Am I inspired? Ask me after my workout today...

This is kind of a catch 22 for me. Am I inspired to work out? Not always, no. Do I feel better if I do? Usually, I do. These days, though, it's taking several days for the muscle soreness I feel after working out with my trainer to go away. I had every intention of going to a yoga class at my gym last night, since The Aussie and I were planning on celebrating Valentine's Day tonight, anyway. I didn't go. I was still too sore from the core workout I did on Wednesday afternoon. Heck, I'm still sore today, and I have to go back and train with him again this afternoon.  I don't feel super guilty for not going to yoga, because I did start up C25K again yesterday morning, so I got a workout in. But I did want to go to the class.  How do you deal with delayed onset muscle soreness? Do you push through it and end up even more sore or do you rest another day or two?

Schlemmertopf

I have finally purchased a Schlemmertofp. They're rare as hen's teeth these days, and unless you order it online, just about the only place to get one is at Sur La Table. And yes, friends, that means I have finally gone to a Sur La Table store! What a neat place. I'd like to purchase one of everything, please.

Now that I have my clay roaster, I can make a couple of the recipes from 365 Ways To Cook Chicken that call for a clay roaster. I decided on the basic Clay Pot Roast Chicken to start, with my own addition of white and sweet potatoes.

Clay Pot Roast Chicken

1 whole chicken, about 3 pounds
1 onion, cut into large chunks
2 carrots, cut into large pieces
1 white potato, cut into large pieces
1 sweet potato, cut into large pieces
2 T butter or margarine, melted
1 T garlic paste
½ t freshly ground black pepper
1 t rosemary, crumbled
½ t thyme

1. Soak clay roaster according to manufacturer’s directions

2. Rinse and dry chicken. Place inside roaster with vegetables around the chicken.

3. In a small bowl, combine melted butter, garlic, pepper, rosemary and thyme. Drizzle over chicken and veggies. Cover chicken.

4. Place roaster in the middle of a cold oven. Turn temperature to 450 and back for 1 hour. Remove lid and roast uncovered for about 10 minutes to brown the skin lightly.

Yeah. You can see how well I did with the "lightly brown" part. Oops.

The juices were so rich. This is basically chicken stock in the bottom of the roaster.

Overall, the chicken was good, and it was moist. I was not expecting so much juice to come from the chicken. It didn't let the chicken or the potatoes get crispy. Maybe if I didn't put in the veggies or potatoes the chicken would get crisp. Or maybe not. We'll see. And I read that you can bake bread in these things too...

Another post brought to you by The Great Chicken Project

My great chicken project posts have been few and far between lately. I've pretty much eliminated dairy from my diet for the time being, and way too many of the recipes in that book call for cream, sour cream, milk...or they just don't sound that appealing to make. This one did, though.

We seldom eat boneless, skinless chicken breasts, so I don't usually have them in the freezer. I picked up a pack that was on sale and put this together. This recipe is adapted from the Sesame Noodles recipe in 365 Ways To Cook Chicken. The book calls for this to be a cold recipe, but I heated the chicken back up and it was really good warm too.

Sesame Noodles With Chicken And Broccoli (serves 4)

1 bunch of broccoli, cut into florets

1/2 c peanut butter

1/2 c hot water

1/4 c soy sauce

2 T red wine vinegar

2 T rice wine vinegar

2 T sesame oil

1 T chili oil

1 T garlic paste

1/4 T Shichimi Togarashi red pepper mix

2 COOKED skinless, boneless chicken breasts, cut into bite-sized pieces

1 "bundle" of soba noodles

1. Cook your chicken breasts. Poaching is recommended.

2. Combine peanut butter and water and stir until it's a smooth-ish paste. Add in the soy sauce, vinegars, sesame oil, chili oil, garlic paste and red pepper. Add in the chicken pieces, mixing well to coat the chicken. Refrigerate for 2 hours if you can.

