Tomato Feta Stuffed Chicken

Well, it's been a while. Months even. I've been all over the place, visiting friends and family, volunteering, and going on vacation. But now that I'm settling back into cozy Chapel Hill to start studying for my Master's comprehensives, it appears Pensive Ramblings will be returning once again.

Last week I was vacationing at the beach with some family, and like usual we divided up the culinary responsibilities. I got to cook one night, and made the above chicken dish. It's pretty similar to previous stuffed chickens I've made, this one with feta cheese, tomatoes, and basil in the middle. But the last couple times I've been dissatisfied with the quality of the breading and was looking to improve on it. One difference was that I breaded this chicken before stuffing it. This allows the chicken to be breaded on both sides, a significant advantage, but it also means that I lose some of the breading just by the handling of the chicken during the stuffing and rolling.

Something else I wanted to improve on was the volume of the breading. I really just wanted more of it on the chicken. Part of my dipping mixture was melted butter, so I took some of the butter and drizzled it right into the dredging mixture of bread crumbs and parmesan cheese. This causes the crumbs to stick to each other and consequently stick to the chicken in bigger clumps. It worked really well and I'm planning on doing even more next time, using some oil instead of melted butter.

Overall I was happy with how the chicken turned out, and it received some rather nice compliments. I still want to improve the breading though, so in the next couple of weeks I'll be doing some more, probably frying this time around. Who could complain about that?

Sausage-stuffed Manicotti

Enter the second half of my buy one get one free spicy italien sausage deal. I had a rather inexplicable desire for stuffed pasta, so I proceeded to check the literature. Something I found that was in disagreement was whether the manicotti should be cooked before the stuffing occurs. The shells are brittle and prone to cracking before cooked, but extremely easy to tear afterwards. The manicotti obviously needs to spend more time in the oven if they are not boiled beforehand, with some suggesting to mix in some water with the sauce. A few recipes suggested what seemed to me a very sensible solution, boil the pasta for half the time.

The stuffing for this dish was made up of browned sausage, sauteed onions, garlic, ricotta cheese, and bread crumbs. The half cooking the manicotti worked out very nicely, as it ended up easy enough to stuff, but not so tender that it tore. The shells were nestled between two layers of spaghetti sauce, with plenty of mozzarella cheese sprinkled on top, and baked at 350 for about 30 minutes or so. Spicy italien sausage is still pretty much the greatest thing ever, and worked really well in this.

Italian Sausage Fettucini without a Creamy Tomato Sauce

I know. The meal pictured above does not really look that exciting, but somehow I thought it worthy to recieve its own blog post. Well that's because almost all of the time I'm starting from some base recipe. I always make variations, often significant, but the base is always still there. This time however, I was acting on total whim. I was in the grocery store and came across something I had previously believed would never occur. Spicy italian sasuage, was on sale. Finding it impossible to resist, I quickly picked some up and decided I had make something out of it. As I was already at the store, I had nothing but my own ideas to work with.

To be honest, the dish was exceedingly simple, containing only the sausage, tomatoes, onions, garlic, fettucini, and various spices. In fact, it looks very simliar to the very first food I ever posted on here, minus the cream sauce. But somehow it feels important, perhaps because it represents the hope that eventually I'll be able to come up with my own recipes from nothing at all.

Southwest Stuffed Chicken

Since my last stuffed chicken went so well, I thought I'd try something similar. I was planning for a chicken stuffed with pepper jack cheese and chilies. However I was unable to find any green chilies, so faced with several choices I ended up selecting serrano peppers, thinking them less spicy than jalapeños. As this ended up being far from correct, it seems a perfect time to stop and explore the Scoville Scale, the measure of piquancy of a chili.

The hotness of a pepper is caused by a chemical compound called capsaicin (8-Methyl-N-vanillyl-trans-6-nonenamide). Capsaicin irrates the chemoreceptor nerve endings, particularly in mucous membranes, causing the familiar warm, burning sensation. This is gauged by the Scoville scale, with some common values below.

