Chicken Bryan (almost like Carrabbas) and Lumpy Mashed Potato Casserole

My favorite celebration meal is Chicken Bryan at Carrabbas Italian Grill (Deerfield Twp., near Cincinnati).  I like to get the small portion which is served with a large scoop of their lumpy mashed potatoes.

I saw a recipe on Pioneer Woman Cooks – Tasty Kitchen which sounded similar and gave it a try with a few adaptations.  It certainly serves well as a Chicken Bryan fix for between-celebration dinners.

The original recipe called for rubbing the chicken breast with olive oil, salt and pepper and then cooking in a saucepan over medium heat for 25-35 minutes.   I prefer to stew a whole chicken (my post on stewing chicken is here) and then cut off the breast portions.  The chicken is tender and juicy when prepared this way and can be cooked in advance.

For six servings, I cut each stewed breast half into three portions.

CHICKEN BRYAN

• 2 chicken breast halves cut into 6 portions, stewed or cooked in a saucepan
• 2 Tblsp. butter
• 1 Tblsp. onion, chopped
• 1 Tblsp. garlic, minced
• 1/2 cup dry red wine
• 1/4 cup lemon juice
• 8 Tblsp. cold butter, cut in slices
• 1/2 cup sundried tomatoes, sliced
• 1/4 cup fresh basil, chopped
• 1/2 tsp salt
• Grinding of black pepper
• 6 Tblsp. goat cheese

To Make the Sauce:

In a medium sauce pan, place the butter and onions on medium heat and cook for about 5 minutes.  Add garlic, red wine and lemon juice.  Increase heat slightly and simmer the sauce for 4-5 minutes.  Add butter one slice at a time, stirring after each slice until butter is melted.  Add sun-dried tomatoes, basil, salt and pepper.  Simmer until mixture is hot.

Place a portion of warm chicken on each plate.  Top each piece of chicken with a tablespoon of goat cheese.  Pour on a scoop of sauce.

I served the chicken with my version of Lumpy Mashed Potatoes

LUMPY MASHED POTATO CASSEROLE

• 6 medium potatoes
• 3 oz. cream cheese
• 1 Tblsp. butter
• 1/2 cup sour cream
• 1 Tblsp. chopped chives
• 1 tsp. minced garlic
• 1/2 tsp. salt
• Grating of black pepper
• 2 slices bacon, cooked and crumbled

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F

Grease a 9-inch casserole

Cook and mash potatoes with a masher, leaving some lumps.  Add cream cheese and butter and stir until cheese and butter have melted and blended.  Add sour cream, chives, garlic, salt and black pepper.  Mix well and spread in prepared casserole.  Sprinkle with bacon and bake uncovered for 30 minutes @ 350 degrees F.

6 servings

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Irish Brown Soda Bread and Colcannon

I have a very slim Irish line in my ancestry, but I married a man who was was fiercely proud of his Irish lineage.  Frank used to take off work on St. Patrick’s Day so he could grab his green derby and head for the nearest pub to spend the day.  One St. Patrick’s Day, he showed up on the evening news coverage at Hap’s Irish Pub with his derby slightly askew,  surrounded by his cronies, waving a big mug of beer and bellowing out, “When Irish Eyes are Smiling”.  His mother said, “Jesus, Joseph and Mary, I’m mortified to death” that her friends saw him in such a state, but this is the woman who was doing the Irish jig for her grandchildren well into her 80s and who said her grandmother washed her clothes on the banks of the river Shannon.

So, I raised four mostly-Irish children and celebrate St. Pat each year with some Irish food.  My oldest daughter was in an Irish dance group and I loved going to the competitions and the annual Feis.  In 1990, they had a food competition and I entered the Scone, Soda Bread and Brown Soda Bread contests.  I won a first-place gold medal in each of the divisions.  I was particularly pleased because the judges were some visitors from Ireland.

IRISH BROWN SODA BREAD

• 1 cup all-purpose flour
• 1 cup whole wheat flour
• 2 Tblsp. dark brown sugar
• 2 tsp. baking powder
• 1 tsp. baking soda
• 1/2 tsp. salt
• 3 Tblsp. softened butter
• 3/4  cup raisins
• 1 cup buttermilk

Preheat oven to 375 degrees F

Lightly grease a flat baking pan

In a large bowl, sift together the flour, brown sugar, baking powder, baking soda and salt.  Cut in the softened butter until mixture looks like fine crumbs.  Add raisins.

Add buttermilk, mixing with a fork until dry ingredients are absorbed.  Turn out onto a lightly floured board and knead gently until smooth, adding flour as needed (about 1/2 cup).  Dough will still be slightly sticky.  Shape into a ball and place on the greased baking pan, forming  into a 7 x 1-1/2 inch circle.  Press a large floured knife into the center of the loaf almost through to the bottom.  Repeat at right angles to divide the loaf into quarters.

