One-Skillet Dinner: Chicken With Napa Cabbage and Bacon

This is basically a riff off the Lettuce Chicken recipe with a couple of variations—most salient, the use of—wait for it—Napa cabbage in lieu of lettuce. It is a quick (~30 minutes) one-dish weeknight supper, and while I generally consider “low-carb” to be a pejorative, rather than a positive term, it is that too, if you’re into that sort of thing.

I laid about 7 strips of bacon to cook on medium-low in a large skillet. As it did, I chopped about 1 ½ pounds of boneless, skinless chicken breasts (slicing through the center to halve the thickness, then once length-wise, then 3-4 times width-wise) into pieces approximately the dimensions of my thumbs (mind you, I am a 5'3" woman, so don’t necessarily base this on your own thumbs—I’d say to think of the orange man with his tiny hands on the button, but you might lose your appetite) and dredged them in flour seasoned with kosher salt, garlic powder, and dried herbs.

I set the bacon on a piece of cardboard (or use a brown paper bag or paper towels) to drain the grease, then poured the bacon grease from the pan, leaving some residue. I turned the heat to low to melt 2 TBSP butter, returned it to medium, and nestled the chicken into the pan piece by piece, shaking off the excess flour. I cooked until golden brown on bottom (meanwhile chopping 1/2 a Napa cabbage head, cored, into roughly chewing-gum-stick-sized strips), then flipped and cooked the other side to match, and then removed the chicken to a plate.

I added another 1 TBSP butter to the pan, tossed in the cabbage, sprinkled with kosher salt, and tossed with tongs; after a few minutes I splashed in a bottlecap full of cider vinegar, tossed again, and covered the pan. I chopped the bacon loosely. After the cabbage had cooked a couple minutes (leafy ends of cabbage should be wilty but not mushy; base ends should have a bit of give but still be crisp), add back the chicken and bacon plus a sprinkling of fresh thyme leaves, toss to mix, re-cover, lower heat to medium-low, and cook a couple more minutes.

Serve by itself or with rice (*cough*perhaps of the a-Roni variety*cough*).

Spinach-Cheese Crepes With Bacon

Gentle reader, remember how I told you that I made spinach-cheese sauce … and that I would tell you what I did with it … and that it would involve bacon? Well, let this post go on the record as proof that I do not lie to you.

This crepe main dish is the latest episode in my ongoing quest to negate any and all health benefits involved in eating green vegetables. Yes, I actually took spinach and mushrooms and made them as cholesterolicious as a croque monsieur. Look, I had some bits of Swiss and some other sharp cheese that was getting crusty around the edges, so what else COULD I do? As the French, who invented crepes and cheesy sauces (I think) would say, je ne regrette rien. (That’s French for “sorry, not sorry.”)

I premade the sauce by cooking some bacon on medium until tender, not crispy, in a saucepot, and draining off the grease but leaving the wee brown bits. I then added half a stick of butter and once melted and bubbly, stirred in a chopped half shallot and 4 mushrooms sliced thin, with those slices then halved.

Cherry-Persimmon Pie (+ Bonus Holiday Party Food Porn)

Now. Normally I pride myself on making absolutely everything from scratch when I entertain. But there are exceptions.

Look, gentle readers, the holiday party I had on Sunday turned out to be quite the freaking production, let me tell you. I made like 6 trips to the Key Foods, formed and froze dozens of meatballs and phyllo triangles, shoehorned some compound butter into a star-shaped cookie cutter … and on and on and on. No rest for the wicked—you might say I was trying to stave off the prospect of getting coal in my stocking.

The menu, which yielded shockingly few leftovers, was as follows:

An 8-pound ham glazed with molasses and studded with pineapples, with sriracha mayo and horseradish sour cream accoutrements.

Two roast chickens, stuffed with orange wedges and leeks for flavor and (dubious) presentation.

An embarrassment of quiches (mushroom-leek, tomato-arugula, and bacon-arugula, all with Swiss cheese).

A tricolor penne salad with goat cheese, roasted tomatoes, and olives.

It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas

'Nuff said.

Bread!

I have always believed bread to be a fundamental component of human existence, kind of like gravity…and beer. Some years ago, in the course of my foodie-geek reading, I discovered that anthropology bears out this concept: Early human culture developed along with yeast cultures, as our formerly nomad-hunter-gatherer ancestors transitioned toward settling in one spot long enough for those spores to ferment, in order to produce bread…and beer.*

Baking bread is also a wonderfully mellow, good-for-the-soul experience. Although it does take time to let the dough rise, not much of that time is spent working. And what work you do feels therapeutic, or possibly even spiritual: The hippie in me believes that all that kneading transmits positive prana into the dough through your hands, so that the eater receives the good energy you put into it.

There are a lot of complicated bread recipes out there, but there are plenty of simple ones out there as well, and I suggest starting with those and working your way up to more ambitious projects.

Technique: Substituting Whole-Wheat Flour in Baked Goods (Without Making Them Suck)

Tweaking recipes to make food healthier is a noble endeavor, but all too often it is achieved at the expense of taste and texture. Case in point: substituting whole-wheat flour for all-purpose in baked goods. Whole-wheat flour has more nutrients such as fiber, because in white flour, those nutrients have been refined out. But those same qualities are what can make baking with whole-wheat flour result in leaden, tasteless, dense, gluey-yet-crumbly lumps that would function better as doorstops than as treats.

However, hot on the heels of my life-changing sandwich-packing innovation (okay, fine, let's say lukewarm on the heels—look, I've been busy), I have another technical kitchen breakthrough to share: how to use whole-wheat flour in baked goods without making them too dense or gluten-y.

You can try this technique for less-sweet baked goods like bread and flatbread; semisweet ones like muffins, biscuits or banana bread; and even—more cautiously—on sweet baked goods like cookies, doughnuts, and cakes, which are harder to incorporate whole-wheat flour into, because their texture is intended to be lighter and crumbier.