apple and sage chicken, tomato almond pesto

I cooked two meals this week since one of my roommates is stateside for work, so Sunday night I made Apple and Sage Chicken for my fellow meat eating roommate and two other teachers, I always enjoy a good casual dinner party, and Monday night I made Tomato Almond Pesto for the three remaining housemates. Katie sent me the recipe for the Apple and Sage chicken and when I found out the vegetarian roommate was eating out, I decided to give this a try. I admit that I was hesitant at a couple points along the preparation, partly because I don't cook with meat very often and I would hate to have someone eat improperly cooked meat, and partly because I couldn't tell if my meal was turning out as it should. Once it was served and sampled, though, there were four votes of approval, so now I can advise you to give it a try if you are a meat eater.

My adaptation of the recipe:

650 g chicken tenders (I think - deboned, deskinned slivers of chicken, packaged at the store)
1 1/4 teaspoons salt
1/2 teaspoon black pepper
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 tablespoon unsalted butter
1 tablespoon packed brown sugar (as mentioned before, I have dark brown sugar only)
2 apples (preferably Gala; 3/4 lb total), peeled, cored, and cut into 1/2-inch cubes
1 chopped shallot (or small onion, which I what I had available and used)
2/3 cup reduced-sodium chicken broth (I used a bouillon cube boiled in water)
1 teaspoon cider vinegar (I didn't have cider vinegar so I used white wine vinegar)
1/2 teaspoon chopped fresh sage

I cut the obvious connective tissue and such off the chicken so it was as pretty as raw chicken can get in my hands and patted them dry in a paper towel before laying them out across my cutting boards. I sprinkled them with salt and pepper and then cooked them to about 80% done in olive oil in a frying pan. I had to cook them in two batches so they didn't crowd the pan and when they were finished, I set them on a plate to wait. In the same pan, I put in the butter, onion/shallot, and brown sugar for a minute before adding the apples. I cooked this until the apples were tender and a little brown. Then I added my chicken broth, a splash of vinegar, and the chopped sage. I think I used too much water for my bouillon, expecting more to boil off, but I think the 2/3 cup would be accurate if you measured it. Still, even though mine didn't reduce as much, it still tasted great, so don't worry too much about perfection. After a couple minutes, I put the chicken back on top of the apples and alternated covering the pan with a lid to steam the chicken a bit and taking the lid off to let the sauce reduce. I repeated this process for about 20 minutes, stirring occasionally.

I served it plain in bowls and we ate the entire batch in one sitting - the flavor was really nice, a mixture of sweet apple and slightly of brown sugar with chicken and sage. Everything was soft, tender, and well cooked. I was impressed and it well exceeded my expectations.

When I make this again, I will use less bouillon, as mentioned, in an effort to make it reduce more. There was a lot of sauce, so I served mine with my slotted spoon so that I left the liquid in the pan, but I think the idea is that it is all soaked up and thicker so that it is served together. The original recipe called for chicken legs and thighs with skin, but I don't like cooking with bones and skin, and I am sure there were some differences because of the meat changes.

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Monday night I made Tomato Almond Pesto from SK and again felt some trepidation as the recipe progressed that it wouldn't taste great, but it turned out all right. Probably not my favorite recipe, but we were all satisfied with the dinner and I always like experimenting a bit.


3/4 cup slivered almonds
1 large handful fresh basil leaves
1 to 2 large garlic cloves
salt
5 tomatoes, cut into chunks
1/2 cup grated Parmesan
1/4 olive oil
1 pound pasta - my package said Vermicelli but it was essentially spaghetti, her recipe used linguine

The first step was to toast the almonds in a skillet - I am not sure I was totally successful, especially as her recipe instructed me to use olive oil and my limited exposure to toasting nuts has been in a dry pan or sheet in the oven, and it seemed like my almonds did not evenly toast. At any rate, it wasn't a disaster but I definitely need to have more finesse. If I had a food processor, I would dump the almonds in, chop them but keep them chunky, remove them, and then chop the basil, garlic, and salt in the processor before adding in the tomatoes, almonds, olive oil, and parmesan to mix them all together.

I do not, however, have a food processor, so I chopped up my almonds by hand and then, as finely as I am comfortable and patient enough to do, chopped my basil, a bit of sage (I still have a lot of fresh sage in the fridge), and the garlic. I mixed the garlic, sage, and basil together in a bowl and then cut up my tomatoes and mixed them in. I grated the parmesan directly into the bowl, eyeing about 1/4 cup, and then used the immersion blender to mix all of that together. I added salt and pepper once it was almost smooth and then mixed by hand. I cooked the pasta between al dente and done, and quickly mixed it in with the pesto, as suggested. I stirred it around a bit before serving it into bowls and grating some more parmesan on top.

And as it is now bedtime for this tired teacher, buona sera!