Cornmeal Chicken Cutlets Done My Way

             Last night I came home from a Yankee game and I wasn't sure I wanted to eat for dinner. I was conflicted with either going to the diner and spending money, or cooking something at home and saving a few bucks, with a sink of dirty dishes as the only price. After nearly two hours of contemplating, I finally went with staying home and doing something with the chicken cutlets I had purchased many days ago. I figured 12:40 am was the ideal time to cook a meal and eat it.

             Usually when I make chicken cutlets I like to bread them, but this time I wanted to add a new wrinkle into the mix to make them that more interesting. To add taste and make the crust more crispy, I decided to bring corn meal into the fold. Starting out with my chicken cutlets which can be purchased from any friendly neighborhood supermarket, I brought out flour, bread crumbs, three eggs, oregano, herbs de provence, salt, lemon juice, cooking oil, and the star of the show: corn meal. For a side dish I wanted to boil up some spaghetti. Had it been earlier in the evening I would've also done a sauce, but due to the lateness of the hour, I was going to stick with keeping the pasta plain. Once I started getting everything together in the kitchen, Leo heard the stirring around and came in to see what all the commotion was. It's usually quite annoying to try to cook with Leo around as he makes many attempts to try to get at the food. I was going to lock him in the living room, but when I noticed he was quietly perched upon the kitchen radiator, I figured I would let him stay for the time being.

             Many people make the mistake of dipping the cutlets into the egg yolk as the first step, that's actually step two. What needs to be done first is coating the raw cutlets with flour; just pour some flour onto the cutlets and massage the powder on all exposed surfaces. Then take the three eggs and break open the yokes into a bowl. Once I threw the egg shells into the garbage, Leo leaped off of the radiator and peeked into the garbage to see what treasure I just had disposed of. With the floured-cutlets and egg-dip bowl ready, the final preparation is the bread crumbs. Pour some bread crumbs onto a dish, and then add dashes of salt, oregano, herbs de provence, and of course the corn meal. You can use a utensil or even your hand to mix up the bread crumb-corn meal concoction It's best to organize each dish and bowl in order like an assembly line. Starting from the left; there's the cutlets, the eggs, the bread crumbs, and to the right an empty plate to house the breaded cutlets. Again, you can either use a utensil or even you hand for the breading process. Take a cutlet, dip it completely in the egg yolk, then place in onto top of the bread crumbs (flip it over to cover both sides), and once covered by the crumbs, place in the plate. When all the cutlets have been breaded, this is when you can take the lemon juice bottle and give the chicken slices a few squeezes of juice for extra flavoring.

             With the cutlets ready to go, I poured some cooking oil onto my trusty iron pan and let it heat for about three minutes. That's when I took a folk to carefully place all four pieces of cutlet onto the hot pan. The initial sizzle noise from the chicken hitting the pan let me know it was officially game time!! Leo came over for a closer look to see how this phase of the cooking was panning out. Each side requires about ten to twelve minutes to cook, so I didn't want to start the pasta until the first side was done. I kept taking little peeks underneath the cutlets, and once I saw the dark brown grill lines from the pan, I knew it was time to flip them over. Leo was still curious about those discarded egg shells, but too bad for him the garbage cover was down. When the cutlets where on their other side, I poured the spaghetti into the boiling water and let the both of them race towards the finishing line. Leo grabbed a spot at the kitchen table in anticipation that he was going to join me for this meal. In about ten to twelve minutes, same as Side A, the dark brown lines from the grill where in clear view and the cutlets were ready to consume. In about this same time the spaghetti was nice and soft and I was able place everything onto my plate. Just as I hoped, the added corn meal kept the cutlet crust firm and in its place. Far too often with chicken cutlets, once you start cutting them with your utensils, the layer of bread crumb slips right off like a sock. That's definitely not the case when the corn meal is there to lend support.

             Adding corn meal to cat food might be a whole other story..........

