51st post!

Apparently, my blog-odometer has clicked over to post number 51! That's not bad, I suppose. It averages out, I think, to 1 a week, but there have been several long dry spells of posting, so the average is deceiving.

It's been about a year, when I started writing about "brewing", which then transitioned to "brewing/beer and food, mixed with the occasional music post", which is where it stands right now.

On to the meat of the post:

Grilled chicken breasts are so common in restaurants, magazines, and backyards that they're almost a cliche. This is for good reason, since a grilled chicken breast is easy to do, tastes reasonably good, and goes with virtually everything. But even as useful as they are, they can get kind of boring after a while, and they've always had a sort of "lean cuisine" connotation to me (not that I eat much lean cuisine, as you can tell from my self portrait (but I swear, the double chin is only because of how I'm standing in the pic)). So, instead of grilling your chicken breast, let me suggest breading. Breading is as easy as grilling, you can add more flavor (by seasoning the breading), it's a change of pace, and it has a different feel to it than grilling.

Here's how I bread:

I take 3 bowls, and I put flour (which you can season with salt, pepper, cayenne, etc) in one, a beaten egg or two in the second, and in the third I put seasoned bread crumbs or panko.
Then I melt a combination of butter and olive oil (say 1 part butter to 2 parts olive oil) in a saute pan over med/med-hi heat.
Next I take my chicken breasts, which I've cut in half and pounded between saran wrap (or turkey cutlets, unpounded), and dip each in the flour, then the egg, then the breadcrumbs, with each piece ending up in the pan. Don't crowd the pan, though, so once things get full, don't add more chicken.
Then you just brown one side (3-4 minutes), and then the other (again, 3-4 minutes).



Once all the breast "cutlets" are done, serve them with pretty much anything. I'm partial to roasted potatoes (my go-to starch), and something like steamed (or roasted) asparagus, or some other green vegetable.

The good thing about something like breading is it gets you a little more involved with the cooking, and you can add more flavor by just adding flavor to the breading, like maybe adding some grated parmesan to the bread crumbs.

Anyway, happy 51st.

PS - picked up the Elliot Smith album Either/Or this morning. Very good stuff. I was looking thru my old posts today, since I'd told someone (hey, senea!) that I had a blog, and I wanted to make sure none of my posts were terrible or anything, and I noticed my comments about Neon Bible, by the Arcade Fire. I was wrong. It definitely is a great album. The muddy production I was hearing was due to my cheapo Toyota Matrix stereo, not the very fine music on the CD.

Coming up next, I'm thinking of taking all the spare chicken parts in my freezer and turning them into stock (I was inspired by in part by this post by Michael Ruhlman, whose blog, and writing overall, is vastly better than mine will ever be). Anyway, that's a long-winded way of saying, "stay tuned".