Current music:	Tarja--Damned and Divine
Entry tags:	cooking

Lotsa food!

Me: Mmk, what to start cooking first.
Why just one first? --starts everything!--
zen_of_nihilism: * _ *
this is part of why I love you

It's been a while since I went into kamikaze cooking mode. But today I had some time off, the remains of a ham + its bone, and a special request from the better half for "something different."

The result is ham bone soup & chicken parm with potatoes. Sorry to you lj-feed people, because this is long and fairly pic-heavy. :P


I have a deep-rooted hate for whatever thick and grainy ham-bone-and-bean soup it was my parents tried to feed me when I was a child, so my only intention when I started this soup was that it be low on beans.

The recipe as it stands:
Ham bone with ham still on it
(a heaping cupful of extra ham, diced)
about two cups chopped celery
about 3/4 cup diced onion (the original piece was a little more than half the size of my fist)
a bag of matchstick-cut carrots
a 16oz bag of frozen corn
a 16 oz bag of green beans
two 12oz cans of baby butterbeans
a 10.75oz can of tomato soup
some bullion cubes and/or more ham, if the soup's too watery for your tastes.

First get a really really big soup pot, plunk the ham bone in, and pour in enough water to cover the bone. The one recipe I looked at online suggested adding cloves and sugar, but as I have no cloves I poured in about three tablespoons worth of the spice & glaze liquid from the bottom of the ham's roasting pan. Boil the ham bone for a little while (I waited until I could just start to pull the remaining ham away from the bone with my spoon), then dump in all the veggies. (I added the extra ham here too, because the mix didn't look nearly hammy enough & I had the impression that my ham bone was a scrawny one.)

Results are colorful, not as heavy as the other soups I've made, and in no way reminiscent of the navy bean monstrosity of my youth. Pre-boil:



Post-boil:



From here: turn the heat to medium, cover the pot, and if you're me you started sealing the latest dreadfall commission. (Did you know Target brand glue is less than half the price of Elmer's? Sheesh!) But for all intents and purposes, this needs left to cook for a while. The last of the ham's gonna be stubborn about coming off the bone, and while butterbeans are some of the least noxious beans I know, they need time to pick up the flavors of whatever they're cooked in. Also be sure that what comes off the bone and remains in your soup isn't gristle! D: That'll put a damper on any sharing spirit, let me tell you.


That all said, the chicken sorta-parm & potatoes is getting the simplest explanation possible. (They almost didn't make it up, but I've only posted about soups here for the past however many times so I figured I could stand some variety.)

The ingredients:
4-6 boneless skinless chicken breasts
spaghetti sauce
cheese (mozzarella or Italian mix)
a few eggs
bread crumbs
oil for frying (I recommend peanut oil--the results are somehow tastier. :D)

about 6 good-sized potatoes
3-4 tbsp butter (melted)
1/2-2/3 cup milk
2 tbsp flour
salt

You'll wanna cook the potatoes first. Peel 'em, rinse 'em, slice 'em thin, boil 'em in salted water until tender, and pile 'em in a good-sized baking pan. Mix the milk, butter, and flour and pour them over the potatoes. Cover it all with foil and put it in the oven @ 350F until the chicken's ready.

The chicken's pretty basic, too: Pour a decent amount of oil into a deep pot & bring to about medium heat. Take the chicken & bread it (dunk it in scrambled egg mixture, then roll it in the bread crumbs), then add it to the oil. Cover for safety, wait, & flip it over if necessary to get all sides cooked.

Once it's done (if you stab it with a fork, the juices will be clear), pull your potatoes out of the oven and put the chicken on top. Pour the spaghetti sauce over the chicken, pour the cheese over everything, and put it all back in oven for a few minutes until it's reached a state of melty goodness.

Results here made Kabuki's day when I tipped my plate too much and dropped the chicken on the floor. But what I got was really really good. :P





World is good. :D