Recipes: Chicken Parmigiana

(This article originally appeared in my Helium.com page until the site closed down)

For this recipe, you will have to separately prepare chicken cutlets and marinara sauce at an earlier time. You can check videos on how to prepare the best tasting chicken cutlets (which are themselves ready-to-eat foodstuffs) and marinara sauce online. Marinara sauce is a regular ingredient households prepare, especially if the one who’s making most of the meals is descended from Italy or one of those cooks who have learned the fact from someone who has been doing Italian-based dishes. I learned this from my landlord who used to own and run his Italian-American restaurant for many years. We would prepare marinara sauce and freeze it for future meals. 

And with both chicken cutlets and marinara sauce prepared sometime ago, you can proceed to make your own chicken parmigiana now. Note that this meal can be expensive if you have it from restaurants; the preparation time accounts most probably for the reason why it’s pricey than other entrees. To prepare it from scratch, you need to spare time to prepare chicken cutlets as well as the sauce, but you can always use short-cuts that you may want to discover and follow. You will learn these from other sources and as long as you allow your creativity to play as well as take the time to prepare meals in your own kitchen.

Please prepare the following:

shredded mozzarella cheese (approximately 2 cups), 8 oz (227 grams)

1 can tomato sauce, 8 oz (227 grams)

1 can or bottle of marinara sauce, approximately 26 oz (1 lb 10 oz or 737 grams), or your own previously prepared marinara sauce

8 pieces of medium size chicken cutlets, approximately equivalent to 1.5 lbs of previously prepared chicken cutlets (or buy equivalent quantity of prepared foods from the supermarket) 

1 tablespoon of grated Italian cheese or muenster cheese

Steps:

1) Heat oven at 430 degrees Fahrenheit.

2) Place aluminum foil to cover all the top side of your rectangular shaped baking dish, which you will use to contain all the chicken cutlets you’ve on hand. Then place all chicken cutlets into this cookware.

3) When oven is already heated enough, place chicken cutlets in the oven and heat them up for at least 30 minutes.

4) Bring out cookware from oven and place the very hot chicken cutlets on a plate using kitchen tongs in the meantime.

5) Pour contents of tomato sauce at the bottom of the oven cookware and spread them all over the cookware using a spoon.

6) Using the tongs, place all the chicken cutlets in the cookware. 

7) Pour and spread all over the chicken cutlets your marinara sauce. 

8) Sprinkle the Italian cheese (or muenster cheese) on top of sauce and chicken cutlets.

9) Heat oven again at 430 degrees Fahrenheit, which should be quicker now because the oven has just been used.

10) Spread all the grated mozzarella cheese on top of the chicken cutlets and the sauce. Make sure all top portions are covered by the grated mozzarella cheese.

11) Put the cookware in the oven, and bake for at least 8 minutes. You have to watch from the glass screen of the oven and make sure the cheese won’t burn. The melting cheese should look like the cheese you see from pizza that has just been brought out from the oven in a pizza shop.

Serve this meal while hot with your favorite side dishes. This is good for 4 persons.

Recipes: fried tilapia

English: Pla thot (Thai script: ปลาทอด): a simple deep-fried fish, often served with a spicy dipping sauce. The fish in this image is pla nin, a Nile Tilapia. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Recipes: fried tilapia – http://ow.ly/bmCou Frying is a very basic approach to cooking food in the Philippines, as well as in many nearby countries. And one favorite food that’s almost always fried is the tilapia fish. The fish is almost always available in the wet market, practically anywhere in the Philippines. And unlike in westernized countries, frying tilapia entails cooking the whole fish after it has been cleaned, i.e., entrails removed, fins and tail cut away, scales scraped away. The fish head is almost always kept intact; don’t be shocked by the idea that the fish going to be served you will still have its head attached to it. It’s practically the whole fish, fried, except that it’s salted a bit. And you’ll have to make your own sauce where you’d like to dip pinchings of the meat, plus the head. You’d certainly love the fish fried crisp, so make sure you request for that (in case you find yourself in a food place that serves fried tilapia)

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• pan fried tilapia (leonthorn.typepad.com)

Recipes: Stuffed peppers

Recipes: Stuffed peppers (This article originally appeared in my Helium.com page until the site closed down)

My roommate introduced me to stuffed peppers, which is among his personal favorites. A whole piece of medium-sized, baked stuffed pepper can be a complete meal by itself.

We have stuffed peppers at least once every two weeks. My roommate says this dish happens to be one of the most frequently ordered by his customers when he used to run and own an Italian-American restaurant. This recipe will also allow you to prepare a variation of a meat loaf from the extra meat mixture (batter) you’re making.

Ingredients you need:

5 lbs of chopped meat, pork, thawed
6 pieces of large-size green (or depending on your preference) Bell peppers, with their tops removed, cored, washed, with all the seeds  removed
2 cups of rice
1 can of tomato sauce (14.5 oz)
3 medium sized onions, diced
3 medium sized eggs
1 tablespoonful of Garlic powder
2 tablespoonful of Parsley flakes
1 tablespoonful of Oregano flakes
3 tablespoonful of grated Parmesan cheese

Prepare the steamed rice. If you’re not sure how to make this, then follow these instructions. Wash the rice first. Then start to add water into the pot. Use one of your hands as an improvised measure; the water you’re pouring now has to reach up to the first horizontal line of your longest finger from the tip of the nail that you will dip into the pot with rice, with you looking at the palm of your hand. Measurement approximately starts from top of the now-washed rice up to the surface of the water. Then cook it under medium fire; reduce to slow fire when it boils until the rice is cooked.

When rice has been cooked, stir it to help it cool down (so that you can then mix it with the other ingredients without fear of getting scalded from the just-cooked rice).

In a large bowl, add the chopped meat, eggs, grated cheese, onions, oregano, garlic, parsley, and rice. It’s best to mix everything with your hands, so you’ll be able to see if you need to add more ingredients. Its consistency when mixed well should not be soggy; the batter has to be easily molded by your hands.

Fill in each one of the peppers, making sure the space inside is crammed, and packed with the meat mixture; you may want to fill it up way over the top.

Set the oven to 350 degrees (Fahrenheit).

On a baking dish, line up all the stuffed peppers.

Whatever is left in the mixture, mold it into a loaf that looks like your typical home-made bread loaf. If there’s still space in your baking dish, place it next to the lined-up peppers (if not, then use another dish).

Pour the tomato sauce on top of each of the peppers, plus the meat loaf, such that they’re all covered by the sauce. Add some water in the open spaces of the baking dish, as this will help you in cooking the peppers.

Cover the whole dish with foil. Bake for one and half hour (at the most). Remove the foil after one hour of baking.  This will help the pepper not turn dry and crunchy at the end of cooking.  

Good for 6 persons. Bon appétit!