Poor Man's Chicken Parmesan

Chicken parmesan should be used to solve hostage crises and talk people off of roof ledges, don't you think? Life just seems a little better when you've got cheesy, tomatoey, fried chicken at your disposal. What's that you say? Chicken parm makes your ass fat? It's hard to make? Shut yo mouth! I am about to present to you Poor Man's Chicken Parm. It's quick, it's easy …. And yeah, maybe it's a little low-class, but I never claimed to be gourmet, here. Can ya dig it?

Chicken economy in the Picky Library Man household: We buy chicken breasts in bulk, and then Picky Library Man goes all Benihana on their asses and puts each tit in a freezer bag. It's perfect for those nights when you forget to thaw something ahead of time – just whip a bag out of the freezer, run the whole bag under some hot water until you can separate the chunks, and voila! It's ready to cook. One breast is the perfect amount for 2 people unless one of you is a teenage boy or a lumberjack.

On with the show

1 cut-up chicken breast, some cheese (mozzarella if you want to be more authentic … PLM loves it with cheddar), bread crumbs, parmesan cheese, garlic powder, parsley, salt, pepper, egg (not pictured), can of drained tomatoes, and extra virgin olive oil.

Moving on. First, put some olive oil in a skillet. I use a big stainless skillet and about 1 tablespoon of yummy olivey goodness – enough to easily cover the bottom of the pan. Heat this on LOW heat for now.

Now crack an egg in a bowl, and show it who's boss.

Next, toss your dead animal in there and mix em around. You could do the pieces one at a time, but why?

Grab a quart or gallon bag (preferably with a fancy zip top) and give Dr. Atkins the finger by adding some bread crumbs.

I measured just for you guys, and it was 2/3 cup.

Next, add some parmesan cheese. I checked, and this is about ¼ cup. But I'm all for decadence, so add as much as you want. The cheese police won't come after you, promise.

Crush the balls.

Yes, I do consider myself a feminist - why do you ask?

Now add some garlic powder. I didn't measure this, but I think it's about a tablespoon. If you like your food really garlicy, add more. If you don't like garlic ... well, I'm sorry, but we can't be friends anymore.

I've used lots of different spices here, but PLM likes it best with just a little parsley. Other good variations include basil, rosemary, thyme, oregano, crushed red pepper, dill. Whatever gets you goin'.

Look, I'm Zippi Longstocking!

Shake, shake, shake, Senora.

Now, stab a chunk of mammary, shimmy off the excess egg,

and toss it into the bag. I usually do 4 or 5 chunks at a time, because I'm lazy.

Shake it up, baby.

Fish out the hunks o' boob, shake off the excess breading, and chuck em in your pan.

After you've coated all of the chicken, crank up the heat up to medium-high heat.

Awesome, you've got 3 minutes to do what you want. I'm going to spend my time grating some cheese, since PLM swears it tastes better freshly-grated and I like to humor him from time to time. Don't forget to nominate me for Wife of the Year.

After about 3 minutes, your chicken will look a little white on the sides.

When you flip em, they should be brown and crusty and delicious.

Ya daaaaaaaamn right.

Now, the other side won't take as long to cook, so keep a close eye on it. If you have not added enough oil OR you've cooked it a little too hot, your pan might be looking kind of dry; if so, add a tablespoon more EVOO into the skillet and shake it around, or it'll char. Add some salt and peppa.

After about 2 minutes, turn the burner as low as you possibly can, and add a can of tomatoes.

Use a spatula to mix it up. Don't forget to drain the tomatoes first or your chicken will get soggy and you'll ruin dinner and everybody will be really mad at you.

Check the bottoms of your chicken – once they're done, cheese it on up.

I used 2/3 cup of shredded sharp cheddar, but hell, I'm all for laziness and personal taste. Use whatever cheese you have handy and however much looks good to you.

Now cover the skillet – shockingly, I had the correct lid. Usually I end up covering my stuff with the wrong sized lid or a plate or a cookie sheet or something. Doesn't really matter for the sake of this recipe.

Usually this is when I tell PLM to pour some iced tea and get out some plates and silverware. It only needs a minute, but it can sit for at least 5 without getting rubbery and gross.

Now, let's talk about side dishes. The obvious one is pasta and your red sauce of choice, and we do that pretty frequently. But let's be real – it's FRIED CHEESY CHICKEN. It can be served with whatever the hell you want to serve with it. Mashed potatoes and corn, fried potatoes and broccoli, baked beans and a salad. Rules? What rules. Today, I had cucumbers and watermelon to use up, so we did that.

Right on. And YES, I consider this a diet food. Based on my measurements today, each generous serving contained about 450 calories - a bargain-basement price for a main dish, and that's without using any kind of diet-food substitutions. You could make it lower-cal, but don't. The tomatoes count as a serving of vegetables, and it's filling and yummy and nom-nom-tastic just the way it is.

Enjoy!

Patriotic Fruit Pizza

Patriotic Fruit Pizza

This weekend was full of uncharacteristically bad food. I'm hoping the fruit in this tricked my body into digesting this as a quasi-healthy dessert. Oh, and the best thing about this stuff is that it even though it looks really impressive, a first grader could make it; K-Dubs made this all the time when I was a kid, and she's really not much of a baker. And there's nothing weird in it, so it's a crowd-pleaser. The downside is that there are a lot of steps, so I recommend breaking it up into two parts like I did.

