Tag Archives: chicken

What’s Cooking: Chicken and Black Beans with Chorizo

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As our feature of Emeril’s Sizzling Skillets and Other One-Pot Wonders comes to a close, we managed to save the best two dishes for last (in my opinion).  First up: Chicken and Black Beans with Chorizo.  This dish is SOOO flavorful.  We marinated the chicken overnight in a delicious blend of spices and some sherry.  The black beans are chock full of aromatic vegetables and a hearty helping of spicy chorizo.  For a weeknight, this one took a little too long to cook, so $1.25 and I didn’t sit down to eat until super late.  But most of the heavy lifting comes in the form of marinating and baking in the oven, so if you’re home with a little bit of time on your hands, you can pull this together pretty easily.  $1.25 was partial to the black bean/chorizo bottom layer and we’re already planning on using it for our pulled pork nachos!  Get your copy of the cookbook here for this recipe and all of our favorites from the past few weeks.

Don’t forget about our giveaway of the Zak dishes!  Only a little while longer to enter to win.

Come back tomorrow for the knock out final dish.  We can’t wait to eat it tonight and tell you all about it tomorrow!

For full disclosure information, click here.

What’s Cooking: Chicken Eggplant Parmesan

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One of the first things I was eager to make with our most recent bounty from Hollygrove Market was Eggplant Parmesan. However, $1.25 was a little touch and go on the thought of eating “just” eggplant and the eggplant we got was on the smaller side of things. So I decided to beef it up (er, should I say bird it up? Sorry, that’s horrible) with a few chicken breast cutlets. I also wanted to keep it light, so I didn’t bread the chicken or the eggplant, just gave them a little suntan in some olive oil before layering them together in a dish with some cheese and sauce and sending them off to the oven. When I sat down to write this post, I really thought I had done a great job on the photography this time, but I realized I totally forgot to take a picture of the finished product!! Oops! We were too excited to dig into it I guess! Continue reading →

Chickens of the Grill

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For some reason I tend to find myself out at the Pontchartrain Center about twice a year for an all day event, which typically doesn’t include lunch. Even if whatever mind-numbingly boring event I was attending did serve lunch, I’d want out just for the sake of escaping for a little while. Problem is, what are you going to eat out that way that you can trust? I’m not really a fast food eater, so that knocks out about 95% of the places on the main drag. Most of the time, I end up at the Smoothie King. It’s easy, consistent and I have a few things I know I like there. Compared to the cornucopia of restaurants I normally have to choose from in the Quarter and CBD, having to lunch out by the Pontchartrain Center is the culinary equivalent of being banished to Siberia for me.

The other night, Cupcake and I found ourselves with an evening appointment out that way. Right after work. The way I looked at it, it was going to be one of those nights that I either ate at 11:00 pm or didn’t eat at all. That is, of course, until we were introduced to Pollos a la Brassa Fiesta (“Chickens of the Grill Party”). The place is pretty aptly named, because although they’ve got a few other things on the menu, the only thing they weren’t out of was chicken dishes. The choices were simple, either a rotisserie chicken (whole or half) or a chicken sandwich. We both went the sandwich route and were highly skeptical.

What arrived was essentially a Latin American Philly chicken cheese steak: Soft bread, gooey cheese, onions and peppers. Oh, and well spiced, thinly-sliced rotisserie chicken. While the sandwich was good on its own, it was a “condiment” that really sealed the deal. A fantastic green aji sauce. The spicy and flavorful green addition transformed a decent sandwich into a great one. Thanks to the Chicken Party, I’m actually looking forward to the next foray out to the Pontchartrain Center. Fine, I’m just dreading it a little less.

Pollo a la Fiesta
3901 Williams Blvd.
Kenner

What’s Cooking: Chicken Parmesan Sliders

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This was a pretty easy meal that didn’t require much from the store.  That meant I was pretty much in and out quickly and off to making dinner.  Let’s cut to the chase and get to the ingredients:

1 loaf of French bread
1/2 cup of finely grated Parmesan cheese
4 tablespoons of minced basil leaves
3/4 cup marinara sauce (on a work night I just used Newman’s marinara)
1lb+ chicken breasts
2 tablespoons olive oil
1/4 grated/finely diced onion
pinch or so of salt
pepper to taste
mozzarella for melting (~1/2 an 8 oz package)
lettuce to dress the sliders

Directions:
Cut two two inch slices of the French bread off and dice them.  Drop the bread and the Parmesan cheese into a food processor and grind away.  Add in two tablespoons of the minced basil.  Set this aside for your breading.
Slice the French bread as your “buns.”  The thicker your French bread, the thinner you’ll need to make the slices.  Most widely available French bread is maybe two inches tall, so you’ll need to flatten the bread after baking, hence the thicker slices.  Bake the bread to crisp it.
Warm the sauce and add in the onion, remaining basil, 1/2 tablespoon oil, salt and pepper (and cayenne) to taste.
Trim the chicken breasts and cut in half.  Coat with the breading mixture from earlier.
Cook breaded chicken with remaining oil in a skillet.  In final two-three minutes top each piece with mozzarella to melt it off.
Now to assemble the slider, drop the chicken on the french bread, top with the sauce, lettuce and basil if desired.  Enjoy!

What’s Cooking: Asian Chicken Noodle Salad

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Fresh vegetables and a spicy Asian-inspired dressing make this noodle salad a perfect springtime dinner or lunch. It sure beats heavy Chinese take-out and it’s relatively quick to throw together. The dressing is key here, as you use if for both a marinade and the finishing touch. Although it’s definitely “Asian” in flavor, it’s made with fairly simple pantry staples, so don’t worry about having to drive to the “nearest” international market on the Westbank or spending your last paycheck on random ingredients you can’t pronounce that you’ll never use again. We paired the dish with the our new favorite cocktail, La Coloniale.

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What’s Cooking–Pineapple glazed chicken with pineapple salsa

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It’s Tuesday, so I’m up on cooking.  Today, pineapple is on the menu.  I went to the store and saw a huge pineapple display, so it was on.  Grabbed a bunch of ingredients and headed home.  Fired up the computer to put on some music and started to shake up a drink.  I’m not the prolific cook like Cupcake is, so I need a little encouragement.

I rocked the Simply Margarita, but subbed some pineapple juice for a bit of the Simply Lime (1 part) and cranked the Rebirth channel on Pandora.  It was awesome until I hit my first ad, but I quickly got over that.  Any way, the food is what we’re here for.

Menu (and recipes):

Pineapple salsa

Pineapple glazed chicken

Black beans (don’t start these last!)

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