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Cooking by the Seat of Your Pants
An advantage of telecommuting is that you can always eat at home, saving money and your health by avoiding high-fat/high-cholesterol fast food. However, a hard day at work is a hard day at work, and on those days it can seem like more trouble than it's worth to follow a recipe. On the other hand, after a hard day at work, you may feel like you deserve something more than a hasty sandwich or delivered food.
On days like those, I indulge in improvised recipes. Measurements are rarely involved, and ingredients depend on what I have in my pantry and refrigerator at the time. One of my favorite improvised recipes is what I call "vaguely Asian chicken."
Here's what's involved:
Three boneless skinless chicken breasts in a 9 x 13 Pyrex pan. I have a variety of ingredients I favor for vaguely Asian chicken, but here's what I usually pull out to the counter:
- Peanut oil (would use sesame oil if I had it)
- Powdered garlic (would use fresh if I felt like it)
- Honey (would also add cayenne to give it a kick unless my husband requested a mellow)
- Powdered ginger (would use fresh if I had it and felt like peeling and chopping)
- Soy sauce
I never measure anything. I drizzle peanut oil, then honey across the chicken breasts. Then I sprinkle on the garlic and ginger, and slosh some soy sauce over everything. After the chicken goes in the oven, I start some rice in our steamer.
If I were making vaguely Italian chicken, it would probably go something like this:
- Fresh rosemary branches, courtesy of the bushes out back. (Tuscan Blue variety, for any gardeners out there.)
- Onions
- Fresh garlic
- Tomatoes (fresh and chopped, or canned and chopped, or sauce, depending on what was in the pantry)
- Basil
- Oregano
- Thyme
- Black pepper (freshly ground)
I use a slightly larger pan if it's clean when I'm doing vaguely Italian chicken, and here's why: I spread the rosemary branches across the bottom of the pan, first thing. The chicken breasts would go on top of the branches, which would mean that any fat would drip off the chicken into the rosemary. Aside from the calorie considerations, the dripping fat would release some of the essential oils in the rosemary, adding to the flavor.
Over the chicken breasts, I'd grind a little black pepper. I'd chop up an onion (rough chunks will do) and scatter them across and around the chicken breasts. Over all that would go the garlic, basic, oregano, and thyme, with the tomatoes or tomato sauce over that. Bake until done. (Time and temperature depends on whether I'm using fresh or frozen chicken breasts.)
Then there's vaguely Indian chicken, which uses the following:
- Curry powder
- Onions
- Chicken broth (maybe with a little white wine added if I have a bottle already opened)
Chicken in the pan, chicken broth poured over the chicken, and curry powder sprinkled across. Then while the chicken was baking in the oven, I would slice up an onion and cook it up in the electric skillet or a frying pan. This would be either a sweat or a saute, depending on timing and how badly I wanted the onions to be a nice dark gold color. About 20 minutes before the chicken is done baking, I spread the onions across the chicken.
Sure, it's not gourmet cooking, and no one would mistake it for anything fancy, but what would you rather have after 8 solid hours: good ol'PB&J, or something fresh from the oven?
Last updated October 2007