In praise of boneless, skinless chicken

Boneless, skinless chicken has saved me many a night from having to serve frozen pizza or "freezer-surprise leftovers" for dinner.

I buy them in multi-packs and freeze them. Often is the evening that I've realized,  too late,  I've planned nothing for dinner. Into a bowl of lukewarm water the plastic-wrapped double breast goes (sometimes I'm running so late, I don't bother to dunk it in its defrosting bath). Then, if still frozen, I can cut them sideways into one-inch thick slices and, if there's time, lay them on a plate to defrost a little more.

Even when frozen, they can be sautéed in a pan if cut into smaller chunks.

I generally use the directions for "Sautéed Boneless, Skinless Chicken Breasts (Basic Recipe)"  from the All New Joy of Cooking (p. 587 in my edition). The great thing about this recipe is that it can be adapted wildly.  I've used their basic recipe and then added sherried mushroom sauce (recipe on the cookbook's next page); I've added broccoli and made pasta with broccoli and chicken in a white/cheese sauce; I've added broccoli and ginger and made stir fry.  Even simpler, the sautéed breasts can be served with a squeeze of lemon and a dash of garlic powder over white rice, with a salad on the side.

The other beauty of this recipe is that after the chicken pieces are sautéed, I can set one or two aside for PE and put the rest into a sauce for everyone else.

I also buy boneless, skinless chicken thighs, which are cheaper, and keep them on hand. They're a little darker and meatier, and do better in more stew-like recipes.

Sometimes I miss chicken skin and the good juices that come with it. So, every three or four weeks, I'll make an effort to buy a whole chicken or I'll defrost a cut-up chicken a couple of days in advance in the refrigerator. With that little bit of planning ahead, a whole chicken is faster to prepare than skinless breasts since usually the only preparation required is salting the outside, rubbing it with butter, and sprinkling it with dried herbs before popping it in the oven.

I'm glad that there's a choice (skin or no-skin). Thinking back to my grandmother's day, when preparing a chicken began in the afternoon—chopping off its head, plucking the feathers, and stewing a tough bird a long time—I try to remember to appreciate how easy it is to cook chicken (or almost anything else) now.

Where are the "what we ate" food logs?

In case there are any readers out there wondering why I haven't been posting my weekly food diary of what my family eats (and how we manage to make the same meal/food work for varying tastes), the answer is a little complicated. Read on if you're interested...

It all began the week I posted my essay on the avoiding-cancer diet. One of the suggestions was to avoid smoked meat; another was to avoid beef. The same day it was posted, we had grilled steak for dinner. D. splurged and bought steak and grilled them outside as a last hurrah to summer. So, I put off writing up what we had eaten that week, thinking I'd sneak it in later, when the two posts might not sit next to each other.

As I held off posting my meal log, I wondered what good it is doing anyone. It is sometimes so repetitious that it is not inspiring that many new meal ideas. Then I realized the thing that would help me would be to chart the repeats, to try to see what I am primarily serving the family, notice patterns (too much pizza on Fridays?) and see if I can schedule a little more variation. To do that I would have to cut and paste each entry into something like an Excel database. But that's just too much work at this point, especially for questionable returns.

Then it hit me—-Blogger is essentially a database, with labels that show frequency of post topics. If I create a separate database/blog just for meals, and log each one as a separate post, the labels would start to show the patterns. In one month, I would be able to see that I served foccacia five times, etc. Plus, taking the food log out of Cooking for Four would leave more room for essays on food and the sharing of shopping tips, etc. I can still write a review of the week's offerings with "why this didn't work" posts/comments.

So I've started a very minimal blog just for 2008 meals. It's called What We Ate in 2008. http://cffwhatweate2008.blogspot.com/. It's not really worth your time—I'll be using it as raw material for this blog in the coming weeks. It may evolve into something a little less minimal; if it does, I'll suggest you look at it then.

In defense of pampering a picky eater

There's been some press lately about how parents shouldn't give into picky eaters. A recent Newsweek article, Help Kids Overcome Picky Eating commands: 

"Don’t fix separate meals. It’s hard to resist when kids are refusing to eat. But it only reinforces their biases."

