Dinner Suggestion: Club Sandwich

Some days you just don't have the time to make a proper dinner, some days you simply don't want a proper dinner. In fact, I hate the term proper dinner. What really defines a dinner? Well, Wikipedia claims that it's the "significant meal of the day", and in that case, my club sandwich is dinner more than anything else I ate today.
 
Well, either way, let us say you didn't feel like mashing potatoes, or boiling rice. Here's how you make an extremely simple, yet awesome club sandwich.

Cut a chicken fillet in thin slices, 1/3 inch or 1 cm thick tops. Salt it before you fry it. I also use lots of black pepper. Fry it on medium high heat. Fry some smoked ham. Cut up half an avocado. Use good bread, add butter and crispy lettuce. It's really simple, and perfect for those days. You know those days... When you have lots of work.

Or those days you just want to sit at your computer and play Hearthstone.

Chicken Sticks

If you want to do something slightly different...

It's exactly what it looks like, so I don't feel the need to explain in details what's going on here.

Enjoy!

Ten Days of Chicken

"If you could only eat one type of food for the rest of your life, what would it be?"

This question always amused me. Am I allowed to say pizza? Because if so, then a pizza can be customized to pretty much anything. Basically, pizza is just a flat bread with leftovers, and the variations are endless. Am I allowed to say eggs in any form? If so, then I could boil them, scrambled eggs, fried eggs, I could add milk, flour to make pancakes, I could add ham and onion to make a great omelet, and so on.
What I'm asking is this: Am I allowed to do variations, add other ingredients? If so, then my answer is chicken.

Would I grow tired of chicken? Probably. But chicken doesn't taste a whole lot, and it's mainly the other ingredients that leave the taste. To find out, I gave my self a challenge. I would eat chicken for ten straight days, but it would have to be different every day.

Click in to read and see the result!

How to make a Club Sandwich

It's a remarkable thing, how easy it is to impress people. Just give them what they want. People want a sandwich with chicken and bacon. Why not make just that? Everyone loves a good club sandwich, specially if it's well made, with home-made bread and other quality ingredients. While we're at it, why not make extra bacon on the side as well?

A club sandwich can disappoint. I mean, I could use bad chicken, I could switch out the tomatoes with eggplant. Or just use less/no bacon. But then I would do just that. Disappoint. I will not disappoint. I will make an awesome club sandwich, not just because I want to, but because it's in my power to do so. 

So hop on in for my example of how to deliver what is promised, and Mattel's example of how to absolutely disappoint (Yup, this is another "Recipes and ranting"). 

Dinner Suggestion: Chicken pot

This isn't as much a recipe, as it is a suggestion for what you can have for dinner. The reason for this is the endless ways you can tweak this dish.

Basically it's raw chicken rubbed with rosemary, along with some salt and pepper. I split the chicken into four pieces, two with thigh, and two with the breast parts. The chicken goes into the frying pan for a little while, and then into the casserole for at least 30 minutes. I also include onion, mushroom and cream. The sweet pepper is there for the color near the end. And that's it.

You don't have to use rosemary as your preferred herb. Feel free to use basil or oregano. Or how about spinach? Or mint? Curry is also an option. The mushroom is optional. How about artichokes or asparagus instead? The cream is optional. How about sour cream or yogurt instead? I used Brussels sprouts, and a simple salad as side dishes. You can add various side dishes like bread, rice, pasta, baked potatoes, mashed potatoes.

The main thing here is a relatively fresh, raw chicken. You can't really go wrong from there. It's easier than you think.

Remember to pour some water into the frying pan, and clear out the good taste that has accumulated. Everything goes into the casserole of course. 

Baked Creamy Chicken

I'm not sure what to call this, but it's nothing special really. Oven baked chicken, and a cream sauce with mushroom and broccoli. I was a bit indecisive whether to place the chicken fillets directly in the pan, or have them on a grate. I ended up using my cheese graters, but I'm not sure if it had any effect what so ever. The idea was that juices from the fillets would drip down, leaving the chicken crisp - and the juices would be used for the sauce. Of course, there are almost no fat in a fillet, so not really a lot of juices for the sauce. Certainly not enough to leave a significant imprint on the sauce.

Chicken was in the oven for 20 minutes at 225 degrees C, but it could easily have been 250. Rub garlic, basil and oil on the fillets first.
Sauce is made by frying spring onion and adding cream. Fry some heavily peppered mushrooms in lots of butter. Steamed broccoli adds some color. Enjoy.

Recipes and ranting: Turkey Pie/Motuc at retail

Pie is not a dish. It's a concept. Much like the pizza, the pie can be customized in almost any way you can imagine. Maybe even more so than the pizza, the pie leaves you endless possibilities. And I like the thought of that. And I would like to try out more pies in the future.

I'll not show you how to make pie, because I honestly don't know. Obviously, what I make here ends up being a pie, but the main part about the pie has to be the lid of pie dough. And I just don't know how to make that. All I know is that it's actually a bit tricky. Unlike the bread, which is extremely simple, the pie dough can't be made while blindfolded.

So with this dish, using leftovers from the new years turkey, I used a pre-fabricated pie dough.

Read on for "recipe".. and another rant about toys.

Girlfriend Cooks: Curry Chicken Soup

As the title says, it's nice to share the joy of cooking, and she's definitely not lost in the kitchen. Awesome chicken soup, spicy, healthy, and relatively easy to make.

Read on for the Curry Chicken Soup!

Dinner suggestion: Chicken-Pasta salad

I made a proper Christmas dinner this weekend, just for the fun of it. The entire kitchen was utilized, all plates on the stove were in use, it took me a good hour to make. It really was fun. But that won't do in the normal weekday. Here's a recipe that will take roughly around 10 minutes, if you time it perfectly: The chicken-pasta salad. 

Start by boiling some pasta. Any will do, but the spiral-shaped fusilli is obviously the best...

Fry some chicken properly. Add spices if you want. I used some oregano and black pepper. 

While you let the pasta cool, slice up some tomatoes and cucumber. Larger bits looks more delicate, in my opinion anyway. 

Add feta cheese if you want. Parmesan will of course also work. 

Oil, salt and pepper, and you're good to go. Pesto on the side, and you have a really simple, quick and tasty dinner. 

Enjoy!

Chicken in tomato sauce

Chicken is versatile. It tastes almost nothing alone, but will easily take on the characteristics of any spice - or anything that has a taste. This is a fairly simple recipe, that can be customized to a great extent.

Click in to see the best pictures I could possibly hope to take with a phone. 

Cliffjumper's Chili Chicken Sandwich

I had planned this to be only a short recipe, no toys, no anecdotes. But you know... Things doesn't always turn out the way you hope.

Read on for chili chicken sandwich recipe and some randomness on the tiny red robot that was not as popular as the tiny yellow robot.