Bake @ 375 degrees F for 30-40 minutes until top is golden and loaf sounds hollow when tapped.  Remove to wire rack to cool.  Brush top with melted butter.

Makes one loaf.  From a cookbook published by the Cincinnati Hoxworth Center called Adventures in a Culinary Vein.

The recipe for Colcannon comes from a cookbook my daughter brought back from Ireland, A Taste of Ireland by Theodora Fitzgibbon.  I adapted the recipe by using half of the butter and cream it called for.  Having tasted Ireland’s wonderful butter and cream, I can only imagine how rich the original dish is.  My family likes this version with a little less fat.

COLCANNON

• 4 cups shredded cabbage
• 6 medium potatoes, peeled and quartered
• 2 green onions with tops
• 1/2 cup cream
• 1 tsp. salt, divided
• Grindings of black pepper
• Pinch of mace
• 1/4 cup butter, divided

Cook cabbage until tender.  I like to steam it for approximately 20 minutes.

Cover potatoes with cold water and cook on medium high heat for 20-30 minutes until potatoes are done, then drain.

While potatoes are cooking, cut up the green onions in small pieces.

Place in a small saucepan and cover with cream (about 1/4 cup).   Simmer on low until onion is soft.

Beat drained potatoes with 1/2 tsp. salt, grating of black pepper, mace, 2 Tblsp. butter and green onions with cream.  Add additional cream to get desired consistency (about 1/4 cup).

Place cooked cabbage in a large pot, add 1/2 tsp salt, grating of black pepper.   Add the mashed, seasoned potatoes.

Mix well and turn into a large serving bowl.  Make a well in the center and place 2 Tblsp. butter in the cavity.

Serve piping hot.

I started making this dish in 1993.  The cookbook suggests frying leftovers like potato pancakes in bacon fat or butter.  I haven’t tried this because we never seem to have leftovers.

HAPPY ST PATRICK’S DAY.

P.S.  I came out to the kitchen this morning to find two handmade gifts from my daughter.

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Crispy Corn Muffins

My oldest daughter mentioned she would like to have some old-fashioned green beans, potatoes and ham for supper.  I thought this might be a good time to make some Crispy Corn Muffins to sop up the “pot likker.”

I used one pound of green beans with stems removed and broken, one medium onion cut into quarters, 6 small red new potatoes, halved, and a cup of cooked ham.   Put everything in a big pot, covered with water and cooked on medium heat about an hour until the vegetables were tender.

Added some salt and pepper to taste and the entree was finished.

The corn muffins were an invention of mine back in the early 1980s when my teenage daughter kept pestering me to make corn muffins crispier.  This technique satisfied her and she makes them this way now for her own family.

CRISPY CORN MUFFINS

• 1 egg
• 1/4 cup granulated sugar
• 1/4 cup vegetable oil
• 1 cup milk
• 1 cup yellow corn meal
• 1 cup flour
• 1 Tblsp. plus 1 tsp. baking powder
• 1/2 tsp. salt
• 2 Tblsp. additional cornmeal for muffin tins

Preheat oven to 400 degrees F.

Oil cups of a 12-cup muffin tin.  In each cup place 1/2 tsp. of cornmeal, then pick up the tin and rotate to cover the bottom and up the sides of the cups.

In a large mixing bowl whisk the egg, then add the sugar, oil and milk, whisking until smooth.

In a small bowl, mix together 1 cup of cornmeal, the flour, baking powder and salt.  Add to the egg mixture and stir just until all of the dry ingredients have been absorbed.  Divide among the 12 prepared cups in the muffin tins.

Bake @ 400 degrees F for 15 minutes until tops are just starting to brown.

Remove muffin tin from oven and immediately with a knife loosen around the edges of each muffin, then use a tablespoon to move the hot muffins to a baking sheet.  Return the muffins to the oven to bake for an additional 5 minutes until the tops are golden brown.

Remove muffins to wire rack to cool slightly.  Best when eaten while still warm.

This wasn’t my southern husband’s favorite version of cornbread, but the rest of us loved it.

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Beans and Dumplings – A Depression-Era Meal

One of my earliest memories is of sitting at a table with my mother, father and little sister.  We are in a one-room, second-floor flat on Elm Street in downtown Cincinnati in the mid-1930s.  All day, Mother has watched over a simmering pot of beans with a pig hock added for flavor.  My father has come in from his timekeeper job on the WPA and we are having about the cheapest supper possible in the midst of the Great Depression.  I have a plateful of beans and a tiny bit of the small amount of meat that is on a pig hock (my father gets the biggest portion of meat and my mother claims to love chewing around on the bone).  The beans are steaming and the teaspoon or so of meat is flavorful – I love it!  It was said in my family that you weren’t an Applegate if you didn’t love beans, so I guess I qualified as a full-fledged member of my father’s side of the family.

