Tuesday, November 17, 2009

Chicken with Cranberry sauce


So, partially due to some positive feedback from the chili, for potluck #3 in addition to the Trader Joes stuffing from a box, i decided to give a shot at this peppered chicken with cranberry sauce. People once again at least pretended to like it, and ate most of it. As with my crochet attempts, i don't go for fancy, just enough to look like i tried.



Recipe also came off the Internet.

Chicken:
4 trimmed boneless, skinless chicken breasts
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
Flour for dredging
2 tablespoons unsalted butter
1 tablespoon vegetable or olive oil

For the cranberry sauce:
1 cup port wine
4 tablespoons dried cranberries (Craisins!)
2 tablespoon seedless raspberry jam
1 tablespoon butter

Directions:

Season the chicken breasts on both sides with ample salt and pepper. Put a handful of flour in a pie pan or other sided plate and position it near the stove. Combine the sauce ingredients of your choice in a 1-cup Pyrex measuring cup or small bowl.

Heat 2 tablespoons of the butter and the oil in a large skillet over medium heat. Dredge one of the chicken breasts in the flour, coating both sides well but shaking off any excess. Increase the heat of the pan to medium high.

Before adding the chicken, test the heat of the pan by flicking in a little of the dredging flour. If the flour sizzles enthusiastically and immediately turns golden, the pan is ready. Add the first floured chicken breast. Then quickly flour the remaining breasts and add them to the pan. Cook for about four minutes without moving the breasts. Then, starting with the first one in the pan, turn them over and cook for another three or four minutes on the other side.

Transfer the chicken to a plate or plates and keep it warm. Add the pan sauce ingredients to the hot pan and boil, stirring and scraping up the browned bits in the bottom of the pan, over high heat until the liquid is reduced by half. Add the remaining tablespoon of butter and whisk until smooth and glossy. (Tilt the pan to bring the small amount of liquid to one side while you whisk in the butter.) Spoon the sauce over the chicken and serve immediately.


6 comments:

HEB said...

Hmmm... this actually looks kinda foolproof. I may try it when I feel that I need to make meat for people. Although: I don't often--or ever-- have port around. Suggestions for substitutions?

CH said...

Nice work again, you should continue to experiment with and share recipes!

Sorry, no suggestion substitions from me. I am not familiar enough with wine varieties and not adventurous enough to really deviate from recipes to be of any use on that front.

kzwick said...

Looks good RJ! HEB - I think you could probably use cooking wine. If you don't have that either, it's not very expensive.

HEB said...

I usually do have wine around that can be used for cooking. (I prefer not to buy cooking wine. It's my Livermore snobbery.)

But isn't port much sweeter than regular wine? Since I tend not to like sweet wines, I think I heard that once and have consequently never tried port, so maybe I'm completely wrong. Or maybe, if it is so sweet, you could doctor regular wine to make it more port-ish with some kind of sweetener?

kzwick said...

Port wine is indeed pretty sweet, but I'm sure you could just add a sweetener of some sort (honey, molasses, brown sugar?). I bet you would like this not as sweet though, so maybe regular wine would be enough.

kzwick said...
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