Flash Chicken Saute with Cider and Almonds
Green Beans with Preserved Lemon and Black Olives
This was one of those meals where I was trying to cook too many things at once and the recipe times given in the cookbook were way off.
Flash Chicken saute is an interesting recipe. First you cook down some chicken broth that you will use later in the sauce. At first it was taking forever to boil down, I turned away for a minute, and when I came back it was practically all gone and the pan was burning. Ok, try number two, and this time I hovered over the pan. After cooking down the broth, you set it aside and wipe down your pan. Then you brown your organic, boneless, skinless, insanely expensive, chicken breasts. This recipe said to brown them, then cook them uncovered for 4 minutes each side. Well I did this and this is where things started to go terribly wrong. After the 10 minutes or so cooking time, when you are supposed to take the meat off the oven, my breasts were completely raw in the middle. I had already started the beans and also some melted greens, so I threw some white wine in the pan and covered it to poach the chicken a little quicker. Maybe they used extremely thin breasts for their cooking, but it ended up taking another 5 minutes to get these gigantic pieces of chicken cooked. And then you aren't even done yet. You put the chicken in the oven, covered to keep it warm and then you have to make the sauce.
Now you have to take cider vinegar, a LOT of cider vinegar (1 cup) and boil it down to 1/4 cup! I don't think they allowed any time for this in the recipe, but it took me a good 7 minutes. Then you added the reserved chicken broth, cook for another 2 minutes, add a little butter, swirl to melt and immediately pour over the chicken. Top with chopped, salted almonds. WHEW!
The recipe said there was 15 minutes stove time, but it ended up being more like 25 minutes, NOT counting re-reducing the chicken broth in the beginning.
This was actually fairly simple and straightforward, if you are cooking it by itself. But I was also trying to time the green beans and the kale with the chicken. I even waited a while before starting them, but they still ended up overcooked.
The green beans are a variation on the yummy beans with lemon, garlic, and parmigiano gremolata I made last week. But instead of those flavorings, you use preserved lemon, cilantro, and olives. Now this is exactly the same combo that we loved so much on the pork tenderloin two weeks ago. But it was way too strong for these green beans. I think the preserved lemon needs something fatty to balance it out. It was just too tart here.
The pot of the melted greens burned, but luckily the greens themselves were okay.
The chicken turned out very good. The cider-broth sauce wasn't as strong as I thought it was going to be and the almonds were a nice touch. I need to make this again but maybe I'll serve it with a salad that I make in advance, to avoid imitating a whirling dervish again.
28 recipes down in How To Eat Supper.
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