Chicken Romanesque

This delicious dish is very easy to make, and the ingredients are readily available. I like it served with mashed potatoes, and buttered carrots and/or sautéed zucchini on the side.

Once you’ve prepped the vegetable ingredients and have everything ready, the cooking is a snap.

Ingredients

• CHICKEN PIECES, 3-4 pounds (or, one whole chicken)
• FLOUR, ½ cup
• FRESH GARLIC, 4 large cloves, minced
• OLIVE OIL, ½ cup
• ONIONS, one frenched, one diced
• MUSHROOMS, 8 ounces, sliced
• ROSEMARY, 1 teaspoon fresh (or 1½ teaspoons dried)
• CIDER VINEGAR, ¼ cup
• DRY SHERRY, ¼ cup
• SALT and PEPPER
• BUTTER, 2 tablespoons
• GREEN ONIONS (aka SCALLIONS), ¼ cup, chopped
• ARTICHOKE HEARTS, 8 fresh (or two cans of small ones)

Directions

1. Cut up the chicken, if whole. Coat with flour.
2. Heat olive oil in a large pan and slightly brown the chicken pieces.
3. Add chopped garlic, onion, mushrooms, rosemary, vinegar and sherry.
4. Salt and pepper to taste.
5. Reduce heat to medium and simmer covered until chicken is tender and gravy begins to thicken.
6. Add artichokes and continue to simmer for 35 minutes.
7. Remove chicken and artichokes and place on serving platter.
8. Add butter and green onions to the pan, and remove from heat immediately. Stir until butter melts and gravy thickens slightly.
9. Pour gravy over chicken and artichokes, and garnish with fresh rosemary spring or parsley. Serve with potatoes or rice.

Teriyaki Sauce

Teriyaki sauce is an essential flavoring ingredient in many Asian dishes. It’s so easy to make if the ingredients are available in your local grocery store.

To me, the commercially prepared product is either too salty or too strongly flavored. We use Aloha Shoyu for ours.

Ingredients: 1 Pint

• SOY SAUCE, 2 cups
• GINGER, 2 quarter-inch thick wheels, smashed (not necessary to peel)
• GARLIC, ½ clove, smashed (not necessary to peel)
• SUGAR, ¾ cup
• AJINOMOTO (MSG), ¼ teaspoon

Combine all ingredients in a jar and shake or stir vigorously until the sugar is completely dissolved. You can add more sugar to increase sweetness if desired.

This recipe makes one pint (two cups), which can be stored indefinitely in the refrigerator. It can easily be doubled to make a quart, or quadrupled to make a half-gallon.

Ingredients: 1 Quart

• SOY SAUCE, 1 quart
• GINGER, ½ large root, smashed (not necessary to peel)
• GARLIC, 1 small clove, smashed (not necessary to peel)
• SUGAR, 1½ cups
• AJINOMOTO (MSG), ½ teaspoon

Ingredients: Half Gallon 

• SOY SAUCE, ½ gallon
• GINGER, 1 large root, smashed (not necessary to peel)
• GARLIC, 1 large clove, smashed (not necessary to peel)
• SUGAR, 3 cups
• AJINOMOTO (MSG), 1 teaspoon

Ma-Too Eggs

This is not a dish for everybody. In fact, some of you might be absolutely appalled and disgusted at what I’m about to tell you.

Ma-too eggs have been around in my family for a long time, ever since our first son decided when he was little that he liked eggs over easy but didn’t know how to describe them.

So he made up his own word – “ma-too.” Ever since then, we’ve called eggs with runny yolks “ma-too.”

Ma-too eggs look pretty horrible when they’re ready to be eaten. In the picture above, I’m showing you what it looks like before everything is mashed together, in order to prevent your disgust from trying it out.

Ingredients

• EGGS, two
• BUTTER, a dab in the pan
• KETCHUP, 3 tablespoons
• SOY SAUCE, 2 tablespoons
• HOT SAUCE, to taste
• RICE, 1-2 cups, cooked

Directions

1. Combine the ketchup and soy sauce in a small bowl, along with as much hot sauce as you want.
2. Cook the eggs in a non-stick pan with butter, over-easy.
3. Slide the eggs onto a bed of steamed rice (sticky rice is best).
4. Spoon the sauce over the eggs.
5. Mash it all together – rice, eggs and sauce.

Cucumber Dill Sauce

This is good as a dip or sauce with cold poached salmon. Or, you can use it on any cooked fish.

It’s so easy to make; the most work you will have to do is slicing the cucumbers.

Ingredients

• CUCUMBER, 1 seeded and thinly sliced
• SOUR CREAM, 1 pint
• YOGURT, plain, 1 cup
• MAYONNAISE, 4 tablespoons
• FRESH DILL WEED, 2 tablespoons (or double the amount if dried)
• LEMON, juice of 1
• CIDER VINEGAR, 1 teaspoon
• GARLIC SALT to taste
• WHITE PEPPER, freshly ground, to taste

Directions

1. Combine all ingredients and refrigerate, the longer the better, to let the flavors marry and the cucumbers absorb the flavors.
2. Serve over cold salmon that has been poached in seasoned water and fresh dill sprigs.

Chili Willi

This is a variety breakfast that I have occasionally, whenever there’s leftover chili from the night before.

I heat up the chili, fry up a couple of over-easy eggs and lay them on top of hot steamed rice, and pour the chili on top. You can do it in a soup bowl and have your breakfast with a big spoon. Hearty man-sized meal, it is.

As for the name, “Chili Willi,” it’s just something silly I made up one day because it’s a good hot breakfast for a cold winter morning.

If we have a lot of leftover chili, I divide it into individual-sized servings and freeze it for another time when I have a hankering for Chili Willi upon waking up in the morning.