Mustard Oven Fried Chicken

A couple years ago I got the book The Good Home Cookbook: More Than 1000 Classic American Recipes. It describes itself as having the recipes you would have learned from your grandmother. I think that it has a lot of recipes you would imagine your grandmother would have made. (One of my grandmother’s made a hambruger and mashed potato casserole with ketchup that I never tried-her cheesecake was phenomenal though.)

One of the quicker recipes is an oven fried chicken that uses mustard to coat the chicken. I get home earlier than Pat and usually have dinner done shortly after he gets home. I was going to make it after I did a couple quick sets of strength training exercises when Pat came home early. He kept asking about dinner so I handed him the cookbook. He did a great job (while asking many questions).

The oven is preheated to 400F. It’s best to start by putting grain mustard into a bowl. Panko crumbs, salt, pepper, and herbs of your choice (oregano this time) go into a different bowl. A sheet pan should be oiled or sprayed with oven spray. For 2, one large chicken breast cut into chunks works.

prep work

The chicken is dipped into the mustard and coated, then transferred to the bread mixture, and finally placed on the pan.

ready to go into the oven

The pan goes into the oven for 20-25 min (really depends on the size of the chicken). The chicken should be flipped half-way though.

delicious and quick

Dinner was done just as I was finishing my work-out. Delicious and I only had to yell suggestions out in between sets.

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Improv Pasta

So I stared into my cupboard and fridge for inspiration for dinner the other night. I noticed we had pasta. I love it and you can do a lot with it, that would work. I saw an once of cream cheese leftover in it’s wrapper and a partial jar of roasted bell peppers. Ah ha! I sort of remember an Ellie Krieger show where she made pasta sauce with feta and roasted bell peppers.

I decided to get the water boiling for the pasta. Then, I cut the cream cheese into junks and threw it into the food processor.

cream cheese and bell peppers

I added the bell pepper pieces and processed it all together.

After the pasta finished cooking, I drained it and tossed it with the sauce. I grated a little parmesan over the top and called it good.

quick and delicious

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One Week-Update 2

So far, I basically cooked from the freezer and pantry. Pat bought more diet dr pepper (I have not been brainwashed by Top Chef, it’s been my soft drink of choice since college) but really no other groceries.

I’ll post some recipes, but mostly I have been finding items I picked up because they sounded interesting but never got around to making like panko bread crumbs and using odds and ends from other planned meals-leftover roasted bell peppers and cream cheese.

So far so good.

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Top Chef Finale

I am so disappointed! I had Carla as my pick. I think she just had an off night. I really ended up liking her and her approach to cooking.

I didn’t think Hosea was all that impressive but I didn’t taste his food.

Stefan’s desserts seemed alright to me. I was interested in the carpacio since Colichio seemed to strongly dislike the technique but someone else at the table liked it. It’s so hard to say when you don’t taste it.

Overall, I am not very good at the Top Chef Fantasy Game.

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what do when you can’t sleep

A few weekends ago, I woke up at 4:30 in the morning and couldn’t go back to sleep.

Usually I read, but I had read all my books and magazines…Not much on TV…

I decided to make stock since I had a few chicken thighs leftover from a meal. I also had celery and carrots which I almost never have.

I threw them in a pot with an onion cut in half-I always have onions.

By 10:00, I had home-made stock!

chicken stock

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