Sunday, April 17, 2011

Easiest Roast Chicken, Spinach-Egg "Bread", Apple-Cinnamon-Walnut "Cookies"

Warning:  all measurements are educated guesses.

Easiest Roast Chicken:
Heat oven to 350, put the whole chicken in the roasting pan with some onions, sprinkle olive oil, garlic, and salt on it.  Cover, cook for 3 hours.  Fall-off-the-skin moist chicken.  No chicken stock out of this one - my freezer is full up.
Pre-bake.  And upside down.  Whatever.
I was trying to plan this such that I could have all three things in the oven at once, and pull them all out at the same time, but I didn't quite get the other two things ready in time.

Spinach-Egg-Basil "Bread*"
based off of this on Mark's Daily Apple.  Planning on using it with leftover chicken in tomorrow's lunch.  Maybe in a sandwich-type way....

16 oz. package of frozen spinach, thawed, and drained as well as you can by squeezing out the liquid with paper towels or a cheesecloth.
Handful of fresh basil leaves.
Whir the green stuff together in a food processor.
Somewhere a little bit south of 1/4 cup of almond meal.
In the pan.
4 whole eggs, 3 egg whites, beaten, with a pinch of salt.
(I was hoping the additional egg whites and almond meal would make the thing a little bit stiffer and a little bit drier after baking.)
Slices
Beat everything together, spread it out in a pyrex 9" round baking dish.  Bake at 350 for 30 minutes.



As one might guess, this tastes egg-y and spinach-y.  (Which I like).  It ended up being still moist (which it's supposed to be), fairly stiff (which was good), but also fairly thick (~ 1/2").  Next time I make it, I plan on getting even more liquid out of the spinach, and divvying this out between two pans to make the slices thinner, and see how that goes.  Potentially only bake it for 20 minutes.  Maybe drop an egg.  We'll see.

"Cookies"
Based on Paleo Foodie
1 3/4 small gala apples, chopped
~ 1 cup almond meal
pinch of baking soda
lots and lots of saigon cinnamon.  Probably like 1+ Tablespoons (Or regular, of course).
Handful of chopped walnuts
2 eggs.  (I tried with just one egg, but it didn't seem moist enough, so I went with two.)
Mix everything together.
Plop onto a parchment-covered baking sheet.  Since I was trying to get all of this onto a small baking sheet, to only take up 1/2 a rack in the oven, I made 6 giant ones.  It really should have been like 10-12 smaller ones.  So much for space efficiency.
Yes, these are giant.  And more delicious than the picture indicates.
I like these a lot, but I like apples, cinnamon, and walnuts.  Depending on how sweet your tooth is, they are either just right, or not sweet enough.  (Or perhaps too sweet, but I don't know many people in that category.)  They could use some honey, if you like.  Or perhaps butter.  Which isn't sweet, exactly, but it is delicious.

Can't wait to eat one with some tea!
scooter

* I recently became annoyed at a local breakfast place that was advertising "scrambles."  The place is vegan and there are no actual eggs in the house.  The menu also included "chicken tenders" and other "meats."  I fumed (mildly) a little bit, wondering why that can't just call things what they are - tofu, some other form of tofu, and more other form of tofu.  (I don't eat tofu.)  At least use "chicken-like."  And here I am calling something "bread."  Ah, well, I didn't invent it.

1 comment:

  1. Lovely!! Will try each one out starting soon.

    Thanks for sharing. :)

    ReplyDelete