Welcome to Food and Wine Wednesday!
I blame it all on author-pal Tawna Fenske. She started me on this food kick ever since I spent the night at her place while we filmed four videos for our book launch last December. If you missed them, you can find the videos on her blog. (Because she’s so on top of everything!)
Anyhoo, if you were to ask my family, they’d tell you under no uncertain terms that chicken was on sale at our local grocery store this past week. How would they know? Take a wild guess what we’ve been eating most of the week? And, hey, at less than $1 a pound, how could I not buy the equivalent of what would feed a small army? 🙂
Course, that also means coming up with creative ways to prepare it so that it’d get past their lips and down the hatch. Tonight, I admit, I was stymied. After a week of chicken soup, roasted chicken, and chicken sauteed in butter, lemon, and parsley, it was time for something different. Something that would allow me to disguise that, for the fifth time in a week, we were having…chicken.
And then it happened. You know what I’m talking about. That moment when I’m going through the day, minding my own business, taking care of whatever recent crisis arises out of The Male Observation Lab, and then, KA-BOOM! Somewhere out of the ether comes the idea that’s been niggling in the back of the brain: what the heck am I gonna do about dinner tonight? The answer hit me like a lightening bolt out of a clear blue Pacific Northwest sky: Chicken Marengo.
Now, if you want the original recipe, you can find it here. I used it as a spring board…’cause I’m such a rebel that way! My variations included baking the chicken ahead of time (to make week day meal prep easier), using the chicken pieces instead of chicken cutlets (what the hell is a cutlet, anyway?), and using drippings from the baked chicken instead of beef broth. The results, if I do say so myself, were pretty awesome!
But since I can’t offer you a taste, or even a whiff, here are some pics:
Has cooking inspiration struck you in a similar way? How’d it turn out? Please share!
Happy eating, all!
~Melia
Do you have a kiddo in your life? Which part of back-to-school shopping do you like best?