15,000,000–16,000,000 - Pure capsaicin
2,000,000–5,300,000 - Pepper spray
350,000–580,000 - Red Savina habanero
100,000–350,000 - Habanero chili
30,000–50,000 - Cayenne Pepper
10,000–23,000 - Serrano Pepper
2,500–8,000 - Jalapeño Pepper
100–500 - Pepperoncini

So it ends up that the green chilies I was looking for where probably somewhere in the 1500-2000 range, meaning the peppers I ended up with were a mere 5 to 10 times hotter.

When stuffing chicken I used to cut the breasts in half the short way and then pound them thin. But this seemed a little silly to me so now I cut them in half length-wise, simliar to butterflying, and no pounding is required. The breasts were sprinkled with salt, pepper, and crushed red pepper flakes, then layered with pepper jack cheese and the serrano peppers. I knew by this point that they were hotter than I had orginally thought, but I didn't really know how much it really amounted to, so I ended up putting a bunch on. The chicken was then rolled up and secured with toothpicks and dredged in butter and a bread crumb mixture with a generous amount of chili power and more red pepper flakes (I figured why not, the thing was already like a 6 billion on the scale). Finally the rolls were baked at 400 for about 21 minutes.

It was in the end not nearly as spicy as I was expecting. I'm not totally sure why. It was hot enough to have me get a little sugar to help relieve the burn, (capsaicin is not water soluble, which is why water doesn't help), but not anymore then some hot wings. I was a big fan of the cheese though, so I was pretty happy with it overall.

Penne with Caramelized Meat Sauce

I thought browning beef was a pretty simple process. All you had to do was heat up a skillet to medium or a little higher and throw the beef in there, moving it around some until there wasn't any pink left. Honestly though this really shouldn't be called browning, because the beef ends up grey. But I was reading today how beef for a meat sauce should actually be brown, that is to say, caramelized. I had never even really heard of that before, and it intrigued me enough to try it.

Caramelization is the culinary term for the oxidation of sugar. It generally occurs around 320 F and releases a whole new set of chemcials, resulting in its distinct flavor. For the meat in this dish I used a cast iron skillet with the stove turned almost all the way to high to provide the necessary temperature. The bottom of the skillet was littered with salt and small chunks of ground beef were dropped in it, and not moved. I fought the impluse to lower the temperature as a generous amount of smoke started to swirl up from the pan. After a few minutes, I flipped the chunks and found that the bottoms were indeed well caramelized, with the distinctive dark brown patches. The meat was let brown on the other side and then mixed with some onions and garlic that had been sautéing simultaneously. A good amount of fire-roasted, though admittedly canned, tomatoes were added, along with the spices that might be expected, salt, pepper, basil, oregano, and thyme, along with some red pepper flakes and sugar. The sauce was let simmer for a while then mixed with penne pasta.

The caramelized beef was definitely noticeable, and I thought very enjoyable. It seemed to add an entire new dimension to the typical meat sauce I had previously made with only "grey beef." I wonder how it would spice up hamburger helper?

Cajun Tomato Chicken

It's been a long time since my last update. This has due to an odd combination of vacation, busyness, and completely losing my appetite for a week. I almost didn't even get around to it tonight because a choral group I’m in was singing at a modern Latin American music festival. And by singing what I actually mean is humming this really slow, soft, and eerie piece, but nonetheless here I am.

Due to either a lack of imagination, or just plain laziness, or both, I followed a recipe almost exactly when making this tonight. The hallmark of the dish was some blackened Cajun spice blend that I even went ahead and got. Making the dish could not have been easier. The chicken tenderloin pieces were sautéed (I opted for peanut oil), and then the tomatoes and garlic just thrown right in the pan. I had put some salt and pepper and the Cajun spice on the chicken before beginning to cook them, and was generous with the spice again once everything was in the pan. The whole thing was cooked until the tomatoes were semi-soft and then served on top of hot angel hair pasta and topped with crumbled feta cheese. Done. The whole thing took like 20 minutes, and it was fabulous.

