Garlic Chicken

Wow, long time no post. I apologize for my disappearance from the Internet, however I am back with the EASIEST dish you will ever make (and it's quite delicious too). Garlic Chicken is a wonderful way to serve roasted chicken and you can do it in under 10 steps! The basic premise of this dish is to slowly roast the chicken with garlic until the garlic caramelizes. This will turn the bitter garlic into a sweet treat!

Ingredients:

• 1 whole chicken
• 1/2 cup of olive oil
• 1 lemon
• 30-40 cloves of garlic
• Fresh thyme
• Your favorite chicken rub
• Kosher salt
• Fresh ground pepper
  

First, take your chicken and break it down to 8 pieces. You can buy a chicken that is already chopped up, but it's a little more expensive and everyone should know how to butcher their own chicken anyway.

You should end up with eight pieces. 2 wings, 2 legs, and 4 breasts (cut the two full breasts in half horizontally). Make sure you save the backbone and all those other pieces for chicken stock and clean your counters with an antibacterial soap if your chicken touches it like I know mine did.

Sprinkle your chicken with your favorite chicken rub and a little salt and pepper (both on top of and underneath the skin). I am using McCormick's Grill Mates Chicken Rub but feel free to substitute with your favorite seasoning.

Now here is the toughest step, peeling clove after clove after clover of garlic. It's a painstaking chore and luckily my wonderful girlfriend volunteered (or was forced, it's a grey area) to do this step for me. Bless her little heart :)

Next get a roasting pan and liberally place garlic and thyme across the bottom.

Place the chicken on top of that.

Next, add some lemons (sliced up in eighths).

Then comes more garlic and thyme.

Drizzle the whole thing with the half cup of olive oil and then throw into an oven that's been preheated to 350°.

Leave it in there for a solid 90 minutes. The last couple minutes I like to turn on the broiler to get a nice char on the skin. The final result is wonderfully flavorful, falls off the bone and should look surprisingly like this:

BBQ Chicken Pizza

So, I just got back from a weekend getaway in North Carolina. While I was down there, I had some excellent food, however I did not have any Carolina style BBQ. The vinegar-style sauce on this pizza met my cravings for Carolina style 'Q and then some. The best thing is, I get to eat this again tomorrow. I made an extra pizza for my family so maybe this time they won't heckle me about not eating my blog's food! By the way, I kind of messed up this post a little. My camera's battery was dying during the process and while I thought I got pictures of me cooking the chicken and the bacon, apparently I had failed to do so. But I can assume that you guys know what chicken and bacon look like when the cook.

Ingredients (makes 2 pizzas):

• 8 strips of bacon
• 2 chicken breasts
• 2 pizza crusts
• 1 bottle (18oz) bbq sauce
• 1/4 cup + 2 tbsp. apple cider vinegar
• 3/4 of a pound of Smoked Gouda Cheese
  
• 1/3 of a red onion
• 1 jalapeno
• Crushed black pepper
  

Dice up your bacon and throw into a pan over medium heat. Add a dash of salt and pepper if so inclined.

When done cooking, take the bacon off the stove and drain on a paper towel.

Sprinkle BBQ seasoning on your chicken breasts. I used home made, but store bought is OK as well. Mine is a mix of smoked paprika, chili powder, salt, brown sugar, crushed pepper, onion powder, garlic powder, cayenne pepper and a teeny tiny bit of oregano.

Place a little oil (or that leftover bacon fat if you are as awesome as me) on a pan on medium-high and toss in the chicken breasts. Cook completely. Slice the chicken up into bite size pieces. It's OK if you eat a couple, I know I did.

Slice up the red onion.

Slice up a Jalapeno. This step is optional, but highly recommended. I love the heat. Alternatively, you can use a green/red/yellow pepper (or nothing at all if you hate peppers). I am omitting this from my family's pizza, which is why their is only one in this recipe.

Take your smoked gouda cheese and shred it.

Now for the barbecue sauce. I am using Sweet Baby Ray's, which is a thick and dark Kansas City style sauce.

For this dish, I need something a little thinner and tangy-er, so I will cut it with the apple cider vinegar.

Then I am adding a little freshly crushed black pepper for a little bite.

I bought a store-made pizza crust. I know some people will think that is cheating and I should have made my own dough, but I just got back from North Carolina today and didn't have the time. Anyways, once you are done judging me, add the BBQ sauce.

Follow with your freshly shredded gouda.

And then the chicken.

And the bacon.

And then the onions. This is really starting to look good now.

Finish with the jalapenos and take a minute to admire your work.

