Chicken Leek Stroganoff

Yum! Tonight was a tasty dish adapted from a recipe by Jamie Oliver: Chicken Leek Stroganoff. This is my second time making it, but I didn't change much.

The recipe in a nutshell: Cook some rice, simmer some leeks, mushrooms, and chicken in a light cream sauce, dish the sauce over the rice, garnish and enjoy! It's a "19 minute" recipe which invariably takes me longer for some reason, but it's still pretty quick and easy.

I'll put the ingredients I used, you can cheap out if you like.

Chicken and Leek Stroganoff

Kosher Salt
Ground Black Pepper
3 large garlic cloves
1 cup jasmine rice
1 large organic leek
2 big handfuls crimini mushrooms
2 free-range organic boneless skinless chicken breasts
organic extra virgin olive oil
1/2 stick organic unsalted butter
2 glasses of (organic? local?) white wine
1 small glass of water (might as well get it ready) This will affect the final thickness of the sauce; err on the side of less water
1 bunch fresh organic parsley
1 heaping cup organic plain yogurt
1 organic lemon

Cook the rice*. I used a rice cooker. I cheat. Jamie uses packets. He cheats too.

Peel and dice the garlic cloves. Slice the ends off the leek off and save for future stock-making. Slice the rest of the leek twice lengthwise and then slice widthwise about 25 times. You want small leek pieces here. Slice the mushrooms into flat mushroom-looking discs and keep separate. Slice the chicken into fingers and keep separate as well.

If you keep them on the same cutting board it makes it harder to add them one by one... though technically it's okay to keep the mushrooms and chicken together. But is it sanitary?

Hm? Oh, the recipe! Right! Sorry, got lost there for a minute.

Put a couple of tablespoons of olive oil along with the butter and garlic in a large frying pan on high heat. Once the butter is mostly melted or starts to sizzle, add the leek and one glass of wine. Do something else with the other glass of wine, maybe drink it? Add the small glass of water and some salt and pepper, stir once lightly, then partially cover it. Give that five minutes while you "finely chop the parsley, stalks and all". Reserve part of the parsley (chopped or otherwise) for garnish.

Add the chicken, most of the parsley, the yogurt, and the mushrooms to the leeks. Bring to a boil, stirring, then reduce heat to a simmer for 10 minutes or until sauce has thickened to your liking. Squeeze half a lemon's juice into the stroganoff just before serving. Add further salt, pepper, or other seasoning if so desired.

Plate by dishing stroganoff over a serving of rice and garnishing with parsley and lemon wedges. Serve with any remaining white wine.

I also added a dab of yogurt for the sake of photography.

Oh no, what happened to all my posts??

Some things have changed in my recent absence; notably I now live in a completely different Portland basement than the one I posted from previously. Also, I'm now Cooking With Gas ™.

I have eaten in the interim and taken many pictures, so I'll be occasionally offering looks back into the Lost Months ™, but meanwhile here is what I cooked and ate (in a Portland Basement) last night.

Crumby Chicken

(this is how I cooked it, see below for how I would do it differently next time)

• 2 large organic boneless skinless chicken breasts


• 4 sprigs of italian flat-leaf parsley


• 1 peeled garlic clove


• 2 tablespoons of butter


• 1 pinch kosher salt


• 1 pinch ground black pepper


• 1 lemon


• 1/2 cup cracker or bread crumbs


• 2 tablespoons plain flour


• 1 large egg


• olive oil

Zest ze lemon, and food process the zest, garlic, parsley, butter, salt, pepper, and crumbs until the mixture is very fine. Put it on a plate so that you'll be able to dunk chicken in it.

The parsley in my crumb mixture left me with very green crumbs.

Whisk the egg by itself in a bowl suitable for dunking chicken breasts in.
Put the flour on another plate.
Cut some slits in the bottom of the chicken breasts, put them in some plastic (plastic bag, plastic wrap, whatever you've got), then take your girlfriend's prized cast iron skillet and whack the chicken breasts repeatedly.

She won't find out. If you don't have a girlfriend's cast iron skillet to use, a mallet would be okay, or some other big heavy flat implement suitable for chicken flattening. Flat chicken cooks faster and more evenly, as you may know.

Extract the breasts from the plastic, and coat them first in flour, then in egg, then in crumbs. You'll want them fully coated for best results.

Crank the oven way up, put the chicken breasts on a metal cooking dish (cast iron skillet perhaps?), drizzle some olive oil over the top of them, and put them in for 15 minutes.

This is exactly 15 minutes. The black crust is a good thing. Er... did I mention I now use a gas stove?
Imagine that it's really tasty, and the picture starts to look better.
Serve with lemon wedges (if you have any lemons... like say the one you zested) and a green side dish of your choice. I chose a green salad with a vinaigrette.

Results: Tasty. You could also fry the chicken at 5 minutes a side in some olive oil on the stove top, which would probably be even tastier, but more messy. Next time I do this recipe I will probably marinade the chicken somehow first, use more garlic, and less butter (the crumbs were more like a paste). I used bread crumbs here, but the recipe I was going from actually suggested crumbled cream crackers; what's a cream cracker anyhow?

Parsley Pesto with Walnuts

On tonight's menu I had two recipes planned, one which was sent to me with my veggies and one which I researched online after coming into possession of a huge box of apples. This is about the first recipe:

Parsley Pesto with Walnuts
Recipe from care2.com

• 1/2 cup chopped walnuts, toasted (I used a toaster oven)

• 1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil (organic)


• 1 cup packed fresh flat-leaf (Italian) parsley


• 1/4 cup vegetable broth (I subbed mushroom bouillon)


• 6 cloves garlic, peeled


• 1 tablespoon plain unseasoned bread crumbs


• 1/2 teaspoon coarse salt, or to taste


• 16 ounces spaghettini or other thin pasta

1. In a food processor fitted with a metal blade, process walnuts, oil, parsley, broth, garlic, bread crumbs, and salt until smooth

Check. I only used 4 cloves of garlic, since the cloves were massive.



See what I mean?

2. Cook pasta in boiling water until al dente. Reserve 1/4 cup cooking liquid, then drain pasta in colander.

Check. I went to war with the pasta I had, but I'm not really a spaghettini fan anyhow. Neither is my spell check.

3. Place pasta in a large serving bowl and add the parsley-walnut pesto and reserved cooking liquid. Toss well to combine and serve at once.

Tasty results achieved: the pesto was good and easily prepared. The recipe boils down to "boil water and puree stuff", but I did miss the last step: I did not "serve at once" because I was in the process of my second recipe: Apple Galette.