Wowing the In-Laws

I got this recipe from Laurel (thanks for pre-screening it for me). I meant to make it earlier, but didn't get around to it and the chicken needed to be cooked the night my parents-in-law came into town, so I went ahead with it. Actually, I was a little embarassed that it looked so fancy. I couldn't stop giggling as I put everything on the plates! Seriously, it was an easy recipe and had a ton of great mexican flavor, which always does well in our house. The pinenuts made the breading extra crunchy. Another bonus is that since each piece of chicken is only a half a breast pounded out, you can fool yourself into eating less (it's satisfying enough for sure). Anyway, here's the recipe:
Chicken
1/2 c. buttermilk
2/3 c. cornmeal
1/2 c. pine nuts, coarsely chopped
1 tablespoon chili powder
1/2 tsp. salt
4 skinless boneless chicken breast halves, pounded to 1/2 to 1/2-inch thickness
Corn or Olive Oil for frying

Green Chili Sauce
2/3 c. chicken broth
1 c. medium to hot bottled green salsa
3 tablespoons chopped fresh cilantro
3 tablespoons heavy cream

Garnish
1 Thinly sliced avocado
Sour Cream
Cilantro

Pour buttermilk into a shallow dish. Combine cornmeal, chili powder and salt in separate shallow dish. Stir in pine nuts. Place chicken in buttermilk and turn to coat. Dredge chicken in pine nut mixture, pressing mixture firmly into chicken to coat.

Heat 1-2 tablespoons oil in a large, non-stick skillet over medium heat. Add chicken breasts, sauteing until cooked through, about three minutes per side. Make sure that chicken is not overly crowded. If necessary, turn the heat to medium low if the pine nuts are browning too quickly. Transfer chicken to a plate covering it loosely with foil.

Add broth to drippings in skillet. Bring to a simmer over medium heat, stirring to scrapte up browned bits. Stir in salsa and cream, simmering until slightly reduced, about three minutes, or desired thickness. Stir in cilantro.

Plate chicken, spooning sauce over each piece and topping with avocado, cilantro and sour cream if desired. I added some mexican rice underneath the chicken and served it all with some fresh cut-up veggies (a salad would have been nice too).

Disaster and Success

Catharine and I talk about recipes all the time, so it is fun to have a new way to share our successes and failures.  I watched an episode of the Barefoot Contessa on the Food Network where she made some chunky banana nut muffins.  They looked really good, so I decided to give them a try.  I usually love bran muffins, so I thought I should double the recipe.  I had most of the wet ingredients mixed when I realized I was short 1 egg.  Luckily my neighbor bailed me out!  I finished mixing the ingredients, filled the muffin cups and put them in the oven.  I started cleaning up the mess and realized that I hadn't mixed in the bran/buttermilk mixture!  The muffins had only been cooking for 1-2 minutes, so I pulled them out of the oven.  I scraped out the muffin pans, mixed in the forgotten ingredients, cleaned and refilled the muffin pans and put them back in the oven. Finally the muffins were done.  I took a bite out of a hot muffin only to realize that it was gross.  The recipe included molasses and orange zest.  I thought those flavors clashed with the bran flavor.  Also, the chunks of banana created pockets of mush.  I made myself finish the muffin then offered some to John and Ashley.  Both of them were excited to try the  muffins, but didn't end up finishing them.  I ended up throwing away 2 dozen muffins!  After all of this, I called Catharine to tell her of the disaster and her reply was, "I made those same muffins and thought they were gross.  You should have told me you were making them and I would have warned you!"

On a happier note, I made a Pear Ginger Crumble that was delicious!  It had a Tablespoon of freshly grated ginger in it and I was a little scared to put in that whole amount.  I decided to risk it and I am glad I did!  The recipe is also a little more figure friendly than most crumbles.  Here is a link for the recipe:  http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/ellie-krieger/pear-ginger-crumble-recipe/index.html