PCAT - Baked Chicken with Broccoli and Cheese

After much deliberation on what to cook for dinner tonight, I came up with a dish that would serve two purposes: first is to satisfy my hubby bebe and second is to be good enough to be blogged about. Yes, it is another chicken recipe but what can I do, we love chicken.

Here is the list of what you will need:

• 3 pieces boneless and skinless chicken breasts
• American cheese singles, one slice per chicken breast
• 1/4 cup finely shredded Parmesan cheese
• 1/2 cup frozen cut broccoli, diced
• 2 Tbsp chopped onion
• ground black pepper
• salt (I personally use sea salt but regular iodized salt is ok)
• cayenne pepper
• dried oregano leaves

There are two ways to prepare the chicken. You can either slit open the side of the chicken breast to make a small pocket on the meat or you can butterfly it as shown in the picture below. (read: to butterfly is to cut and spread open)

Here is the rest of the procedure:

• 
  
  Preheat oven to 350 F.
• 
  
  Rub salt on both sides of the chicken. If you made a pocket instead of butterflying it, rub salt inside the pocket too.
• 
  
  Combine the broccoli and chopped onions in a bowl. Season with ground black pepper and dried oregano leaves. Mix thoroughly.
• 
  
  Divide the slice of cheese into two and put the first half in the pocket or on the middle section of the butterflied chicken. Next, put in the broccoli mix. Cover the mix with the other half of the cheese.
• 
  
  Secure the pocket opening with toothpicks. If using butterflied chicken, fold the side sections to cover the stuffing and secure the fold with toothpicks.
• 
  
  Put a dash of cayenne pepper on top side of the chicken and rub it. Rub oregano leaves on both sides of the chicken and put them on a baking sheet lined with aluminum foil and sprayed with Pam (any cooking spray will do actually!).

• 
  
  Bake the chicken for 20 minutes. Take the chicken out of the oven and sprinkle Parmesan cheese on top. Then continue baking for 15 minutes more.
• 
  
  Remove toothpicks before serving.

There you go. I hope you'll enjoy it.

PCAT - Chicken Skewers

My husband loves barbecue a lot. In fact, he would never turn down any offer to eat this type of food no matter what. But this is not to say that he doesn't have a discriminating taste when it comes to one of his favorite foods because he does recognize a good barbecue from a not-so-good one.

For my first recipe in Project Cook and Tell (PCAT), I would like to share with you my version of Chicken Skewers. I got the idea for the marinade in a cookbook called "America's Favorite Brand Name Light Cooking". The original recipe calls for specific branded products but since I don't really go for expensive branded stuff when you can have a cheaper product that can do as well, I decided to do some substitutions and alterations. This resulted in a recipe which uses more generic and common ingredients.

Here is the list of what you will need:

• 3 lb (1.4 kg) skinless and boneless chicken breasts
• 1 can 8-oz (227 g) tomato sauce
• 1/8 cup water
• 1/8 cup dark soy sauce
• 3/8 cup worcestershire sauce
• 1/4 cup sugar (see notes below on which type of sugar you could use)
• 1/8 cup chopped onions (fresh or dried)
• 3 Tbsp. cider vinegar
• ground black pepper
• cayenne pepper (optional)
• dried oregano
• dried basil
• garlic powder
• Italian seasoning

This is how to prepare it:

1. Cut chicken breasts into pieces, approximately 1.5 inches by 1 inch. Remove fat if you like. Set aside in a bowl for marinating.
2. In a small skillet or saucepan, combine all the other ingredients and stir to remove the lumps. The amount of spices you would put in depends on your taste. In my case, I usually put 1 to 2 tablespoonfuls of each type of spice except for the cayenne pepper which would be too potent if you put more than a dash or two.
3. Bring the sauce into a boil over medium heat while stirring constantly. Lower the heat and let it simmer for 8 to 10 minutes.
4. Let the marinade sit for a while to cool. Then, pour over chicken pieces. Make sure that the marinade covers the chicken pieces well.
5. Put the bowl in the refirigerator and let it stand for at least 24 hours.
6. Skewer the chicken and grill it.