What if?

I’m on my spring break now, and am going to be traveling/volunteering, so there’s not going to be a food post this week. But there has been another topic I’ve wanted to talk about for a while. There are many verses in the Bible that I think imply so much more then a cursory glance would suggest. Most of the verses fit right into the narrative and are easy to read over. But if you’ll stop to think about them, you’d probably be surprised at what you’ll end up with. So without further ado, here are three of my favorites.

When Gideon arrived, there was a man telling a dream to his comrade; and he said, “I had a dream, and in it a cake of barley bread tumbled into the camp of Midian, and came to the tent, and struck it so that it fell; it turned upside down, and the tent collapsed.” And his comrade answered “This is no other than the sword of Gideon son of Joash, a man of Israel; into his hand God has given Midian and all the army.
Judges 7:13-14

Just take a moment visualize the dream. The camp of Midian is spread out on a plain, minding its own business, when a fearsome loaf of bread suddenly appears careening towards it! I’d like to think it was a giant loaf, but we can’t say for sure. But this horrifying barley cake shows no quarter and wrecks havoc on the encampment, striking the tent with enough force to knock it flat. It makes about as much sense as most of my dreams. The guy’s buddy though, doesn’t miss a beat. With total conviction he states that obviously the dream must be referring to Gideon. I mean, come on, barley cake….Gideon….duh.

Gideon hadn’t exactly shown and exemplary faith coming up to this event, and the purpose of the dream was to assure him that they would indeed prevail. Given that, I’d like to think that the barley loaf was an example of divine whimsy. If we consider humor to be a good, laudable thing, then by the very nature of God we are required to ascribe it to Him. Have you ever imagined God laughing? Maybe we think that the universe as a whole is so serious that it would seem inappropriate. But try it. Not a short guffaw or a nasal chortle, but a deep, rich, resonant laugh that seems to build up from deep within and crescendo into a joyous roar that echoes off the walls of the universe. It’s a pleasant image to me. And if you’re still not convinced, just take a look at a platypus. There is something funky going on there.

Then Elisha prayed: “O LORD, please open his eyes that he may see.” So the LORD opened the eyes of the servant, and he saw; the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire all around Elisha.

2 Kings 6:17

We when look at the entirety of the Bible, we really don’t know that much about angels, and almost nothing about demons. Details about heaven are scarce or confusing, and details about hell virtually non-existent. I think that this is likely due to the fact that we can’t comprehend the spiritual realms in our current state. But this lack of information, perhaps coupled with a few hundred years of rationalism, has caused many Christians to at the most nominally believe that there are spiritual forces at work in their everyday lives. I honestly don’t know how much the actions of angels or demons may affect my life, but I am convinced it has to be more than most people grant. The magnitude of the Biblical conflict is far greater then all the wars of humans combined, but some would believe that Satan and his demons, if they even exist, are somehow not interested in interfering with Christians.

Our enemy is prowling, he is looking for someone to devour. If only we could see what was actually going on around us. If only we could see the spiritual struggle normally hidden from us. What would it look like? How would we act differently?

But the angel of the LORD said to him “Why do you ask my name? It is too wonderful.”

Judges 13:18

This was the verse that started this whole idea. The KJV translates the last two words ‘secret’, but almost every other translation uses ‘wonderful’. But what’s implied is not simply the name is wonderful, but rather that it is so wonderful it becomes incomprehensible, or secret. Now whether you believe the angel of the Lord is a pre-incarnate Christ, another theophany, or only a specific angel, doesn’t have any real bearing. The idea that something as simple as a name could be so magnificent, so marvelous, so glorious, so as to become unfathomable, should amaze us. For if the name is that splendid, then what of the Person to whom it belongs? Or the place where He dwells?

What if the most beautiful sunset since creation was only the smallest dot on an infinite canvas? What if the greatest symphony ever written was only the least note in an eternal opus? And what if the artist and the composer loved you? What then?