Allez cuisine!

So, tonight I decided to do a little impromptu amateur Iron Chef. Secret ingredient: boneless skinless chicken breast.

I only did three dishes - appetizer, salad, and entree. The pictures aren't the greatest, because I was taking them on the fly before the food got cold. Also, no photos of the work (mess) in progress. I don't know exactly how safe my camera would be in the kitchen while I'm cooking frantically.

Anyway, on to the first dish: honey roasted peanut crusted chicken fingers with a potato pancake and honey peanut sauce.

(I know it's a little one-note color wise, but I'll make up for that in the next dish.) I cut up the chicken, seasoned it with granulated garlic, white pepper, and kosher salt, then covered it with milk and a little hot sauce and let it sit while I heated the skillet with about half a stick of butter and some vegetable oil. I rolled the chicken pieces in finely chopped honey roasted peanuts, then fried them in the oil/butter mixture, and set them on a rack over a baking sheet in the warm oven to drain. I then made a roux with the leftover fat and some flower, added in a couple of tablespoons of natural peanut butter, then deglazed the pan with chicken broth. I added a little milk to thin it out some more, and a good deal of honey to get it to the right sweetness level. The potato pancakes were just a shredded russet, with most of the moisture squeezed out, fried in some butter.

Dish 2: Julienne fresh vegetable slaw with milk poached chicken, dressed with olive oil and balsamic vinegar.

(Balsamic poured a little quicker than I wanted on that one piece of chicken.)

For this one, I poured off the seasoned milk from the chicken into a sauce pan, added some more milk, parsley and tarragon, then brought it almost to a boil and added several pieces of the chicken and turned the heat to low and let it simmer while I cut up the veggies: celery, carrot, and a fresh green bell pepper from the garden. In the middle of the cutting, I took out the chicken and let it cool to room temperature. Mixed the veggies in the bowls, sliced the chicken, poured a little balsamic vinegar and extra virgin olive oil over the top, and sprinkled a little more tarragon over it.

Final dish: Sauted chicken, Brussels sprouts and sweet corn

This one was fairly simple. I melted a couple of tablespoons of butter in a pan, added the last few pieces of chicken, and partially cooked some single serving steamer packs of baby Brussels sprouts and sweet corn. They went into seperate bowls, I seasoned the corn with garlic, the sprouts with white pepper, and both with paprika and kosher salt. I added the sprouts after the chicken was no longer pink on the outside, then the corn after a few stirs. I covered the pan for a couple of minutes, stirred it all together, then deglazed the pan with a little zinfandel. Let that reduce, portioned out into bowls, then topped with some grated parmesan.