Mango Chicken Leg Stew Done My Way

             Towards the beginning of the month I was at the meat department in a Key Food store in search of a new challenge to cook. Key Food maintains the widest varieties of meats at the lowest prices compared to other supermarkets. There was a package of chicken legs under three dollars which was too cheap to pass up. Plus, since I never cooked chicken legs on my own without adult supervision, this was the exact type of mountain I was looking to climb. I didn't have an actual plan of attack; I simply bought the package and tossed it in my freezer once I got home from the supermarket. A couple of weeks later I defrosted the chicken legs and left them in the refrigerator. For a various number of reasons I wasn't able to do any of the cooking I was hoping to accomplish. Unsure if I was going to use these legs in the near future or not, I contemplated placing them back into the freezer, but I really didn't like the idea of freezing and unfreezing them yet again. I looked around my kitchen and brainstormed what I could do with these legs, then I saw my answer laying in a fruit basket. I had also bought two mangoes that day at the Key Food - which were finally ripe. The first mango was consumed in the morning and I had the taste for more. That's when it struck a chord in my mind that I should incorporate the last mango with these chicken legs.

             My weapon of choice was going to be a crock pot, so I could cook the legs in a hot broth and have the flavor from the mango (as well as other ingredients) soak into the soft meat of the chicken. I skinned and diced the mango into little cube pieces. It's very tempting to consume all the mango pieces on the plate, so you have to limit yourself to stealing just one piece only. Another important item that needs to be skinned, sliced, and diced, is an onion. The bitterness of the onion serves as the perfect contrast to the sweetness of the mango. Once the crock pot is ready, pour in a can of chicken broth, one cup of water, and half a cup and water. Place the drumsticks into the pot and then begin adding the other flavors: two strands of thyme, with sprinklings of oregano, herbs de provence, garlic salt, and regular salt. Lastly, dump in the cubed pieces of mango and sliced onions. Make sure the fire is barely above a whisper and its preferred to use a wooden grandma spoon to initially mix the legs in the broth with the flavors inside. Afterwards, you can place the lid on top to cover the pot. It needs to cook long and methodical, so the fire must remain very low. The cooking time takes about an hour and fifteen minutes in total. While it cooks its never a bad idea to check on it every ten minutes and use the wooden spoon to stir gently for a few seconds. If an hour passes by and there's steam shooting from any possible crevasse in the crock pot, that's usually the telltale sign the legs are ready.

             The mango cubes should still be visible once the drumsticks are ready, but at this point the pieces have been stewing in the broth so long that the sweet taste of the mango will be gone. On the flip side, the sweetness from the mango juice would make its way into the soft meat of the chicken, its a fair trade. If cooked correctly, the meat will be so soft that it should easily slip off the bone once you begin handling the drumstick. The natural side dish in this situation would be rice, but instead I had leftover broccoli from a Chinese take-out place the night before that I wanted to use before they went bad. I heated them up in the microwave and set them on the plate when I knew the legs were just about ready. I took my first bite and was surprised the meat cooked to near-perfection. It's was certainly beginners luck with these chicken legs as usually they don't even come out as soft when you order them from a restaurant. With my flag sticking out from the top of this mountain, I'll need to return to Key Food in search of the next meat to conquer.

             I'm going to need to look somewhere else other than the fruit basket for assistance....

The Truth About Roosters

            The image I had of roosters was from cartoons and movies; The rooster on the farm gets up around 5am, makes it morning call to wake everyone up, and then that's it for the day. After spending a couple of weeks in Haiti I've learned that's the farthest thing from the truth. It turns out roosters are ready to make a ton of noise at anytime, be it 3am, 7am, 1pm, 7pm, or even 10:45pm.

           The first noise is the flapping of its wings, no later than two seconds after that the rooster will go into it's cadence. Once that happens, another rooster several yards or several blocks away will pick up on that and do it's own cadence in response. Eventually a domino-effect occurs and roosters are crowing back and forth all over the place. The whole episode lasts for about five minutes, but it feels more like an eternity when its 2am and you're trying to sleep.

           At least I know I'll never want to be a farmer...


          

Nice Knowing You, Chicken

            Last week she had to travel five hours up north to an area called Cap-Haiten on a mission. On the way back home, her party stopped off at a marketplace to pick up various goods. To my surprise, she returned with two sugar canes, regular bananas, what seemed like a whole branch of mini-bananas, and last but not least, a live chicken.

            The chicken was tied up by its leg to the back porch so it wouldn't be able to escape. Another surprise I learned is that if chickens are left alone for an extended period of time, they actually die of loneliness. Although I wouldn't mind eating it, in no way was I looking forward to participating or even being around it's unnatural demise.

            Luckily her mother dropped by two days later to pick up the chicken and bring it to her house where she has her own stock for the chicken to mingle with. For that chicken, it's days are numbered.

            If I had the choice, I'd rather take the loneliness...