Mandarin Chicken Skillet

I don't know if any of you watch Chopped on the Food Network, but we love that show over here. For those who don't know about it, the basic idea is there are 4 contestants to start. They each get a basic full of the same mystery ingredients and they need to cook an appetizer using all of the ingredients in the basket, plus anything else they want from the pantry area. The worst dish in the appetizer round gets chopped, and then the 3 remaining contestants get a new basket for the entree round. It then goes to 2 contestants for dessert and then one of them wins $10,000.

Well, it is always interesting to see the ridiculous items in each basket and what people do with them. I have actually learned about a lot of foods and techniques through this show.

But anyway, I sort of have to challenge myself now to use things that are in my pantry before they go bad. My husband and I have slowly been cleaning out every crevice of our house - kitchen cabinets included. I came across a few food items that I didn't even know we had, and I don't want to let them go to waste. Instead of combining all 4 into a dish (that probably would have been nasty), I took one item and just searched online for recipes using it. This ingredient was Mandarin Oranges in a can. Yeah, I know they are yummy on their own, but I wanted to use them.

I found THIS recipe on AllRecipes.com and thought it sounded good. I had to change it slightly though because 1) we had no broccoli in the house, 2) my husband isn't a huge mushroom fan, 3) we didn't have orange juice concentrate and 4) I later realized I didn't have chicken bouillon.

HAHA! At first I was like, um, why am I making this. Then, I figured out some substitutions, so I now present to you, Mandarin Chicken Skillet the A way.

Ingredients:

1 cup chopped asparagus spears (I used the frozen Trader Joe's spears I had)
1 tablespoon butter
2 pounds skinless, boneless chicken breast meat - cubed
1 cup edamame
3 teaspoons flour
2/3 cup water
1 (11 ounce) can mandarin orange segments - reserve juice separately!
1/4 cup sliced green onion
splash of orange or citrus flavored vodka
1 tablespoon of a mixture of salt, garlic powder, onion powder and paprika **

** you could use 1 cup of chicken broth instead of this seasoned mixture.

Directions:

Steam asparagus and edamame for a few minutes - set aside.

Heat butter in a large skillet over medium high heat. Saute chicken in butter until browned. Remove from skillet and set aside.


Stir in flour, water, mandarin orange juice and seasonings (or chicken broth). Heat to boiling.

Stir and simmer for 4 minutes. Return chicken and mushrooms to skillet and stir in orange segments, green onion, edamame and asparagus. Add the splash of vodka. Heat through and serve immediately.


This recipe makes about 4-6 servings.

My concoction actually came out pretty well! My husband really enjoyed it when he got home from work. I was quite pleased with myself.

We had some leftovers and I found that the best way to heat them is to put everything back into a covered skillet with a splash of water to let it heat up, instead of microwaving it.

Enjoy!

Homemade Cream of Asparagus Soup!

Well, my husband had bought a whole bunch of ingredients to make homemade ice cream with a while back, including a bunch of half & half. He only made one batch of ice cream, so we had a lot of half & half left over.

I HATE wasting food and just throwing it out...so I started looking for recipes using half & half. The recipe I made the other day with the artichoke ravioli came to me in my food network magazine...but I went trolling online to find some more.

One recipe I found on AllRecipes.com was for Cream of Asparagus Soup. I just had some on the cruise we took a few weeks ago, so I thought, why not?

The difference between the soup I had on the cruise was that the asparagus was pureed and this one actually left the asparagus in the mixture whole. But, it was DELICIOUS!! We wolfed it down on Sunday night. And, it was so easy!! Bonus!!

The original recipe (here) uses fresh asparagus. I cheated and used frozen grilled asparagus I bought at Trader Joes, but it was still delicious. :-)

I halved the recipe because we didn't have a lot of half & half left after some other recipes I made. It also probably took maybe 25 minutes total - nice and quick! The recipe I am posting is for the full recipe, serves about 6.


Ingredients:

* 1 pound frozen asparagus
* 3 1/2 cups chicken broth
* 1/4 cup margarine
* 1/4 cup all-purpose flour
* 1/2 cup half-and-half
* 1/2 teaspoon salt
* 1/8 teaspoon ground black pepper


Directions:

Cut asparagus into one inch pieces.

In a medium skillet over medium high heat, saute the asparagus in 1 cup of the broth for about 7 minutes, or until tender.


In a large saucepan over medium high heat, melt the butter or margarine and remove from heat.

Add the flour and stir well until smooth.

Gradually add the remaining 2 1/2 cups broth. Return the saucepan to the heat and continue to cook, stirring occasionally, until slightly thickened.

Add the half-and-half, salt, pepper and cooked asparagus with liquid. Stir well and heat thoroughly.


Serve hot and enjoy!

I can also see using this recipe as a sauce over pasta or chicken. It's very versatile!

Another Steak Dinner from the Eating With A Steakhouse

My husband and I took a trip to a butcher this past weekend. I can't remember the last time I stepped into a butcher! My parents used to take to one when I was little, but since I've been cooking for myself, it's been supermarket meat.

That changed when we did one of the many deals popping up on the Internet through things like Groupon, Living Social, etc. There was one though Valpak for the same butcher my parents used to take me to while growing up, so we decided to get it and treat ourselves to a nicer steak for once. The deal was spending $10 and getting $20 worth of food. Yay!

So we took a drive to where I grew up (a whole 4 miles down the road) and stopped into the butcher. First we picked out a nice skirt steak, and then we had a little leftover so we also got my husband a rack of ribs to eat one night for dinner and me a container of mushroom barley soup - my favorite! We ending up spending around $6 extra, but definitely not a big deal. All of that food for $16 isn't too shabby, especially since the soup was buy one get one free!

We decided to do something different with the steak instead of just marinating and cooking it and we settled on some sort of roll up. I got the idea to use the frozen asparagus we purchased from Trader Joes, and my husband wanted to use some sort of cheese. And thus our dinner was born...

Here are the ingredients we used:

2 pieces of skirt steak (you can pound it a little flatter too)
Peter Luger's Steak Sauce
Splash of Worcestershire sauce
salt & pepper to taste
asparagus (we used Grilled frozen Asparagus from Trader Joes but you can also use fresh)
provolone cheese

Here is what we did:

First I marinated the skirt steak in a glass bowl for an hour with the Peter Luger's and Worcestershire sauce.

Then I laid out the pieces of steak and cut them in half so I would ultimately make 4 rolls.


In the middle of each piece of steak I put a little provolone cheese and a few pieces of asparagus.


Then I rolled them up and secured them with a toothpick. Once rolled, we sprinkled some salt and pepper on all sides of the roll for some extra taste.

I heated some oil in a grill pan on the stove and seared the rolls for a few minutes on each side.


Then I put the grill pan into the oven at 350 degrees F and let them cook off for another 10-12 minutes, or until the desired "doneness." We are fans of steak cooked to medium or medium well.

We ate our steak dinner with a side of mashed cauliflower and steamed mixed vegetables. Delicious!!