My New Friend Herb

Last night I went on an all-out cooking blitz. I got home from the grocery store (one of my favorite field trips) around 4:30, changed out of my school clothes (sad experience has taught me not to try new recipes in nice clothes), rolled up my sleeves and began our meal. Now, in previous blogs I've stated that I don't really like blogging about things that I just "throw together" for dinner. While they are delicious and fairly healthy (for the most part), I don't know that I'd always called them "blog-worthy." Last night, however, I outdid myself (if I do say so myself), and feel I must tell you about it.

I made chicken scarpariello and herbed potatoes for dinner and we had dark chocolate homemade ice cream for dessert (the dark chocolate ice cream will be the subject of my next blog...stay tuned!). Anyway, the recipe for chicken scarpariello comes from my mother-in-law, who found it at allrecipes.com. If you aren't on this website, you should be. I love it. You can maintain an online recipe box, post your own recipes, comment on ones you've tried, all sorts of things. It's great for days when I decide what to make for dinner while at school and then am faced with the choice of winging it at the grocery store, or driving home for the recipe, then back to the store, then back home. Several rather...interesting meals later, I posted/filed a bunch of stuff on allrecipes.com and now can just look things up before heading to the store. Excellent!

Anyway, not only is chicken scarpariello super yummy, it's also very simple to make in large or small quantities.

Ingredients:
1/2 pound chicken breast meat, cut into 1x3 inch pieces
Flour, for dredging
2 Tablespoons olive oil
2 Tablespoons butter
2 Tablespoons minced garlic (2-3 cloves -- I like it extra garlicky!)
2 Tablespoons minced shallots
1/2 cup white wine (I used a chablis)
1 cup hot water
1 chicken bullion cube
1/2 teaspoon dried rosemary, crushed
Salt and pepper

Directions:
Put olive oil and butter in a 10-inch skillet (I use one with high sides for less-messy stirring).
While the oil and butter heat up/melt, cut the chicken into pieces. Dredge the chicken in flour right before laying carefully in the skillet (this is usually when I get burned with little oil pops -- evil MUFA). Brown the chicken on all sides and lay on a paper towel-covered plate to drain. While the chicken is browning, fill a measuring cup with 1 cup of hot water and add the bullion cube so it can dissolve. After browning the chicken, turn the heat down on the skillet and add the shallots. Cook until shallots are softened and translucent. Add the garlic a few minutes before the shallots are done to avoid burning the garlic. After sauteing the shallots and garlic, add the white wine to deglaze the pan. Next, pour in the chicken bullion/water and add salt and pepper to taste (I add about 1/4 - 1/2 teaspoon salt and lots of pepper (probably about a teaspoon -- I like it spicy!). Standing over the skillet, rub the dried rosemary vigorously in your hands to "crush" and release it's aroma as it drops into the sauce. Stir and bring sauce to a simmer. Re-add the chicken to the sauce and simmer until sauce is thickened and reduced by half.

This can be served over pasta or brown rice, but I made it with mini herbed potatoes. I found the recipe for the potatoes on foodnetwork.com. It's one of Ina Garten's recipes (she's one of my favorites -- I LOVE her kitchen!!). This was also the first time I had invested in fresh herbs. I was a little apprehensive -- would it really be as easy as it looks on TV?? YES! It was! And the difference in taste was unbelievable!!! I have been busily making plans ever since to have an herb garden on my back patio this spring/summer. I would dearly love to grow my own rosemary, thyme, dill, parsley, and chives -- to name a few. I would love to know if I could also grow oregano -- how great would that be on homemade pizza?!?!? More on the possibility of an herb garden later, however. For now, back to the herbed potatoes.

As I mentioned above, I stopped at the grocery store on my way home. I knew that I would be making chicken scarpariello, and was planning to serve it over angel hair pasta, as I have in the past. But I'm really trying to be better about eating more veggies, so I browsed through the produce section to see if something caught my eye. And while I know that potatoes aren't the all-time healthiest veggies...these mini potatoes looked too good to pass up. Imagine a bin filled with little Easter egg-sized Yukon Gold potatoes. They were adorable and practically screaming, "Choose me!" What's a girl to do? So I grabbed a bunch of them, already thinking of herbed potatoes. And since I was buying herbs I wanted to be able to make at least one other batch of the potatoes to "use up" the rest of my herbs. Then the fun began: choosing my herbs. First I grabbed a big bunch of Italian flat leaf parsley. From what Ina Garten writes, that's a classic combination with potatoes. Then, I headed down to the rest of the herbs...for some reason, in my grocery store, parsley is in with the lettuces instead of with the rest of the herbs...weird. Anyway, for my other two herbs, I choose rosemary (I use the dried kind when we grill potatoes for barbeques) and thyme. Ina recommends chives as more traditional than thyme in herbed potatoes, but since I already had an oniony thing going on with the shallots in the chicken sauce, I didn't want to double up. Here's the recipe I used for *my* herbed potatoes. For the record, my husband, who is possibly the world's harshest food critic, and picky besides, said these were "really good." And believe me, that's high praise indeed. =]

Herbed Potatoes:

Ingredients:
1/2 lb. of potatoes
1/4 - 1/2stick of butter (it depends on how healthy you want to be...or how bad) =]
Finely chopped herbs (parsley, rosemary, thyme)

Directions:
Scrub the spuds carefully (and slice in half if needed) and then place in a deep saucepan or stock pot and cover with cold water. Bring to a boil and boil for 10 minutes. Dump into a colander and cover with a clean kitchen towel to "steam" the potatoes. In the meantime, melt the butter in the pot you just used. Return potatoes to the pot and allow them to begin to brown, stirring and turning often. While the spuds are browning, chop the herbs to your heart's content (chopping is another favorite cooking technique of mine -- especially mincing -- with my biggest chef's knife, of course). Add the herbs when the spuds are almost done browning. Savor the aroma!

Serving:
I put a few of the potatoes on a big white plate (very appetizing -- I actually ate one before I finished serving dinner) and then added the chicken. I finished the plate by scooping the scarpariello sauce over everything. It was steaming hot and delicious. Great meal to eat while watching the NCAA Tourney games.