Over the last couple of years I’ve been really discouraged about cooking anything. M has no sense of culinary exploration at all, and L was willing to go any-way-for-a-pint. But with the new year, L has decided to try on the paleo diet and M is kinda-sorta going along with her, which means that some of my starchy go-to rely-ons have to go out the window. About the same time, I had to find a replacement recipe database for my beyond-venerable copy of Meal-Master, which I could barely get to run even in XP mode under Win 7. I ended up going to MasterCook, which is among the best known and most popular of the various recipe applications around, and which handles Meal-Master imports with relative grace. (I had more than 13,000 recipes in MM, and was not ABOUT to do anything that required major massaging to make export-imports work. I did that once going from QuikBook to MM. NEVER AGAIN.)
Although MasterCook did handle all the imports pretty gracefully, there are invariably things that aren’t perfect, and things you adopted as conventions years ago but don’t like any longer and want to change, so there is still stuff to tweak and clean up, and I’ve been doing that. And doing that, and seriously looking at a lot of recipes again, I started thinking “hey, that might be a nice thing to cook” more and more often.
And that has led to me starting to choose actual dishes to cook, and making shopping lists, and things like that, and I think I will post things that I cook here as a reminder of what I did and whether it worked out. Tonight I did a chicken and Italian sausage and peppers skillet.
Chicken With Peppers and Sausage
Amount Measure Ingredient -- Preparation Method -------- ------------ -------------------------------- 1/2 pound Italian sausage links 1 large red bell pepper 1 large yellow bell pepper 1 medium red onion 3 tablespoons olive oil 1/2 teaspoon dried thyme 2 chicken breasts, no skin, no bone — halved Salt Pepper 4 teaspoons balsamic vinegar sprigs thyme — garnish
About 40 minutes before serving, in a 15” skillet over medium heat, heat sausage and 1 cup water to boiling; cover and cook five minutes. Remove cover; cook until sausages are browned, about 20 minutes, turning sausages frequently and pricking them to release fat.
Meanwhile, devein the peppers and cut each one into ½” wide strips; cut the red onion into thin wedges. In a three-quart saucepan over medium-high heat, cook the peppers, onions, and thyme in hot olive oil about 10 minutes or until vegetables are fork-tender, stirring the mixture frequently. (UNDERcook this; it will continue to cook on the residual heat.)
Cut each chicken breast in half; sprinkle lightly with salt and pepper. With a slotted spoon, remove sausage to paper towels to drain and cool slightly; thinly slice sausage diagonally.
In sausage drippings remaining in the skillet over medium heat, cook the chicken breasts until tender and browned, about 10 to 15 minutes. (I had to add a couple of tablespoons of bacon dripping; the sausages were quite lean.) To the chicken in the skillet, add vinegar, vegetable mixture and sliced sausage; heat through. Garnish with thyme sprigs to serve.
I overshot on the peppers and they weren’t as crunchy as I wanted, although they tasted nice. Adding the balsamic vinegar meant I really didn’t need to add any salt to the chicken when cooking it.
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