As time went on and my father moved to better jobs with the City of Cincinnati and then Dayton Acme (a World War II defense plant), there was more money in my mother’s food budget and she stopped using the mostly-fat pig hocks and either threw in a pork chop or two to cook with the beans or had crisp bacon or fried ham on the side.  This was the only time my father ate pork … along with his beans topped with chopped onion and a lot of black pepper.

By the time my future husband started coming to the house for meals, Mother had added a big cast iron skillet full of fried potatoes to the menu.  It was his favorite supper.  After we were married, I continued to have this meal one night a week.  Every time I hear the John Denver song, “Back Home Again” and the line about “supper on the stove” and the wife who felt the baby move, I think about my young husband coming home to an expectant wife in our little apartment with the windows all steamed up and a big white and red graniteware pot of beans simmering on the range.

My four children didn’t inherit their parents’ love of a bean supper and I got out of the habit of making it.  But now that I’m alone, I crave the beans of my childhood, especially in the fall and winter.  I make a healthier, easier version with a slow cooker.

GREAT NORTHERN CROCKPOT BEANS

• 1/2 lb. Great Northern dry beans
• 6 cups cold water*
• 1-1/2 tsp. ham flavored soup base (L. B. Jamison’s)
• Salt and pepper to taste

Place the dry beans cold water in the slow cooker.  *I use this amount of water to insure that I’ll have enough broth to make dumplings.  Cook on low overnight – approximately 8 hours.  Add the ham flavoring, then taste before adding salt and pepper.

I was the only one in the family who liked dumplings with my beans and I used to make a one-person serving.  This works very well for me now when I want to make a meal just for myself.

DUMPLINGS FOR ONE

• 1/4 cup of My Biscuit Mix**
• 1-1/2 Tblsp. (approx.) of cold water

In a small bowl, stir the biscuit mix and water together to make a thick, moist dough.

Heat about 1 cup of bean broth and 1 cup of beans in a small pot to boiling.  Drop the dough into the boiling mixture by the tablespoonful, making three dumplings.

Lower the heat to simmering, cover the pot and continue simmering for 10 minutes without lifting the lid.  Note:  The white and red graniteware lid is from my original 1952 set.

Serve immediately with chopped onion and a grating of black pepper.  A small serving of meat is good, but not necessary (to me, at least).  Today, I happened to be browning hot sausage to freeze for my Thanksgiving stuffing and kept back enough to make myself a small grilled patty.  It tasted wonderful.  This is truly my soul food.

**MY BISCUIT MIX

• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 tsp. salt
• 1 Tblsp. baking powder
• 1/3 cup vegetable shortening (Crisco)

Mix together the flour, salt and baking powder.  Cut in the vegetable shortening.  Store in a covered container in the refrigerator until ready to use.

This is good for making individual servings of biscuits, pancakes … and dumplings.

Recipe for Walt’s Polish Stuffing

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A Good Autumn Meal

One of my favorite meals in the autumn or any other time of the year consists of marinated pork tenderloin, sweet potato patties and Spinach-Mushroom Casserole.  I marinate 3/4″ thick slices of pork tenderloin in Italian dressing for about four hours, then cook on a range-top grill.   Sweet potatoes are microwaved until tender, allowed to cool, then peeled and mashed with a little salt and pepper.  The potatoes are formed into patties and browned in olive oil.

The Spinach-Mushroom Casserole is based on a recipe for Mushrooms Florentine from a wonderful Cincinnati Junior League cookbook, I’ll Cook When Pigs Fly. I changed the ingredients a bit  to reduce the fat and to have more spinach and less mushrooms.  It makes a great side dish.

SPINACH-MUSHROOM CASSEROLE–Reduced Fat

Preheat oven @ 350 degrees F

• 1/2 lb. fresh mushrooms, sliced
• 1 Tblsp. olive oil
• 1 lb. bag of fresh spinach
• 2 Tblsp. dried minced onions
• Butter flavored spray
• Sprinkle of salt and pepper
• Sprinkle of garlic salt
• 4 oz. low fat Colby cheese

Saute mushrooms in oil.   Place spinach in a sprayed large flat casserole (mine is about 10″ square).  Spray the spinach with butter flavored spray and sprinkle the onion, salt, pepper and garlic salt.   Sprinkle grated cheese on top.

Bake uncovered @ 350 degrees F for 20 minutes.

Serves 6 to 8.

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