So... there is one other new recipe I tried this week... chicken lasagna. Now, I have never made lasagna before. And, to my extreme embarrassment, I have never cooked chicken either. Yes, shocking, I know. I have simply heard too many stories of how full of disease and bacteria chicken can be if it's not prepared properly, or how sick it can make you if you forget to wash your hands. (Either that or I heard all that once and just kept replaying it in my mind after that... lol).
I decided, however, that it was time to face my fears. In college, whenever I ate chicken, I bought it pre-cooked. But now, there was a package of chicken breasts sitting in our freezer that my husband had purchased before I got here, and it really would have been ridiculous if I had gone the rest of my life scared of cooking chicken. So I thought I'd better go for it! The recipe is courtesy of my friend Bethany's mom, Cheri, and I got it at a lovely shower some friends threw me before the wedding. All of the guests were asked to fill out a recipe card and give it to me at the shower. The end result was incredibly tasty, so, as promised, here is the recipe:
Chicken Lasagna
1/4 c. chopped green pepper
1/4 c. chopped onion
3 Tbsp. butter
2 cans cream of chicken sp
1/3 c. milk
1 - 4 oz. can mushrooms (drain)
2 c. shredded cheese
6 wide lasagna noodles cooked and drained
2 whole chicken breasts cut up and cooked
1/2 c. Parmesan cheese
Saute green pepper and onion in butter till tender. Stir in soup, milk, mushrooms and cheese stir until blended. Lay 3 noodles in 9x13 pan, layer 1/2 of chicken, sauce and Parmesan cheese, repeat this, then cover and bake at 350 for 45 min - 1 hr. Let stand for 15 min to set before serving.
This should be a very simple dish to prepare. Yes, very simple. But it took me a grand total of 3 hours to prepare it. Eric called me from work around 5 in the afternoon to tell me he would be home in about an hour. Knowing that lasagna takes a while to bake, he said I might want to get started on it a bit early. But I was a few steps ahead of him! I was already standing in the kitchen....
Now, I don't know how many times I've done this, but I NEVER remember to take meat out of the freezer to thaw the day before. Or even a few hours before. So I have to revert to defrosting in the microwave. A rather stickier, less predictable method. I needed two chicken breasts for the recipe. There were three in the frozen package. I cut open the plastic and tried to crack the meat sections apart. No luck. I banged the frozen hunk against the counter. Still nothing. I even took a knife to it. I didn't want to thaw all the meat, but there was nothing else but for it. I put the meat on a plate. It was too big and hung over the sides. I did NOT want raw chicken juices dripping all over my microwave. I found our largest plate and set the microwave to ten minutes. After five minutes I was able to sever the extra chicken breast. But it probably took between fifteen and twenty minutes of total microwave exposure before the chicken was soft all the way through.
Having, as I said, never cooked chicken before, I figured that I should consult the internet as to the best method. I can't even remember what term I came up with... poaching, maybe? The idea was to set the chicken in a skillet with boiling water and cover it, then just let it sit for about fifteen minutes. That seemed easy enough. Fifteen minutes didn't nearly do it though. When I cut open the meat, it was still completely raw on the inside. So, I took a knife to the meat (yes, a knife in my new nonstick pans = dumb, but no damage was done). Ten minutes later, the meat was no longer pink. Crikey!
The recipe says to saute the pepper and onion. I definitely chopped up too much onion. I stared at my neat little pile of minced onion and wondered if adding it all would overpower the recipe. I could just eat it, I supposed. So I scooped the extra into my mouth. Another poor idea on my part. That much raw onion eaten entirely plain... the aftertaste stays with you for awhile.... I wasn't exactly sure what "sauteing till tender" was supposed to look like. So I figured I could just call five minutes good. At about three minutes everything looked pretty brown. I figured that was probably already a few stages past "tender." I mixed together all the liquid ingredients easily enough, but then looked with dismay at my recipe.
Doh! I was supposed to have already cooked the noodles! Everything else for the lasagna was prepared and ready to go... except the noodles were still dry as could be in the unopened box. I grabbed a pot and filled it with water, then sat and watched for it to start bowling. They say a watched pot never boils. It did seem to take an inordinate amount of time. I set the noodles in the pot, and immediately regretted my choice of pot. I had not grabbed the largest one, and the noodles were only able to submerge about 1/4 of their length. I poked and prodded until there were soft enough to twist around the circumference of the pot.
That was when Eric got home. The preparation up till this point had taken me two hours. I had the guiltiest smile on my face. "I'm sorry; I don't quite have it in the oven yet." "That's fine. So it'll be another twenty minutes or so then?" "Actually? About an hour...." We had a good laugh over how poorly I had allocated my time while preparing the dish, but we watched a movie while we waited, and the finished product really was quite delicious.
