Today is my Mom's birthday!
When I was first married, Mom was taking classes on painting. She depicted this serene scene, gave it to me, and I have had it in my living room ever since.
It's nice to have family-created items.
I had a dinner party for Mom this weekend, with 10 people at the table. I find cooking for 4, 6, or even 8 not so bad, but 10 gets me a little nervous. You need to double most recipes! When I have this size of a group, I try to keep it simple, and I write out a timeline as well as a menu. However, I forgot to plan on some minor disaster happening.....which it did, when the oven got turned off instead of the timer. In the end, dinner was about 30 minutes late, but still delicious. Here was my main dish:
Breaded and Baked Boneless Chicken
Preheat the oven to 425.
Take however many boneless chicken breast halves as you need.
(I had way too many! But that's okay because they make excellent leftovers.)
Bang them a little with a meat mallet to tenderize them slightly.
Spread the chicken with some olive oil on both sides.
Roll the chicken in an appropriate coating. In Whole Foods, I found an interesting pre-made coating mix called "Kariba Farms Wheat & Gluten Free NutCrusters" in an Almond-Lemon Flavor. This contained almond meal, soy, flax and spices. I used this coating mix until I ran out, then we quickly scrounged up some gluten free bread and whirled it in the food processor for a while, then adding parmesan, spices and salt to taste. Both coatings were very good. Tonight I will have leftovers of the breadcrumb-parmesan style, topped with tomato sauce and some provolone to make a chicken parmesan alongside some gluten free pasta.
Coat the bottom of your cast iron skillet with some olive oil.
Put your chicken in the skillet.
Bake the chicken (uncovered) for 30 to 35 minutes. We always check our meat for done-ness with an instant-read meat thermometer. I'd hate to find it wasn't cooked enough after it had been served!
Those little pieces are little bits of tenderloins and such that didn't cut neatly. Mmmmmm....chicken nuggets!
The lighter-colored piece at the bottom right had the bread crumb mixture on it.