3. Steam your broccoli. I use the steamer bags that you can get at the grocery store. You can use them multiple times - I think they're neat-o.

4. In a pot of boiling water, cook your soba noodles for 5 minutes or until done to your taste. Drain and rinse under cold water. Drain well.

5. Place a serving sized amount of soba in a dish. Top with several pieces of broccoli and a large spoonful of the chicken. Drizzle some of the sauce from the chicken on top and serve.

Soup to warm the cockles of your heart on a cold winter's day

It's a little warmer this week, but still gets nippy. I've been browsing through the chicken recipes for soup. I love Thai food, so this one sang to me. (La tua cantante, or whatever the head Volturi said about Edward and Bella...)

Thai Chicken Soup (adapted from 365 More Ways To Cook Chicken)

2 cans of lite coconut milk
6 cups of chicken stock
1 piece of lemongrass stalk (about 6-8") cut in 1" pieces
1 1/2 " piece of ginger cut into thick slices
1 boneless skinless chicken breast (feel free to use a couple more, this is what I had), thinly sliced
1- 5 ounce package of fresh shitaki mushrooms, stemmed and sliced
3 scallions, sliced
1 carrot, cut into thin julienne strips
1/4 cup nam pla (Thai fish sauce)
1 minced jalapeno (I used pickled slices from a jar...)
1 t hot chili oil
1 kaffir lime leaf, cut into thin strips

1. In a large saucepan, bring coconut milk, stock, lemongrass and ginger to a boil. Add in your kaffir lime leaf strips...

... and your chicken. Lower to a simmer.

2. Add in mushrooms, scallions, carrot, nam pla, jalapenos and chili oil. Simmer until carrots are tender.

3. Enjoy.

Winner, winner, chicken dinner

Now that the FabFatties cruise is over and gone (I miss you guys very much!) I'm trying to get back into my routine. So I'm back to figuring out what's for dinner, and that includes figuring out what kind of chicken to cook for dinner. Last night was Oven Crisp Chicken (adapted from recipe on pg. 68 from 365 Ways To Cook Chicken), and oh, this was a good one.

Oven Crisp Chicken

1 cup low fat sour cream
2 T fresh lemon juice
2 T Worcestershire sauce
1/2 t regular paprika
1/2 t hot paprika
1/4 t celery seed
1/2 t salt
1 t garlic powder
1/2 t freshly ground black pepper
1 cup breadcrumbs (recipe calls for stuffing mix that you pulverize. I used Italian breadcrumbs)
1 chicken, cut up
olive oil cooking spray

Preheat oven to 350.

In a bowl mix together the sour cream, lemon juice, Worcestershire sauce, paprika, celery seed, salt, garlic powder and pepper.


Pour breadcrumbs into a dish (I poured onto waxed paper because it's easy and doesn't mess up another dish).


Dip the chicken pieces in the sour cream mixture and roll in the breadcrumbs.






Place coated pieces in a pan that you lightly sprayed with cooking spray. Spritz top with olive oil spray (the recipe calls for melted butter) and bake for 1 hour.

Serve with veggie of your choice, salad, whatever is in the freezer...


The review: This chicken was really moist on the inside and lightly crispy on the outside. I'll be making this one again.

Rosemary Roast Chicken With Vegetables

It's The Great Chicken Project - Recipe 2 - cooking my way through 365 Ways To Cook Chicken by Cheryl Sedaker.

Rosemary Roast Chicken With Vegetables (serves 4)

1 whole chicken, about 3 pounds

salt/ground pepper

1 t rosemary, crushed or chopped fine

2 T butter, softened

4 medium potatoes, peeled and cut into 2 inch pieces

4 small onions, peeled and quartered

4 carrots, peeled and cut into 1 inch pieces

1 cup dry white wine

Note: I used 1 medium/large white potato and one large sweet potato and 4 boiler onions, halved.