This next week will see me breaking out the sit-ups :) Talk to you later :)
I decided, however, that it was time to face my fears. In college, whenever I ate chicken, I bought it pre-cooked. But now, there was a package of chicken breasts sitting in our freezer that my husband had purchased before I got here, and it really would have been ridiculous if I had gone the rest of my life scared of cooking chicken. So I thought I'd better go for it! The recipe is courtesy of my friend Bethany's mom, Cheri, and I got it at a lovely shower some friends threw me before the wedding. All of the guests were asked to fill out a recipe card and give it to me at the shower. The end result was incredibly tasty, so, as promised, here is the recipe:
Chicken Lasagna
1/4 c. chopped green pepper
1/4 c. chopped onion
3 Tbsp. butter
2 cans cream of chicken sp
1/3 c. milk
1 - 4 oz. can mushrooms (drain)
2 c. shredded cheese
6 wide lasagna noodles cooked and drained
2 whole chicken breasts cut up and cooked
1/2 c. Parmesan cheese
Saute green pepper and onion in butter till tender. Stir in soup, milk, mushrooms and cheese stir until blended. Lay 3 noodles in 9x13 pan, layer 1/2 of chicken, sauce and Parmesan cheese, repeat this, then cover and bake at 350 for 45 min - 1 hr. Let stand for 15 min to set before serving.
This should be a very simple dish to prepare. Yes, very simple. But it took me a grand total of 3 hours to prepare it. Eric called me from work around 5 in the afternoon to tell me he would be home in about an hour. Knowing that lasagna takes a while to bake, he said I might want to get started on it a bit early. But I was a few steps ahead of him! I was already standing in the kitchen....
Now, I don't know how many times I've done this, but I NEVER remember to take meat out of the freezer to thaw the day before. Or even a few hours before. So I have to revert to defrosting in the microwave. A rather stickier, less predictable method. I needed two chicken breasts for the recipe. There were three in the frozen package. I cut open the plastic and tried to crack the meat sections apart. No luck. I banged the frozen hunk against the counter. Still nothing. I even took a knife to it. I didn't want to thaw all the meat, but there was nothing else but for it. I put the meat on a plate. It was too big and hung over the sides. I did NOT want raw chicken juices dripping all over my microwave. I found our largest plate and set the microwave to ten minutes. After five minutes I was able to sever the extra chicken breast. But it probably took between fifteen and twenty minutes of total microwave exposure before the chicken was soft all the way through.
Having, as I said, never cooked chicken before, I figured that I should consult the internet as to the best method. I can't even remember what term I came up with... poaching, maybe? The idea was to set the chicken in a skillet with boiling water and cover it, then just let it sit for about fifteen minutes. That seemed easy enough. Fifteen minutes didn't nearly do it though. When I cut open the meat, it was still completely raw on the inside. So, I took a knife to the meat (yes, a knife in my new nonstick pans = dumb, but no damage was done). Ten minutes later, the meat was no longer pink. Crikey!
The recipe says to saute the pepper and onion. I definitely chopped up too much onion. I stared at my neat little pile of minced onion and wondered if adding it all would overpower the recipe. I could just eat it, I supposed. So I scooped the extra into my mouth. Another poor idea on my part. That much raw onion eaten entirely plain... the aftertaste stays with you for awhile.... I wasn't exactly sure what "sauteing till tender" was supposed to look like. So I figured I could just call five minutes good. At about three minutes everything looked pretty brown. I figured that was probably already a few stages past "tender." I mixed together all the liquid ingredients easily enough, but then looked with dismay at my recipe.
Doh! I was supposed to have already cooked the noodles! Everything else for the lasagna was prepared and ready to go... except the noodles were still dry as could be in the unopened box. I grabbed a pot and filled it with water, then sat and watched for it to start bowling. They say a watched pot never boils. It did seem to take an inordinate amount of time. I set the noodles in the pot, and immediately regretted my choice of pot. I had not grabbed the largest one, and the noodles were only able to submerge about 1/4 of their length. I poked and prodded until there were soft enough to twist around the circumference of the pot.
That was when Eric got home. The preparation up till this point had taken me two hours. I had the guiltiest smile on my face. "I'm sorry; I don't quite have it in the oven yet." "That's fine. So it'll be another twenty minutes or so then?" "Actually? About an hour...." We had a good laugh over how poorly I had allocated my time while preparing the dish, but we watched a movie while we waited, and the finished product really was quite delicious.
This next week will see me breaking out the sit-ups :) Talk to you later :)
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