Chicken Parmesan with made-from-scratch marinara

Lisa makes the best Chicken Parmesan I've ever had, restaurant or otherwise. We don't always get this involved, but the flavors are worth it, and if you grow tomatoes and herbs, it can be very cheap.


First, pour yourself a tall frosty IPA into a frozen beer mug. This'll help you get through the extremely long cooking process.
Ain't she purdy?


For the Sauce:

Start with some fresh basil. Find a big leaf, and line up a bunch of smaller leaves in it.


Roll it like a "cigar."


Chop the basil cigar thinly, leaving you with a lovely basil chiffonade.


We bought ten lbs of "on the vine beefsteak" tomatoes. They were 88 cents a pound, and we expected a much higher yield. But that's for later.
Boil some water, and drop whole tomatoes in to boil for about 45 seconds. Remove them with a deep slotted spoon and dunk 'em in a bowl of ice water. Peel the skins off and discard.
Reserve 5 peeled tomatoes whole. Lightly coat these in olive oil, wrap them in aluminum foil, and use your burner to "roast" them. Your looking for just a bit of char all around. This will produce a somewhat "smoky" flavor, as well as help to cut down on some of the acidity.
Cut the tomatoes in half and squeeze the juice and seeds out. You can squeeze into a strainer and keep the tomato juice for other meals or for drinkin' if that's your thing.


After they're drained, plop the tomatoes into a big stock pot. Add
2 tbsp. Fresh Basil
1 tbsp. Fresh Oregano
1/2 tbsp. Marjoram
2 bay leaves
1 whole yellow onion, chopped to your liking
kosher salt and fresh black pepper to taste
1/3 bottle of red wine
And again, as much garlic as you feel like mincing. We used one head of garlic.


No need to add additional liquid. Once the tomatoes start to break down, they'll get quite wet, and you'll need to reduce the sauce for about two hours. Use a medium-to-low heat, high enough that it's still steaming, but avoid burning the sauce at the bottom of the pan. Stir occasionally.


Once it looks like a good consistency, it's done. Add cornstarch to thicken. Make sure to remove the sauce from the heat while you do this.



The Broccoli:

Cut up some fresh broccoli (about two heads)
As much garlic as you feel like mincing (we used about five cloves.)
Add to taste:
Kosher Salt
Fresh Ground Black Pepper
Paprika
Parsley
I also usually use Cajun Seasoning.
Bake in a medium-sized pyrex at 350 for about 15 minutes. Be sure to time everything so that the broccoli is done right when it's time to serve, or it will be cold.



For the Chicken Parmesan:

Mozzarella, sliced
boneless, skinless chicken breasts. Pound 'em flat, about 3/4 to 1 inch thick.
flour
"italian style" breadcrumbs (or make your own...)
Fresh grated parmesean
one whole egg and two egg whites, mixed but not beaten
On a nice big piece of counter space, set up a row of (in order):
plate with chicken breasts
vessel with flour in it
a bowl with eggs
a large plate with about 1/2 Parmesean and 1/2 bread crumbs mixed together.

Cover the chicken completely with flour, but knock off MOST of the flour. Too much and you'll lose your breading.


From the flour, dip the breast in the egg and let it drip off a little. Lay it in the breading mix, and use your fingers to pick up the breading without disturbing the chicken breast. Cover it completely and press down to make the breading stick.


Shake off the excess.


And go for round two. Once again (trying not to manhandle the chicken, that'll knock breading off) dip in in the egg mixture.


Lay it on the breading plate and repeat the process. The double-breading makes it better. I promise. More cheese = good.


Let the breaded breasts rest for at least 15 minutes to let the egg set, or again, your breading will fall off. Meanwhile, preheat the oven to 350 and cover the bottom of a large pyrex with your homemade marinara.


In a large skillet, heat about 2 tbsp olive oil over medium to high heat. Once it's hot, carefully place your chicken into the skillet. You can tell on the edges when the breading is getting close to done. It only takes maybe 2-3 minutes.


Once they're browned, flip 'em carefully, and if necessary, add more olive oil. You can cook more than one at a time, but don't crowd the pan. These breasts were really big, so we fried them individually.


Once the delicious crust is fully formed, place the chicken into your Pyrex. You can cram 'em in, but don't let them overlap.


