Chicken Breasts in Caper Cream Sauce

Today was rainy and gray but with the weather making you want to stay inside is a perfect time to try out a new recipe. I got the idea for this one on allrecipes.com, made a couple of minor additions and it received rave reviews from the entire family which is an accomplishment in itself.

Here's how to do it...

Ingredients:

4 boneless, skinless chicken breast halves
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon pepper
1 teaspoon dried dill weed
1 tablespoon minced garlic
1 tablespoon olive oil
2 tablespoons butter
1 cup whipping cream
2 tablespoons capers, drained
1/4 cup green onions, minced

Directions:

1. Season chicken breasts with pepper, salt, and dill weed.
2. Melt butter in a large skillet over medium heat. Add olive oil. Saute onions and garlic for about one minute. Place breasts in skillet, and increase heat to medium-high. Turn chicken frequently, until brown, about 5 minutes. Reduce heat to medium, and cook 5 to 7 minutes, until breasts are cooked through. Remove chicken to a warm serving platter, and cover with foil.
3. Return skillet to stove, and increase heat to high. Whisk in whipping cream, whisking continuously until reduced to sauce consistency, about 3 minutes. Remove from heat. Stir in capers. Pour sauce over chicken, and serve.

The sauce is simple and really makes this dish what it is. You'll notice from the picture that I served this with a fairly simple bruschetta. Here's how to do it.

Ingredients:

• 3-4 slices of sourdough bread
• 2 roma tomatoes
• 1 small yellow squash
• 3-4 tablespoons balsamic vinegar
• 1 green onion
• 2 tablespoons olive oil, divided
  

Directions:

1. Dice squash and chop onion and saute in 1 tablespoon olive oil.
2. Chop roma tomatoes.
3. Toast sourdough bread in a frying pan in 1 tablespoon olive oil.
4. Top toasted bread with squash and tomatoes and then lightly drizzle balsamic vinegar onto the combination.

Both of these recipes are easy but taste difficult. You can replace the chicken with cod or halibut or even pork if you'd like to change it up as well.

The dipping sauce in the picture is balsamic vinegar; Valerie likes to dip her bruschetta instead of putting it directly on the bread. Valerie also added grated cheese to the top of hers which is a nice variation.

Until next time, bon appetit!

Chicken Corn Chowder....mmmmmmm

I told you that I'd be posting some recipes here on occasion and here is the first. This is something I made for the first time tonight and it got thumbs up all around. Keegan kind of faltered at the bottom of the bowl but that's just how it is with him. I'd have been shocked if he ate the whole thing.


Chicken Corn Chowder

1 lb chicken breast - diced
1 16oz bag of frozen whole kernel corn
32 oz chicken broth (I used Imagine Organic)
1 cup heavy whipping cream
2 medium onions - chopped
2 medium potatoes - chopped
1 cup cheddar cheese - grated
2 tbsp olive oil
2 tbsp butter
1 tbsp italian seasoning
salt, pepper, garlic powder to taste
ground cumin, ground coriander (optional)


1. In a large frying pan saute diced chicken and onions in olive oil and butter with salt, pepper, garlic powder, italian seasoning, cumin and coriander until thoroughly cooked.

2. In a separate pot simmer potatoes and corn in chicken broth until chicken/onion combination is done.

3. Add sauteed chicken and onions to pot, add heavy cream and bring to a boil then reduce heat and simmer for about 10 minutes.

4. Serve with a sprinkle of grated cheese on top.

Serves about 4.


That's it. Most of the work comes in dicing up the ingredients. The whole thing took me about 30-45 minutes and it turned out pretty good for my first attempt at a chowder of any kind.
Feel free to let me know what you think or if you have any ideas on how to improve it. Personally I would have added sliced mushrooms if I was making this for only myself but most of my family are not fans of fungus. Oh well, bon appetit!

Hello again, hello.

Ok so I haven't posted anything here in forever but I bet you haven't been too put out by that. I originally created this blog primarily for book, music and television reviews and while that will continue in whatever capacity this blog continues, there will be a bit of other things as well.

For one, I like to cook and I am always learning new and fun things to try out on my unsuspecting family. Since I can never quite remember what I put in things I'm thinking I'll start sharing a few of those recipes with you. That way you can try them out if you'd like and I'll always have somewhere to come back and refer to when I want to make something again.

Secondly, I have always meant to keep a record of the bizarre stuff that happens while working at a grocery store so I may just keep you abreast of those strange goings on. There is the time I was drenched by some idiot with a super-soaker, the time one of our wonderful teen-age shoplifters slapped me in the face and took off running and the time some old man walked into our back room and took a leak against the milk cooler.... you get the picture. You never know what's going to happen when you work in such a public place.

So, what to start off with? I think it'll be a brief review of a book I finished recently called The Terror written by Dan Simmons.




The Terror takes place in the 1840's and follows the doomed expedition commanded by Sir John Franklin. There were no survivors of the two ships Erebus and Terror that set out from England in 1845 in search of the fabled Northwest Passage though there is evidence that some of the men may have lived in to the early 1850's trying to escape the arctic wilderness.

Simmons account of that fateful expedition is the subject of The Terror and he obviously did his research with regard to the men who set out to find the route that would undoubtedly make many of his countrymen rich. Simmons doesn't settle for simple historical fiction though, as interesting as that may have been. He intertwines a supernatural element to what happens to these men as their ships are stranded and locked in ice for over a year and a half.
There is something stalking these men and picking them off one by one and that is what a good portion of the book is about.

Simmons gets a bit repetitive and I found myself wondering after the third or fourth encounter with this 'creature' when he was going to advance the story beyond a cat and mouse game between sailors and 'thing'.
He does though and eventually you realize that the antagonist of this story isn't just a supernatural predator but simply the cold ice storms and desperate conditions these men actually faced as they were stranded in temperatures that were often at least 50 degrees below zero.

The book is long, very long (the paperback is 992 pages), but I would recommend it. This is the first book I've read by Dan Simmons but I'll be back for more. Browsing his titles at amazon.com it is obvious that he writes in several different genres and I'd be interested in some of his science fiction and other historical fiction.

I guess that is all for now. Feel free to leave a comment if you'd like, any feedback would be welcome.
Until later.