The article helpfully suggests such strategies as pureeing cauliflower to look like mashed potatoes and concealing as many as eight puréed vegetables along with wheat germ "in a tasty meatball."

Well, that's great, but Picky Eater (usually referred to in this blog as "PE") won't eat mashed potatoes or meatballs. She'll only eat potatoes when they are french fried, on one of our occasional fast food forays. She will eat ground beef only as hamburgers.

For the last couple of nights, I have tried to make meals that would nudge PE towards eating what the rest of us like. The first night I made what I told her was "noodle pizza"--penne noodles squished into the bottom of a casserole dish, topped with pizza sauce and lots of mozzarella cheese.  (I made a separate pan for me, topped with goat cheese and artichoke hearts). PE tore into enthusiastically for the first couple of bites and then began to pick at it, saying she wasn't really hungry.

Last night I made Satay Chicken Stir-Fry with Snow Peas and Cilantro (from RealSimple.com), substituting the snow peas and broccoli with tiny slices of green onions and celery.  When PE asked what the green stuff was I told her "chives" ("chives" is my code name for anything small and green since she likes fresh chives from the garden, for some reason). I served it with sushi rice, which PE only seems to like when we go to Asian restaurants (there not being anything else she will eat there). 

The peanut butter sauce was a little sweet for my taste, so I couldn't see how she wouldn't like it since pb and sugar are her two favorite flavors. But she pushed at it with a worried look on her face and only ate the tiny serving I gave her when I said she absolutely had to finish it if she wanted milk.  (Demanding that kids eat is something the Newsweek article says is a no-no, but I was getting a little desperate). I think she would have drunk the milk and eaten nothing if I had given it to her with her meal.

We are listening to the "Little House" books on tape in the car right now. I was hoping that hearing about the Ingalls family's limited diet would make PE grateful for the abundance of food we have now. But if the Ingalls had had to dine on chicken nuggets and french fries every night, I'm not sure that PE wouldn't have wanted to join them.  That the child is as healthy and energetic as she is, fortunately or unfortunately, attests to the fact that maybe such things aren't so horrible, at least for the few years that she insists on eating them. At least I hope it's a few years...

Desperation dinners

There are those times when you absolutely don't know what to make for dinner. For me, it's usually around Wednesday evening. Weekend leftovers have been completely depleted, as has my ability to come up with anything new.

Or maybe you don't get home from work until 6 and everyone is hungry at 6:15.

Or, for once, you wanted to play, too--you've been out throwing a frisbee until dinnertime, and then you realize when you walk back into the house that there's no dinner waiting for you.

At such times, it's best to have on-hand a few "desperation dinners"--things your family will eat without much complaint and without much work on your part. Most of these will be frozen and ready-made. Some can be tossed together from things in cans.

As long as you don't rely on them everyday, I see no reason to feel guilty about serving them occasionally, even if you are a stay-at-home parent.

Here's what we have on-hand or make quickly for such occasions:

Trader Joe's Orange Chicken (frozen). PE loves this and can eat it again and again; the rest of us are getting sort of sick of it. You can cut the sugar in half if you use only one of the two flavor packets.

Frozen pizza. All can eat this except M., who can't eat milk. On such evenings, she might eat scrambled eggs or some small portion of a previous dinner she had squirreled away in the freezer. 

Burritos. (Assuming you have tortillas on-hand, in freezer, etc.). You also need to keep cans of pinto beans around. It helps if you have salsa and cheese, too. If you only have cheese and tortillas, make quesadillas.

Omelets. This works for everyone except TA, who hates eggs. M. makes hers with goat cheese.

Spaghetti/cheesy pasta. We try to keep small portions of pre-made tomato sauce with meat in the freezer. When we don't have it, we can make a quick, meatless sauce using a can of crushed tomatoes. If in a real rush, we'll just cook noodles and grate some cheese over them.

(Still quick but less desperate--and limited availability)

Pesto. In the summer, when we have pots of basil growing on the deck, this makes a quick meal that, unbelievably, everyone likes. We use pecorino (sheep's cheese) rather than parmesan, for M.

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I'll post additional Desperation Dinners lists in the future. I'm also soliciting ideas for other things to serve. Please feel free to share via comments.