Week 21: Not Your Mother’s Chicken and Rice

I remember my mother making chicken and rice dishes, mostly casseroles that were heavy on some sort of canned creamed soup. Edible but not terribly flavorful, they were a staple in most households in the 1960s and 1970s. Given my subsequent aversion to casseroles and anything containing a creamed soup, I have avoided such dishes for 30+ years…until now.

In the most recent Sunset magazine, I found a recipe for Chicken Steamed Over Ginger-Garlic Rice. Full of flavor, utilizing only one pot and taking only 30 minutes, the family has determined the recipe a keeper and I can now proudly cook chicken and rice casserole.

Rather boring in color, due to the dual colors of white (rice, chicken) and green (sauce), it is anything but bland. The recipe contains bold flavors—ginger, garlic, cilantro, sesame oil and jalapeno—that give the moist steamed chicken a great kick, although not so spicy that children won’t eat it.

The recipe is low in salt, easy to prepare and a quick and hearty weeknight meal. While the recipe says it yields four servings that would be a huge amount of rice per person. I used 2 pounds of chicken (rather than the 1 1/2 it called for) and it served 5 adults, with enough leftover for one lunch. I have adjusted a few things in the recipe to satisfy our palate, but if you want the original recipe, you can find it here.

Butcher Son and Mr. B added some sriracha to up the heat quotient, our guest tried it with a bit of soy, but Brilliant Daughter and I found it perfect just as it is. Now it’s your turn to debunk the myth that chicken and rice casseroles have to include creamed soups!

Recipe on the next page...

Week 14: Baked Gnocchi with Squash and Kale

What drew me to this recipe in the San Francisco Chronicle was the list of ingredients in the title. I love gnocchi, butternut squash and kale and imagined they would be a killer combo. Tasty and healthy at the same time. It was a fairly easy recipe that took little preparation, as I was able to use pre-made gnocchi, pre-cut squash and pre-cut kale.

Unfortunately I was wrong on several counts and actually chock this up as a bit of a failure. It is healthy and it was easy, but it wasn’t terribly tasty. The gnocchi gets quite gummy and sticks together, the squash doesn’t get that nice brown crisp that adds to its flavor when roasted, and the pre-cut kale had some thick ribs that made for a more than few nasty mouthfuls. And even with the addition of salt and parmesan cheese, it lacked any oomph or real flavor. It was a bit soggy and the liquid was not thickened at all. Overall, I cannot recommend this dish, but in fairness to my goal at the beginning of the year, I wanted to post my failures as well as my successes, so if you are brave, you can try and recreate this and judge for yourself, or modify it in a way that would make it tastier (more cheese? herbs? pancetta or bacon? Sausage?)

Recipe after the jump