Greens, Potatoes and Chicken

I was having one of those days, one of those weeks actually, where meal planning goes out the window and all your best intentions get wiped out once you hit the front door. Work has been very hectic lately, my husband has been ill, the kids have been in a mood, even the dog decided to wake me up every half hour on the hour last night. So as I drove home talking to my husband via cell phone he told me the closest he had gotten to starting dinner was defrosting some chicken thigh fillets. He offered to go pick something up for dinner.

As tempting as that was, we have been eating out way too much and that's not good for our health or our wallets. I knew I had some sad vegetables in the fridge that needed to be cooked or tossed STAT so I told him to meet me at home.

I started finishing the defrosting of the chicken in the microwave while I surveyed the vegetable situation. A 16 ounce bag of collards that had seen better days, several onions and a cereal bowl full of white creamer potatoes. I formulated a plan for a one pan meal that would hopefully feed my family of 4.

I rinsed and sorted through my sad collards, some of them were wilted beyond salvation, but most of it was fine. I put it in a sheet pan. To that I added one thinly sliced onion, and I halved lengthwise all of the creamer potatoes. I tossed them all with generous slugs of olive oil (maybe 1/4 C all together?) some sea salt and some black pepper.

When the chicken was good and defrosted I opened up each fillet and seasoned them on both sides with salt, pepper and paprika (mostly for color). I placed the chicken thighs on top of my oily, salty veggies and then placed aluminum foil over the whole thing and put it an oven set at 450 degrees. I let the chicken cook covered for 20 minutes. When that was up I checked the chicken and vegetables and decided to roast everything uncovered for another 20 minutes to get some color and finish cooking.

When I pulled the pan out of the oven everything was browned and crispy. Even some of the fronds of collard greens had turned crisp! I took the chicken and placed a piece or two on every plate, then I tossed the hot vegetables together in the pan one more time to coat everything in pan juices and served the green and potatoes alongside the chicken pieces.

Variations of recipe:

You could toss the vegetables with a mixture of olive oil and bacon fat if you had some on hand. You could even add bacon pieces to the pan and let it cook with the chicken.

You could add a 1/4 teaspoon of red pepper flakes to the greens as well for a nice kick of heat.

You could use a good baking potato cut up into one inch pieces in place of the creamer potatoes, or you could use turnip greens and turnip pieces in place of collards and potatoes.

Instead of using boneless, skinless chicken thighs you could use chicken leg quarters, but I'd separate the drumstick from the quarter and add more time for cooking. Maybe an additional 10 minutes?

Last night's dinner: Pressure Cooker to the Rescue

Okay, I think I actually sort of invented a one dish meal for the pressure cooker, GO ME! Here is what I did.

I added 1 C of brown rice to the pressure cooker, 2 C of water, an onion cut in half, some salt and cooked it on high pressure for 10 minutes, when it was done I added 2 semi-frozen chicken breasts, cut into chunks and seasoned with adobo to the pan, put the lid on and cooked it all for another 10 minutes, while that was cooking I chopped some zucchini into nice thick rounds and when 10 minutes was up I stirred up the chicken and rice; added the zucchini, 1 TB of Italian herbs, another 1/4 C of water and cooked it all for 5 more minutes. Semi-frozen chicken (still very firm and cold in the middle) is much easier to chop up into cubes, plus you don't need to take the extra time to defrost it completely before cooking which saves time. The brown rice cooks (in about half the time!) into a creamy texture in my pressure cooker, almost a risotto type consistency without the bother of standing over a pot for 30 minutes stirring and adding ladles full of broth. I think another fun way of making this would be to add a can of chopped Italian style (herbs added) tomatoes in the last 5 minutes of cooking. To serve you could top it with a bit of freshly grated Parmesan cheese or some chopped fresh herbs. Prepared just as it was it was a flavorful, nutritious and very easy dinner. Another bonus of pressure cooking is because it is all one contained unit it does NOT heat up the house the way you do cooking on the stove top or in the oven.

Pressure cookers require some water in order to come up to pressure, which is why I added water every step of the way, your pressure cooker may require more or less liquid in order to cook, please consult your manual before attempting my recipe.

Kayla's ABC pasta

I got this recipe/technique from my BFF Kayla and now I am going to share it with you.

Take an onion and chop it into itty bitty pieces, then start browning it in a pan with olive oil. (Doesn't that smell good?) When it is translucent throw in some chopped fine garlic and a bit of sea salt. Then throw in 1 pound of whatever ground meat product you are using (beef, pork, chicken, turkey) Add in some fresh chopped tomatoes (canned if you don't have fresh) and let that all simmer. While it is simmering chop whatever other vegetables you have on hand. I use a "Vidalia Onion" chopper, like you've seen on the infomercial, basically a gadget that presses the veggies through a metal grid to get uniform pieces. I use the finest (smallest) grid I have to get more itty bitty pieces. Chop 1 great big carrot, 1 small zucchini, 1 big stalk of celery, half a big green pepper and when you add in the onion, tomatoes and garlic it is well over 3 C of vegetables! Take the meat mixture and pour off the excess fat. Then add the vegetable mixture to the meat and stir it up with some oregano and some House Blend and then pop a lid over it and turn the temperature down to low. Since the meat is browned at this point you can let the veggies just steam in there. This only takes 10-15 minutes on low. Then you stir together the meat and veggies with one small can of tomato sauce, let it heat up, taste and adjust the seasoning if need be. While the tomato sauce is heating up, boil some water and cook the ABC pasta (only half a box!). I know it looks small and like a tiny amount of pasta but it makes a surprising amount. The last step is to simply add some pasta to the bowls, top with sauce and then mix it together. Because the pasta, the veggies, the little pieces of ground meat are all of uniform size and cunningly covered in red sauce and maybe some cheese, this goes down a treat for veggie phobic kids. My children would eat this all day every day if we had it.

You can serve this as a one dish meal since it has protein, carbs and tons of vegetables. I think if I were to make a vegetarian version of this I'd sub in some cooked lentils for the ground beef and make a vegetarian red sauce, but what say you my full-time vegetarian friends?