A good day!

It was a productive day in the kitchen. It wasn't the meal I had planned, but I decided the pork shoulder would be a better choice to make the day I have to work this weekend - either tomorrow or Monday. So, I started thinking about other ideas for dinner. I want to make pizza since I have pepperoni and just opened a pack of sliced mozzarella that I'll need to use up too. I have lots of chicken and a container of sauce (which I also need to for the pizza) in the freezer  - chicken parm! Except I didn't have bread crumbs...so I made them! I know, they're easy to make, but I had never done it. I usually have a container in the cabinet, but they had expired so I tossed them a little while ago. I don't suggest making this dinner if you don't have a day that you want to spend, on and off, in the kitchen and you don't want to do a lot of dishes/run the dish washer. I didn't mind doing either.

First, I made the sauce. I buy the regular tomato sauce and then season it myself. Less ingredients than in canned/jarred spaghetti sauce and it can be used in recipe that are not Italian (chili, cheater enchilada sauce, etc). I got that started cooking down. It is thinner than spaghetti sauce, so it's best if you can let it cook a while to thicken it up. I took the chicken out the freezer and went off to do some laundry. A little while later I started the pizza dough. I've never made it before, but my friend always uses the Smitten Kitchen recipe so that's what I made. I also put the bread out to dry some. 

Ready for the oven! 

A bit later I tackled the chicken. A regular chicken breast is giant - way more than one serving. The one I had was easily cut in half and then sliced in half (does that makes sense?). I then pounded it out to make it even little thinner. I don't have a meat tenderize but I discovered an ice cream scoop works really well for this. I sliced it when it was still a little frozen which made it much easier to work with - not nearly as slippery. Then I let it finish thawing. The bread wasn't super dry yet, so I toasted it and then pulverized it in the food processor. Since all the recipes called for Italian bread crumbs I mixed in a little basil, oregano and garlic. Then following most recipes, added some parm, dipped the chicken in egg, then the crumb mix, and then into a frying pan. I don't like frying with oil so I just sprayed the pan well with cooking spray and then spritzed the tops again before flipping them over. This worked well. Then into the over it went for about 25 minutes (350). I started the water for spaghetti and made a salad while it baked. After 25 minutes, I topped it with a little sauce and some sliced mozzarella and put it back in the over for about 10 minutes, until the cheese was melted.

Obviously, one chicken breast made a lot. I put two in the freezer, without pasta, and one in the freezer with some spaghetti and sauce. If I didn't need the sauce for pizza, I would have assembled all three as complete meals and frozen.

The plan for tomorrow is pepperoni, artichoke, and black olive pizza with half the dough. I think I might try some sort of pork on the other half later this week.

Dinner's ready!