breaded chicken.

I love this dish because it is so versatile. You can serve this with pasta or salad or freshly buttered bread. Our favorite though is to cut it up and put it in sandwiches. Big rolls, lettuce torn up, a hint of salt and pepper on large sliced tomatoes. Mayo, swiss cheese, feta cheese. Bacon slices for variety. And a big dollop of Sriacha. Mmmm, I told ya, that shit goes with anything. Anyway, here's how you make my version of breaded chicken. Try it and let me know how it turned out.

Gather ingredients in an assembly line:

Flour mixed with salt, pepper and garlic powder.

Two eggs. Or if you use four big pieces of chicken you might need an extra egg, like I did. Whisked, of course.

Chicken. I used four big pieces of thigh meat. We usually purchase breast pieces but this week they weren't on sale at Sunflower.

And a plateful of Japanese Panko bread-crumbs. Another solid investment.

Drench chicken piece in flour. Shake off excess. Dip it and cover it in egg.

Cover with bread-crumbs on both sides. If you want a heavier coating, press the bread crumbs onto the chicken with your fingers so that they stick. I prefer a light coating so I usually dust the bread crumbs on top of the meat.

Arrange said chicken on a greased baking sheet and bake the pieces in a 400F pre-heated oven for forty-five minutes.

Once thoroughly cooked, fry them in canola or vegetable oil for a couple of minutes on both sides till the coat turns golden brown for a not-so-healthy option.

PS: Plis to excuse the quality of the photographs. I took them with one hand on The Android.

the guide to eating out in ABQ

I wanted to do a post on the best places to eat in Albuquerque, at least the ones we've tried so far.

Evergreen Chinese Buffet:

Our favorite go-to-place anytime hunger strikes. Excellent sushi, crab rangoons, breaded shrimps, dumplings, dim suns, wontons. You name it, they got it.

Village Inn.

Suzanne took me here one Monday evening and I fell in love with their breakfast items. Best sausage gravy ever! The fact that it is open till 2am on weekends is a definite plus.

Saggio's.

This is located near the University. This is where we had our first staff-only-dinner. The calamari was perfect.

Elephant Bar Restaurant.

Chris made reservations for my birthday. Located in ABQ Uptown, this place has an amazing ambience, and perpetually crowded (at least on a Saturday) so make your reservations early! Loved, loved, loved my sushi. I think it was the sea-weed fried in batter that did the trick.

O'Neill's.

Great Irish pub in the neighborhood. We had an early dinner there once, I loved my shepherd pie. The portion was quite big so I had left-overs as well! Chris liked his beer and his ginormous burger. I ate his fries.

Krung Thai.

The pad-thai I ordered the first time was quite mediocre but I am glad we stuck with this place for a second, third and fourth tries in quick succession. I get the stir-fried basil with chicken and Mr. Sachinky sticks with the red curry chicken with rice. We split half-and-half.

India Palace.

Good buffet with a reasonable price-tag. Large variety and amazing desserts.

Viet Q.

Banh mi and spicy lemongrass noodles with pork. Big portions and extremely reasonable prices. 'Nuff said.

pumpkin and chocolate chip bread.

I attempted to bake pumpkin-chocolate-chip bread earlier today. One of my kindergarteners had bought it for lunch last week, so I asked his mom, who runs a catering company with her husband, to send me the recipe.

Makes 16 servings
Prep: 15 minutes
Bake: 1 hour.

Ingredients:

1.5 cups of all-purpose flour.
1 teaspoon of ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon salt.
1/2 teaspoon of baking soda.
2 eggs.
1 cup sugar.
1 cup canned or fresh pumpkin puree.
3/4 cup canola or vegetable oil
3/4 cup of semi-sweet chocolate chips.

Directions:
In a large bowl, combine the flour, cinnamon, salt and baking soda. In another bowl, beat the eggs, sugar, pumpkin and oil, Stir into dry ingredients just until moistened. Fold in the chocolate chips.

Pour into a greased 8-in. x 4-in. loaf pan. Bake at 350 degrees for an hour till a toothpick inserted near the center comes out clean. Cool for 10 minutes before removing from pan to wire rack. Yield: one loaf. 16 slices.

mac and cheese.