Bake for about 15-20 minutes. Check for doneness after 15. If they're fully cooked, add the mozzarella and cook for an additional 5 minutes, or until your cheese is melty.



Cheesy Bread:

We also made garlic cheese bread. At our new favorite grocery store, QFC, we found some cheese that didn't claim to be any particular kind of cheese, other than "handmade."

1/3 stick of butter
6 cloves garlic
sliced sourdough
fresh oregano
parsley
grated nondescript cheese
grated parmesan

Melt the butter with half of the garlic, oregano, and parsley. Brush the butter mixture over the bread until it's gone. Toast lightly. Add the two kinds of cheese and the rest of the garlic. Toast until the cheese is slightly brown.



Use all marinara (including the stuff used to bake the chicken) to put over pasta and chicken. We tend to prefer whole wheat pasta, which is actually pretty cheap at Trader Joe's.

Serve with the remaining wine that you used to make the sauce (along with 3 or 4 more bottles).



Notes:

This was the first time we'd done tomato sauce completely from scratch. All in all I think we did well, but there were a few things.
It was slightly too sweet. I'm attributing a good deal of this to the fact that we used somewhat young tomatoes (not to mention on the vine). We added no pepper flakes, which would probably have helped with this, as well as adding a little heat.

This is the most expensive tomato sauce I've ever had. I had counted on a much higher yield from 10 lbs of tomatoes, but they only made it through one meal. The particular tomatoes we bought were from a discount grocery store, and honestly didn't have much substance. Now we appreciate the difference between "on the vine" and "vine-ripened." We also opted to purchase fresh herbs, which contributed to the overall cost. Hopefully someday we can grow our own damn herbs and veggies.

Pan Seared Alligator over Red Beans and Rice, Round 1

So I had some alligator meat from ExoticMeats.com . . . . . . .

I've only ever had alligator one other time, and it was served chicken-nugget style. It was good. I would say something like an 80-20 chicken-fish.

I wanted to try to do something a little more interesting. For the second time ever, The Google failed to turn up anything very intriguing. One recipe involved marinating the meat in milk. Sounded weird.

So there's this guy named Brian that we run into fairly regularly at the Vin de Pays wine tastings. He's an instructor at the Pasadena Culinary Institute. I asked him how to go about making an interesting alligator dish. I few phone calls later I had an answer:

The Alligator

• ~1lb. alligator meat.
• ~1tsp. red pepper.
• ~3 cloves garlic, minced.
• 3 12oz. beers (IPA).
• salt & pepper to taste.

Boil the alligator in the IPA for ~20 minutes. Slice into thin strips. Sautee the garlic in olive oil, but do not brown. Add alligator meat and red pepper. Cook at med-high heat for ~10 minutes.

Red Beans and Rice

• 1lb. dry red beans.
• 1 fist-sized yellow onion, chopped.
• 1/2lb. smoked ham, chopped.
• ~1 large cloves garlic, minced.
• 1 cup white rice.

Cook the white rice according to standard instructions. (We use a microwave cooker, which makes perfect rice EVERY time.
Sautee garlic in olive oil, ~5 minutes. Boil dry beans ~5 minutes. Add garlic, ham, and onions. Boil ~2 hours. If you can blow on a single bean and make the skin crack, the beans are done. There should be some liquid left at the end. If you want it to be thicker, smash some of the beans while the pot is still boiling.

Serve beans over rice. The alligator can go on the side or on top. I tend to prefer to mix stuff like this around.

Notes:
Every now and then, we fail miserably. But we still learn.

The alligator was bad. It had a "muddy river-bottom" flavor that the boiling was supposed to remove. I imagine we didn't boil it long enough. Brian had said ~20 minutes, which we did, so I'm imagining more like 30-45 minutes. The meat was also a bit chewy, which longer boiling would theoretically correct.

The pan searing seemed boring. We ended up with muddy flavored, spicy meat. I would use less red pepper, and some other spices to add complexity.

One interesting idea that Casey came up with was kind of "east meets west and somewhere in between." It might be interesting to do this as a stir fry with a little bit of sesame oil and green onion. And more garlic.

Too much red pepper. It wasn't too spicy, it just didn't work.

We'll be trying this again some day. If anyone knows how to make this work, please let us know where we went wrong.