What do you think about my latest decorating idea?
Squeezing a queen size bed between two sofas in the living area downstairs just seemed so practical and like such a fancy design. I mean, you're only steps away from the kitchen, you can just lay in bed and watch TV till you fall asleep, and it is fully visible from our foyer ... such a design bonus score! You'll be seeing this great design idea popping up in all the best shelter and design mags so just remember you saw it here first 'cause I'm such a trendsetter.
{Picked up on the sarcasm, didn't you?}
So what is going on?
We have a 2-zone heating / cooling system in our house and a few days ago the upstairs equipment died. So of course we get to replace that unit ...
yay, so happy to be spending all that unanticipated $$$ right now, and we get to wait for up to a week before the equipment is shipped to our installer. Meanwhile, without A/C upstairs the thermostat registers 80+ degrees, and that is too hot for comfort. Solution: move mattress downstairs until we get the new unit installed :)
A failed heating system is just part of the craziness going on here this week. We get to the end of the day and there's no time or energy to cook, but we still have to eat. This seemed like a perfect opportunity for me to try two very similar recipes I keep running into on blogs and Pinterest:
Mayo Parmesan Chicken and
Greek Yogurt Parmesan Chicken. Let the
battle review begin!
We've cooked one recipe twice this week (to ensure it wasn't a fluke that it was so good the first time) and the other recipe once.
Cluck, that's a lot of chicken.
Neither recipe requires any skill to prepare; in fact,
both recipes could be great opportunities to introduce basic cooking skills to children with adult supervision.
Both recipes call for 4 ingredients + basic spices. In our household, everything used in the recipes are standard pantry items and I always have some frozen chicken breasts available if I don't want to run to the market.
Both recipes took less than 10 minutes to prep and cooked for 25 minutes.
Dinner. On. The. Table. In. 25 Minutes. Start to finish. Quicker (cheaper, and healthier) than a fast food drive thru. Now that has to be a culinary score!
Last night we had the Greek Yogurt version and since we are major greek yogurt lovers, we really wanted this recipe to be great.
It wasn't bad. We agreed that we might cook it again but lighten up on the spice measurements. But the more I've thought about it, this recipe never came together as a "dish"; the sauce looked like it was added after the chicken was cooked and the flavor would have been the same if the sauce was just served on the side for dipping.
When I prepare a recipe with a sauce I expect the protein portion and the sauce to merge and yield a flavor and texture that can only be achieved if they were prepared together. That's exactly what happened with the
Mayo Chicken. By the way, this is the recipe we luv.
Baking the mayonnaise changed its texture to a puffed-up, meringue-like texture {best analogy I could come up with} which actually doesn't surprise me due to the egg content of mayonnaise. The parmesan also fully melted into the baked mayo and was a really great flavor addition to the dish; you wasn't a melted gooey cheesey texture since it incorporated into the mayo. And the Italian Seasonings smelled wonderful while baking and was perfect with the parmesan flavor. The chicken, although baked at a high temp, remained very moist because it was fully covered by the mayo, almost steaming the chicken, but certainly holding the cooked juices - and therefore flavor, in the chicken rather than allowing them to run out into the pan.
We give the Hellman's Mayonnaise Parmesan Chicken a "two forks up" {a definite you should try it, you will like it} rating.
Here are the ever-so-small changes I made to the recipe:
- it calls for Italian Seasoned Bread Crumbs. I used Ian's Whole Wheat Panko Breadcrumbs + a liberal sprinkle of dried Italian Seasoning Herbs on the mayo mix before I added the
breadcrumb Panko topping.
- it calls for 1/4 cup shredded Parmesan cheese; its clear they mean shred it yourself, um ... I buy Shredded Parmesan in small bags in the dairy section for just this kind of time crunched day ... also, my block of parmesan cheese is probably a higher grade cheese than is necessary for this recipe. I say you can certainly save time and $ and use the real pre-shredded parmesan cheese (not the dried parmesan that comes in a cardboard bottle and is off-the-shelf)
- recipe calls for 5 - 6 ounce skinless, boneless chicken breasts. My market sells 8+ ounce chicken breasts so I just cut a couple ounces off of each breast and mounded those pieces together to create another serving.
- the recipe calls for a baking temperature of 425 and I assume they meant a conventional oven; I like to use the convection setting when I cook protein so I dropped the temperature to 400 since convection "cooks warmer" than conventional bake settings. I kept the cooking time to 25 minutes as called for but did check at 20 minutes to confirm the additional 5 minutes was needed (it was).
Now I know I'm suppose to have glam photos of the food, but did I mention it was the end of a tough day on the heels of a couple of other tough days? I did snap a pic of the dish before and after baking ... s
o not a glam shot, but you'll see my other tip in this pic for quick clean-up ... line your baking dish with parchment paper and there's no scrubbing baked-on residue when you do dishes :)
Going into the oven ...
25 minutes later, a nice lightly golden crust on the chicken ...
So if you have chicken breasts, some type of mayo (I did not use Hellmann's), parmesan cheese, breadcrumbs, and if you are like me, Italian Seasoning Herbs, you could make this dish tonight. Follow this link to find out how:
Here's the link to the Hellmanns.com website and recipe. You'll also see complete nutritional information in case you are concerned about the mayo contribution to the recipe.
Hope you like it and I'd love to know if you give it a try. And hey, if you have any quick, tasty, and somewhat healthy recipes ... please help a girl out and share them with us ... we still have some crazy days ahead of us! Thanks for stopping by,