Preheat oven to 375. Season chicken inside and out with salt and pepper. Place 1/2 t rosemary in cavity. Tie legs together (I skipped this) and rub butter over skin. Place in a large gratin dish or roasting pan.

Roast chicken for 15 minutes. Arrange potatoes, carrots and onions around chicken.

This is the chicken after the 15 minutes

Sprinkle remaining rosemary over chicken and vegetables. Pour the wine over everything and back for 1 hour and 15 minutes. (Note: since this was a small chicken I started checking at 45 minutes. After an hour I pulled out some of the white potato to brown in the toaster oven because it wasn't getting crispy, and that's how The Aussie loves his potatoes.)

The recipe doesn't call for gravy, but roast chicken without gravy is just criminal! I removed the chicken from the pan to rest.

Add in a tablespoon of flour and stir in any pan drippings, making sure you don't have any clumps of flour left.

Deglaze with water, stirring constantly, until you have a smooth brown gravy.

Roast chickn. Does it get any better than this?

The Great Chicken Project - day 1

Welcome to "The Great Chicken Project." This might be a stupid idea (the jury, aka The Aussie, is still out on this), but I'm going to cook my way through the book "365 Ways To Cook Chicken" by Cheryl Sedaker. My Mom has a copy of this 1986 book and I've used several of the recipes over the years. I picked up a used copy on Amazon because I missed having access to the book. I figure if you're going to eat chicken a lot you should have a bunch of recipes to chose from.

Last week, before I started The Project, I made the Kung Pao chicken (pg. 51) with a couple of ingredient variations. Since it's absolutely freezing here I wanted the next dish to be something warm and comforting. The winner was...

Coq Au Vin (serves 4)

4 slices of bacon, diced

1 T butter (I used bacon drippings instead)

1 chicken (3 pounds) cut up (I used 4 chicken thighs)

18-20 small white onions, peeled (I used 4 boiler onions. I cried peeling them too.)

2 cups thickly sliced mushrooms (Yes!)

2 garlic cloves, chopped (I use chopped from a bottle)

2 T flour

1/4 cup brandy (I don't have brandy, so I didn't use any)

1 3/4 cups red wine (I used YellowTail Grenache with the bright pink stripe on the label)

1/3 cup chopped parsley

1 bay leaf

salt/pepper

1/4 t dried thyme

In a large frying pan, cook bacon until crisp. Remove and drain on paper towel.

Preheat oven to 325.

I had so much bacon drippings that I poured out most. Season chicken with salt and pepper (both sides) and cook until a nice golden brown. This usually takes about 5-7 minutes on the skin side. I used my cast iron skillet because I've found that chicken browns really well in it.

Transfer chicken in casserole dish that has a cover.

And we're slicing... (I had plenty of mushrooms in the fridge. Memo to self: when inviting people over for New Years Eve dinner, find out *first* if they like mushroom sour cream sauce or stuffed mushrooms. You won't have so many leftovers.)

Add onions to frying pan and cook until lightly browned. (I forgot to do this and put them in together with the mushrooms. They didn't brown, but they still tasted good) Transfer onions to the pot with the chicken. Add mushrooms and garlic to pan and cook until soft. Transfer to casserole with the rest of the gang.

Add flour to the fat in the pan. Cook for 1-2 minutes, stirring frequently.

Add the brandy (if you have it) and the red wine to the pan and cook, stirring constantly, until sauce is bubbling and thick.

It's Pink!

Remove from heat and pour over the chicken. Sprinkle with 3 T parsley (I forgot to do this), add a bay leaf, thyme and the cooked bacon pieces.

Cover and bake for an hour. When done, remove bayleaf and serve, garnishing with the remaining chopped parsley.

Phew. Day 1 of The Great Chicken Project has been completed. Well, kind of day 2, since I did make the Not Quite Kung Pao Chicken already.

The Verdict: This was a great dish to serve on a cold winter night. The leftovers were great the next day too.