Wednesday, April 4, 2012

Faith like a mustard (seed) chicken

A few weeks ago I made mustard-y chicken with a light salad of greens and other salad-like veggies.  You see, one of the guys happened to mention that he loves mustard and is trying to figure out how to incorporate it into everything he cooks.  I'm not quite as passionate about mustard as Jon, but I do really like mustard and I like cream so I figured I'd embody Jon and create something with mustard, cream and chicken.
The problem with me following recipes is that I don't.  I look at a variety of them then look at what is available and figure out how to adapt the recipe to fit what is accessible.  I also am somewhat of a picky eater so I adjust things to suit my own taste and expect that others have the same particular opinions about food as me.
So I loosely based this recipe on The Pioneer Woman's recipe of the same name but when I infuse it with my love and tears (a la 'Like Water for Chocolate'), it takes on a whole new form, flavor, and place in my heart as my own creation.

Here's the recipe (keep in mind that all my meals are designed to feed 10-15 people, you should adjust accordingly, unless you like eating the same food left over a hundred million times):

8 boneless, skinless chicken breasts (cut in half laterally to make them more cutlet-like)
3 T olive oil
4 T butter
lots of minced garlic, then add 3 T more (really, it's more like 6 T of garlic)

1.5 C of white wine (I used really cheap, I mean a $3 bottle of, Pinot Grigio)
5 big tablespoons good mustard (you can mix it up and use dijon and grainy mustard, I wanted to keep the cost down so I just used dijon mustard because it was in the fridge)
1/2 C heavy cream
1/2 C chicken broth (we had boullion so I made my own chicken broth)
salt and pepper

The road to delicious is in these easy steps:
1. Melt the butter in the olive oil in a deep-ish frying pan.
2.  Dry off chicken and salt and pepper both sides.  Then pan-fry the chicken in the oily/buttery mixture, either until just under completely cooked or completely cooked, if you're like me and are paranoid about salmonella, and then remove from the pan.
3.  Leave juices in the pan and throw the garlic in there.  Let the juices enjoy the garlic for a little bit then add the booze.  Reduce the wine/garlic/butter/oil/chicken juice mixture by about half.
4.  Add the mustard(s), heavy cream and chicken broth.  Let it simmer for a little while so all the flavors can happily symbio-size.  (It's not a real word, I just made it up.  Clearly.)
5.  Taste the sauce.  It should be creamy but not heavy and the mustard should not knock you off your feet or be so faint that you can't taste it and its only purpose was to color the sauce.  If you are more of a mustard fiend, like Jon, add more.  If it's too thick, thin it out with a little bit of broth.  This is the time when you get to stray from my recipe and make it more your own.  Be adventurous and courageous!
6.  Finally, add the chicken back to the sauce.  I let it sit for about 15 minutes so that the chicken can somewhat absorb the mustardy goodness.

I suggest you serve it with something light like steamed veggies or a side salad because it's kind of a heavy dish, and you'll feel like you should eat something healthy with it anyway because it's quite the artery-clogger.  But that's what fasting, yoga, running, and cookies are for!  Ok, maybe the cookies only balance the savory flavor, but they're a nice addition, to any meal, really.

We may all quickly discover how not good I am at sharing recipes because I just make them up as I go.  I will try much harder to pay close attention to what I do and try my hardest to remember the steps and improvisations when I sit down to write.

2 comments:

  1. It was delicious! I do love me some mustard. Also I am very excited about your blog. Keep at it!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Yay!!! My failure was not adding chicken broth. I'm excited to remake it...correctly this time with a bit more wisdom than my own. :)

    ReplyDelete