Anyway, let's make with the good stuff, shall we? First, the crust.

That's butter, granulated sugar, confectioners' sugar, eggs, orange peel, vanilla, baking powder, and salt.

First things first. Chuck three sticks of butter into a mixing bowl. I used white again, b/c it's the only huge bowl I have.

Add in about ½ Tbsp orange zest. This will NOT make your crust orange-flavored, I promise. Just gives it a little bit of flavor that works well with the fruit. You can buy orange peel in the spice aisle (I had it on hand b/c my orange cookies are often requested … more on that closer to Christmas), but you can also grate up an orange or lemon peel if you have fresh fruit handy. I'd personally rather rip off my own thumbs than peel and zest an orange, but if it works for you, go for it.

Next, add about a teaspoon of real vanilla, b/c it makes everything better.

Now add a cup each of granulated sugar and confectioners' sugar. If you just have granulated, you can do 2 cups of that – no biggie.

Time to make like Sir-Mix-A-Lot. (Jokes like this are entirely Rip-Diddy's fault.)

Give it a minute of mixing .

Crack 2 eggs in there and mix it some more. Why can't you do all the mixing at once, you ask? Because I said so.

Now toss 4 cups of flour and a tsp each of baking powder and salt in a separate bowl. You can sift it together if you want, but I think a whisk works just fine. Besides, I'm cheap and don't own a sifter.

It's time to turn this glorious mess into sugar cookie dough. Add the flour mix into the wet stuff a little bit at a time – I usually do ¼ of the flour at a time.

You can use your mixer at first, but you'll probably have to resort to a spoon at some point. Preferably a wooden spoon so you can smack any fingers that try to steal a pinch of your dough.

Baby got back.

After this you're supposed to refrigerate the dough for an hour. But I say rules were made to be broken. If you want you can refrigerate it overnight, or maybe, like me, you're a procrastinator. In which case …

… you can put it in the freezer for about 10 minutes, if there's room.

About 10 minutes before it's done cooling, preheat your oven to 350 and grease your pan. This makes a LOT of dough, so I recommend either 2 round pizza pans or your biggest cookie sheet. I usually use that butter/flour Baker's Joy spray stuff, but I'm out, so butter will work just fine.

Make sure it's the skankiest cookie sheet you own. Adds to the charm.

Now press the dough into the pan. You don't want to go quite to the edges because it expands when it bakes. It's fine if it's bumpy and imperfect – you won't be able to tell when it's done.

Toss it in the oven for about 9 minutes. When it comes out, it should NOT look like this:

I baked mine for entirely too long, like 13 minutes. It worked out fine – I had a crispy crust instead of a soft, chewy one, and it still tasted fine. But it should be just brown around the edges, NOT brown on top. If you're not convinced that it's done, stick a spatula under a corner and see if the bottoms are brown; if they are, it's done, no matter how raw it looks on top.

Now let this sucker cook off for awhile. I wrapped mine up in cling wrap and called it a night.

Frosting and Fruit! I'm doing this part in K-Dubs's kitchen, hence the superior utensils and surroundings.

Here's what you need:

Whatever fruit you want (mine is a flag cake, so I'm using blueberries and stemmed/quartered strawberries), 2 blocks of cream cheese, a stick of butter, vanilla extract, and powdered sugar.

First things first – the fruit. If you're making flag cake, here's how to slice the strawberries. First take out the stem by ripping off the greenery, and then inserting a paring knife vertically as close to the stem as possible. Then cut around the stem, making a cone.

Then just yank out the stem – check it out, no wasted berry.

Now cut it in quarters like so.

Then – and this is critically important – let all of your fruit drain as thoroughly as possible. Otherwise you'll get fruit juice in your cream cheese frosting and it won't look as cool.

Anyway, on to the frosting. First you're going to wrestle the cream cheese and butter into a mixing bowl. Don't even CONSIDER using reduced fat cream cheese or the taste police will lock you up forever. Add in 1 tsp vanilla.

Now whip it. Whip it good.

Add a cup of powdered sugar and mix.

Scrape the sides with a spatula and add another cup. Mix it some more.

Now, force yourself to taste some of this.

I know it looks terrible, but sacrifice. It's for the children.

It tasted perfect to me, but if you want to add more sugar, go right ahead. Whenever you're done tinkering, plop it down on your sugar cookie cake.

Splat.

Start spreadin' the news. I love offset spatulas for stuff like this. Wish I had one at home.

The great thing about this recipe is that you can cover all imperfections in the crust with the frosting. No one can see that it's bumpy and a little overbaked and that there are gaps at the edges. It's like Spanx for cake.

After it's pretty, you can add your fruit. For flag cake, use a knife or toothpick to separate your stars from your stripes.

Use your strawberries to create stripes. Don't worry about making 7 stripes, historical accuracy isn't important here.

Raspberries would probably make for neater lines, but I can't resist strawberries.

Next, add your blueberries. I started off by making outlining the border of the box we created, and then just filled it in.

I intended to use a pastry bag with a star tip to create some "stars" on top of the blueberries, but I forgot to bring it, and K-Dubs didn't have one. But still, it turned out looking decent!

Happy Fourth!