Special Notes:

• If you are using frozen chicken, make sure that you thaw it well. This will minimize the amount of water that the chicken pieces will give off while it is marinating and the marinade will not be diluted.
• You can use either refined (white) sugar or brown sugar. Brown sugar caramelizes well and will give a nice burnt color to the chicken skewers when cooked. White sugar doesn't caramelize as much. The taste doesn't vary as much when you use either one.
• If you don't have cider vinegar, you may also use 2 Tbsp. red wine vinegar. I haven't tried this recipe with other types of vinegar aside from the two that I have mentioned. But feel free to experiment.
• I usually marinate the chicken for 3 to 4 days but 24 hours will suffice.

My husband absolutely enjoys this dish and I hope you would too.

Project Cook and Tell (PCAT)

My husband calls me a fibber. It is because when we were still dating, I told him that I couldn't cook. And now that we're married, he says he likes most of the food I prepared for him.


I did not really mean to lie to him because in my mind, I don't know how to REALLY cook. Yes, I sometimes make pasta dishes whenever I have time off from work. But I never considered myself a good cook - passable maybe but not good. So I told him that to save him from disappointments that can come from encountering the stuff i make.


There are reasons, though, why I consider myself just passable. First is my grandmother (mama's mom) who used to live with us. She cooked the daily meals and she's really good at it. So whatever sense of "deliciousness" I have, it developed from her. Food has to be cooked her way or better.


My papa is a superb cook too. When we relocated to our own house in Laguna, he took on the duty of cooking meals after he has resigned from his regular job. He still works by driving a tricycle or van to ferry kids to and from school but his schedule allows him to prepare the daily meals. Needless to say, those dishes are delicious.


So then, there was wee little me who had to go to school (commuting from Laguna to Quezon City and back again) and never had the chance to really improve on my cooking. It got worse when I graduated and held jobs that had me going home at way past dinner time and no chance of practicing how to cook there.


But now that I am in the US - so far away from my grandmother and my papa, I guess I needed to step up and cook, especially since my hubby goes to work and I don't. (Not yet, that is!) So I had to flex my muscle, stretch my imagination and exercise my palate. And surprises of surprises, I apparently could folow a recipe, make some adjustments and come up with a meal that is EDIBLE! Yehey!


And so I decided that aside from blogging regular activities in our daily life, I could start writing about my adventures in the kitchen. Thus, came PROJECT COOK AND TELL. So in my next posts, I would actually share recipes that I cooked for hubby and tell you how he reacted to it. Hopefully, those Passable Cooks like me will be able to benefit from my gastronomic experiments.

Catching Up... Again!

It has been a while now since my last post. At that time, I was just beginning a new life with my hubby bebe bear. Now, our 1st wedding anniversary is sneaking up on us. Cliched as it may sound but I cannot believe how time flies.



Our first year is not unlike many starter couples' because it is definitely a period of honeymoon. We have regular datenights and we celebrated our monthversary (monthsary for me) religiously. We went on camping adventures, cooking experiments, tea samplings and kitchen stuff shopping. It is indeed a relaxing state for most part.



Like any new married couple, we had our petty quarrels. Although, I would have to say that most of those incidents are caused by me not knowing how to communicate how I feel leading to a misunderstanding. But I would have to state that it is not the language barrier that led to that "tampuhan" it is just my "learned" ability to clam up when I should be talking to him about certain situations. You see, Steve is my first and only boyfriend and so I have yet to realize that men cannot read their women's minds. Nevertheless, these incidents (or the things that happen after) are fun.



The only time we were not enjoying ourselves are those times when we had to deal with immigration hooplas. I, being a foreigner in the proverbial land of milk and honey, have to prove that I did not marry my hubby just for the green card (the permanent resident status card). Admittedly, it is relatively easy for him and me to prove the bonafides of our marriage. It is the bureaucracy that is hard to deal with. Just imagine the money, effort and time that we have to put into the convoluted process of adjusting my immigration status. Add to that my craziness because of being stuck at home without a job. And you will get (my) minor meltdowns which, fortunately, my hubby knows how to handle and quell.



Yes, it has been an eventful year for us - one that would forever be etched in our minds (another cliche... lol!). And looking at the whole picture, I could say that our first year of marriage has been a bliss.