Yummy Chicken and Spinach Dinner

Since I've been on the DL and not at work, I've had more time to think about cooking - and more time to actually do it!

First of all, if you like to cook, you need to subscribe to Cook's Illustrated. Period. Stop what you're doing now and subscribe! They cook a meal literally hundreds of times if that's what it takes to get it perfected. I have a magazine subscription, but if you're greener than I am, you can subscribe to their online membership.

Every once in a while, Cook's Illustrated sends me emails with access to a few online recipes, and this past Monday, I made the following recipe, and it was GOOD.

Sauteed Chicken Breast Cutlets in Lemon Sauce with Proscuitto and Sage
Serves 4

To minimize the amount of time the cutlets wait in the oven, prepare the sauce ingredients before sautéing the chicken.

INGREDIENTS

Chicken Cutlets
4 boneless, skinless chicken breasts (about 1 1/2 pounds), rinsed and dried thoroughly
1/4 cup unbleached all-purpose flour
1 1/2 tablespoons unsalted butter
1 1/2 tablespoons vegetable oil

Sauce
2 medium cloves garlic , sliced thin
15 fresh sage leaves
2 tablespoons lemon juice
1 cup chicken stock or low-sodium canned chicken broth
3 tablespoons unsalted butter , softened
1 slice prosciutto (1/4-inch thick, about 1 1/2 ounces), diced fine

INSTRUCTIONS

For the Chicken Cutlets:
1. Generously season both sides of each breast with salt and pepper and dredge one at a time in flour placed in a shallow dish; shake gently to remove excess flour and set aside. Heat butter and vegetable oil in 12-inch heavy-bottomed skillet over high heat, swirling to melt butter. When foam subsides and butter begins to color, place cutlets in skillet, skinned side up. Reduce heat to medium-high and sauté without moving until nicely browned, about 4 minutes. Turn cutlets over and cook on other side until meat feels firm when pressed and clotted juices begin to emerge around tenderloin, 3 to 4 minutes. Leaving fat in skillet, transfer cutlets to plate, cover loosely with foil, and keep warm in 200-degree oven while preparing the sauce.

For the Sauce:
Set skillet over medium heat. Add garlic and sage leaves; sauté until garlic is fragrant and sage crisps, 1 to 2 minutes. Add lemon juice and bring to boil, scraping up browned bits from bottom of skillet with wooden spoon. Add chicken stock, increase heat to medium-high and bring to boil, stirring occasionally, until reduced to 1/4 cup, about 8 minutes. Off heat, swirl in butter, and add prosciutto. Season to taste with salt and pepper. Spoon sauce over cutlets; serve immediately.

I wanted to find a side dish that would also incorporate lemon - preferrably the zest, since I just bought a microplane zester. I did a google search for Spinach with Lemon Zest and found the following, AMAZING recipe. This is from a website that I just found and bookmarked, because it's wonderful: For the Love of Cooking http://fortheloveofcooking-recipes.blogspot.com/

Spinach and Pine Nuts
1 large bunch of baby spinach, washed thoroughly twice and stems trimmed
1 tsp olive oil
1-2 cloves of garlic - minced
Sea or Kosher salt & fresh cracked pepper to taste
1 tsp lemon zest
1-2 tbsp toasted pine nuts
2 tbsp red wine vinegar

Toasted Pine Nuts: In a small skillet over medium heat, add the pine nuts to the DRY pan. Cook for a few minutes, stirring frequently, until golden brown. Remove from the heat and set aside.

Spinach: In a large dutch oven or skillet, heat the olive oil over medium heat. Add the garlic and stir constantly for 45 seconds then add the clean spinach, salt and pepper to taste. Stir frequently for 1 - 2 minutes until wilted. Add the pine nuts, lemon zest and red wine vinegar then mix thoroughly. Serve immediately.

My only tip about the spinach is - cook it in a dutch oven. You need the space because the spinach starts out really big before it shrinks.

Enjoy!

New Cookbook!

I love to cook. I don't have a lot of time to do it, but when I do, I really enjoy it. Most of the time when I cook a meal, it's on the weekends when I have more time. Last weekend, I cooked barbecue pork in my crock-pot because Roman brought me some awesome barbecue sauce from his recent trip to Memphis.

The crock-pot recipes I have feed an army, so we had friends over to help us eat it all (Molly, Jason and Xavier). I also made cornbread for the first time. I was amazes at how easy it was to make! I made it from a recipe out of the cookbook that Molly gave me for Christmas. The book was on my amazon.com wishlist because Jackie recommended it to me. And I LOVE it. I read it periodically and learn more and more about cooking technique. Something I never learned growing up.

I admit that I love reading recipes as much as (or more than) I like to cook. I recently went to Half-Price Books and hit the jackpot. I found Bobby Flay's Mesa Grill cookbook for $10 and Nigella Lawson's book, "Nigella Bites" for $10. I think that both of them are incredibly talented, and I was so excited at my find.

We were visiting family today, and during the drive, I was able to finally read Nigella Bites. I love her style! I've seen her shows on Food Network, but this is the first cookbook of hers I've owned. It definitely won't be the last. Her writing style is so friendly, and her recipes are so easy and yummy-sounding. I can't WAIT to try them!

Simply said, I'd highly recommend this cookbook to anyone who likes to cook. I'll eventually write more about her recipes that I try. But if you're anything like me and are a cookbook junkie more than you even cook, this is one to get!