You did preheat your oven to 425, right? If so, go ahead and throw the pizza in and find something to do for the next 12-14 minutes while this cooks. Cooking time may vary according to your pizza crust, but when it is just about turning golden brown and the cheese has melted, it's time. It might come out looking something like this:

Leftover Lo Mein

Wow, this is a long post. I didn't realize that I took this many pictures during the process or that there were this many steps. Let me start by saying my mother showed up at my house with a random head of cabbage telling me it was a secret ingredient and I had to make a dish with it for the blog. I initially had planned to make corned beef and cabbage, but that was too expected and it's too far away from St. Patty's day. I've made this recipe before and used chinese cabbage, so it's an easy substitution. I call it left over lo mein because you can use pretty much anything you have in your refrigerator. You can put green peppers or squash or broccoli or green beans, any vegetable you have available will work. There is a fair amount of early prep work in this dish, but once you start cooking it's over fast. We want to make sure we have all our ingredients ready to go before the oil hits the pan. Oh yea, if you want it vegetarian, it's just as delicious without the chicken.

Ingredients:
For the Lo Mein:

• 1 chicken breast
• 1/2 of a medium onion
• 4 oz of sliced mushrooms
• 12 baby carrots
• 1 clove of garlic
• 1/2 cup of cabbage
• handful of fresh cilantro
• 1/2 package of Lo Mein Noodles
• canola oil
• kosher salt and fresh ground pepper
  

For the Sauce:

• 1/4 cup of soy sauce
• 1.5 tsp of hoisin sauce
• 2 tsp of black bean sauce
• 1 tsp of fish sauce
• 1 tsp of honey
• 1.5 tsp of sriracha sauce
• 1 dash of chinese five spice powder
  

Step One, take a chicken breast, clean and trim it, then season liberally with kosher salt and freshly ground pepper on both sides.

Next, heat a pan on medium-high heat and pour a little oil in it. Add the chicken.

Flip the chicken over. Isn't that starting to look good?

Once the chicken is done cooking, remove it from the heat and let it sit for five minutes. You can skip ahead and start doing the vegetable prep work now, or you can wait those five minutes and then slice the chicken up into pieces.

Take about a dozen baby carrots, cut them in half horizontally and then dice them vertically. You should make 3-5 slices per carrot.

Take a quarter pound of mushrooms and slice them vertically. I cheated and bought my mushrooms pre-sliced but by putting them on the cutting board it looks like I did the work myself.

Chop up half of a medium sized onion in a very large dice. The pieces should be nickel to quarter size.

Take one clove of garlic and finely dice it.

Ahh, the beautiful head of cabbage that started this meal. Shred up about 1/3 of the head of cabbage.

This is how your vegetables should look now. The garlic is on top of the carrots because they will be going in at the same time. So will the onions and mushrooms, so it is ok if they mix too.

Take a handful of cilantro and chop that up as well. We will be needing that at the end of the dish.

Boil a pot of water and then toss in your Lo Mein noodles. This is what mine look like:

Follow the instructions on the package for cooking. Mine says it takes 5 minutes. This will give us time to get our sauce together.

Start with a quarter of a cup of dark soy sauce.

Add to that a teaspoon of honey.

Follow with a teaspoon of fish sauce.

Next add a teaspoon and a half of hoisin sauce. This is like a chinese BBQ sauce and is quite delicious.

Add two teaspoons of black bean sauce. Another delicious Asian condiment.

Add a dash of Chinese five spice powder.

This stuff is pretty strong, so I don't like to add to much as it can take over a dish. I put in about this much:

Oh, I bet you thought I was going to forget about the Sriracha sauce, didn't you? I told you I put this on everything when I introduced it to you in the bourbon chicken post and now it's back. If you haven't bought a bottle yet, kick yourself (It's amazing I get nothing from promoting this stuff, but Sriracha, if you are listening, send me a case!). Add a teaspoon and a half of the good stuff.

Are your five minutes up? If so, drain the noodles and set them to the side. Now we have everything prepped. The french call this mise en place, which literally means putting in place. Our spread pre-cooking:

This is where it gets interesting. We want to cook the food on the highest possible heat. We also need to keep it moving during the process, else we end up with burnt food. This is not that difficult of a process, unless you are trying to take pictures at the same time. Then it becomes overwhelming, but I survived. Place a wok on the highest setting your stove top goes. Once your pan is hot, add two tablespoons of oil. Immediately add the onions and mushrooms and saute for a few minutes.

Next add the cabbage. Continue to keep the food moving. Cook for another minute.

Add the carrots and garlic. The cabbage should be releasing their water which is instantly turning to steam on the hot wok making picture taking more difficult. This should not pose a problem for you.

After another minute, add the chicken and the noodles. Stir everything (just like you have been the whole time, right?).

Once all that is combined, go ahead and add the sauce. This should cook one to two minutes.

You can take it off the heat at that point and add the chopped cilantro.

Stir to combine everything. Grab your bottle of Sriracha (everyone deserves a little extra), a plate, a fork and get to eating. The table is optional.