Today, I'm presenting 'Macaroni and Cheese' -- I've never made mac and cheese from scratch, boy, does this taste good! So much better than packaged cheese plastic-tasting crap you get in the stores.

Step 1: Pre-heat oven to 400F. Gather your ingredients. Milk, butter, flour, sour cream, cream cheese, salt, pepper, mustard, cheese, elbow macaroni.

Step Two: Boil macaroni in hot water with a pinch of salt till al dente.

Step Three: In a large pan, melt four spoons of butter. Fry three spoons of flour in it till bubbly. Pour two cups of milk and stir till the mixture turns creamy. For an added pop of taste--mix in a large chunk of sour cream, cream cheese and a dash of Dijon mustard. Add salt and pepper to taste. I threw in some chilli flakes as well.

Step Four: Drain excess water and lay out macaroni in a baking dish. Pour the creamy sauce all over it.

Step Five: Sprinkle shredded cheese generously -- I used a cheddar, pepper jack and monterey mix. Top with several slices of fresh tomatoes.

 

Step Six: Bake in the oven for 25 minutes and then dig in while it's hot! Serve with garlic bread.

death by chocolate (cake)

Step 1: Gather ingredients. Pre-heat oven to 375F.

Step Two: In a large mixing bowl, mix together one cup of flour. One cup of cocoa powder. One cup of oil or butter. One cup of sugar. Half a cup of milk.

Step Three: Add one teaspoon of baking powder. One teaspoon of vanilla essence. Two eggs. And a pinch of salt.

Step Four: Whisk batter well. Pour into greased baking dish. Bake for forty minutes.

Step Five:  Cool for fifteen minutes. Serve with French vanilla ice-cream and hot chocolate sauce!

bread pudding.

Step 1: Gather your ingredients. White bread, eggs, milk, butter, sugar and vanilla essence. Pre-heat oven to 350F.

Step 2: In a big bowl, mix together two cups of milk with half a cup of sugar and four eggs. Add a few drops of vanilla essence.

    

   

Step 3: In a baking dish, place six slices of bread, roughly torn up.

Step 4: Pour the egg mixture over the bread, letting it sit for a couple of minutes so that the bread can soak the milk-egg mixture.

Step 5: Melt two spoons of butter and drizzle it over the bread mixture. Pop it into the oven.

Step 6: Forty-minutes later, VOILA! Serve warm with vanilla ice-cream.

chicken wontons.

Mummy's going to be so proud of me! I made dumplings from scratch! Okay, that's a lie, I cheated a little by buying some wonton wrappers I spotted at the grocery store earlier today. I decided to document the process, which was way easier than I ever imagined them to be. Instructions and pictures follow.

Step 1: Finely chop onion, mushrooms and green pepper. That is all I had in the refridgerator.

Step Two: Heat oil in a pan and fry garlic and ginger paste.

Step 3:  Fry the onion, mushroom, pepper mixture. Then brown half a pound of ground meat in the skillet. I used ground beef but you can use pork and chicken as well. I then poured some of 'Lawry's Szechwuan Sweet and Sour BBQ' marinade/sauce and cooked the beef mixture in it.

Step Four: Spread the wonton wrappers on a plate. Beat an egg.

Step Five: Line the edges of the wonton wrapper with a little bit of the egg mixture. Pour a tiny spoonful of the meat mixture in the middle of the wrapper. Then seal the edges. We started making them in the 'momo' triangle-shape at first, but gave up soon. Instead, we decided to go with the more traditional sui-mui 'twist on top' -- it's easier and pretty!

Step Six: Heat oil in another skillet. Fry the wontons for a couple of minutes till golden-brown. Flip and fry on the other side as well. The oil was too hot so they came out a little more brown than I would've liked. But they were delicious, nonetheless.

Step Seven: Serve hot with Kikkoman soya sauce as a dipping sauce. Tip: I usually don't like the bitter taste of soya sauce so I mixed a tiny spoon of sugar in to sweeten it. 

ENJOY! We sure did!