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*).

Jalapeno Mashed Potatoes

Obvi, gentle reader, there ain’t nothing wrong with straight-up meat and potatoes. But sometimes you just wanna switch things up a bit. Especially when you’re using a cheapo cut of beef, as I did the other night. I was grilling some none-too-tender, none-too-flavorful “steaks” (this is what I get for cheating on my Key Foods with a slightly closer, vastly inferior market) that had been halfheartedly rubbed in prepared churrasco seasoning, and figured that adding a spicy kick of jalapeno to the mashed potatoes would up the meal’s flavor profile—or simply sear our taste buds so that each gruelingly chewed bite of the meat would seem like a relief and not a letdown. Win-win, amirite?

I used 2 large new (purple) potatoes, peeling just enough to carve out any pockmarks and brown spots but leaving most of the skin on. For expediency and consistency’s sake, I roughly chopped them into cube-ish (not to be confused with Cubist) pieces and added them to a pot of salted water that I brought to a boil, then lowered to a vigorous simmer until the potatoes were fork-tender, maybe 15 minutes. (For mashed potatoes, I would always err on the side of cooking longer; it’s pretty hard to overcook them, but devastating if you undercook them.)

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.

It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas

'Nuff said.