(originally from rec.food.recipes)

4 boneless skinless chicken breasts
1 chopped onion
2 chopped carrots
4 minced garlic cloves
1 cup chicken stock
1/2 cup orange juice
1/2 cup of crushed tomatoes
1 tablespoon dried rosemary (sounds like a lot, but it works!)

Season the chicken breasts with salt and pepper and brown them for 5 minutes on each side in a frying pan. Put them to one side.

Mix onion, carrot and garlic together and fry, covered, for 25 mins, stirring occasionally.

Add the chicken stock, orange juice, tomatoes and rosemary, and simmer uncovered for 15 minutes.

Return the chicken to the pan and simmer, covered, for 25 minutes, basting occasionally.

Serve with buttered new potatoes and green beans, or rice and salad, or pasta...use your imagination! Serves 2 or 4 depending on the size of the chicken breasts, how hungry you are, and what you have with it!

Notes: It's up to you how finely to chop the onion and carrot. I think it's nicer when it's chopped quite small. I do the whole thing in my big wok; you could do it in a large saucepan but a shallow frying pan wouldn't work so well.

Peanut Crispies

4 cups Rice Crispies
1 18oz jar peanut butter (smooth or crunchy, doesn't matter)
4 ounces caster sugar
3 dessertspoons golden syrup
1 teaspoon vanilla essence
melted chocolate to taste :-)

Place peanut butter, sugar, golden syrup, and vanilla essence in a large microwave-able bowl and microwave on full power for 2 minutes. Stir the mixture together (if necessary, microwave further until sugar has dissolved).

Stir in the Rice Crispies and spread the mixture in a shallow baking tray. Leave in the refrigerator to set.

When set, melt the chocolate and pour it over the top. Let chocolate set. Cut into squares and eat :-)

Notes: as far as I can tell, the nearest US equivalents to caster sugar are granulated sugar or superfine sugar. Granulated should work fine in this recipe. 4 ounces is about 1/2 a cup.

Tony and Suzy, October 13
   
The only thing I changed was using bone in chicken breasts.  I liked it,
Dh was indifferent (he's not a big chicken person)  So this is one for
when he's not home.

Suzy
He loved the Peanut Crispies though



fdrc, October 20

I made this dish last night; I discovered it's actually very similar to
one I've done before using leek and red pepper instead of onions.  I
used olive oil to sautee the chicken and vegetables; I think next time I
may add a bit of butter as well.  Perhaps I had the heat up too high
when cooking the carrot, onion, and garlic; I had it slightly below
medium high and managed to burn them after just 20 minutes.  (The recipe
said "fry" when I believe it meant "sautee"!)  So next time I'll sautee
them for less time over lower heat.

I didn't have rosemary (thought I did!), but I substituted Herbs de
Provence, which has rosemary in it as well as thyme, lavender, oregano,
and savory.  The substitute worked very well, and the dish was
marvelous.  The orange juice made the chicken slightly sweet, and the
chicken itself was very moist and tender.

I served it with rice & vermicelli, and DH & I both enjoyed.
We'll be doing this one again; thanks for a great recipe!

Fiona



Barbara Elizabeth Warner, October 23

Thumbs up for this one, Vicky!  We just tried the Monterey Chicken for
our midday meal today, and everyone (myself, DH, DH's high school friend
who's visiting) loved it!
As usual, I originally intended on not making substitutions, but
couldn't help mysel 

The subs:
(1) I used fresh, diced tomato instead of tinned crushed tomatoes.
Since the recipe said 1/2 cup tinned, I used about 3/4 cup fresh.  It
tasted just right!  I did this purposely -- we did a massive ($200+!
egads) grocery shopping trip today so I could have bought tinned but
opted for fresh, in an attempt to limit the amount of processed foods we
eat.  
(2) I used vegetable broth instead of chicken, or atleast whatever broth
was in the leftover Knorr clear/yellow vegetable soup.  It made more
sense to use the leftovers than open a can of condensed stock, mix it up
and only use half of it.  Again, the tastes were right (although perhaps
the chicken stock gives a little more of a stronger/chicken-y flavour?)

The only glitch was the time it took to prepare and cook the recipe.  I
took Vicky's caveat about finely chopped vegetables to heart, and it
took me 25 minutes to finely dice the onion and carrots!  (I did try to
recruit DH but he only agreed to peel the carrots....he wanted to play
on his computers with his friend.  Seeing as we don't see the friend
from out of town too often, I didn't mind...'til about half way through
when I realized that indeed, six hands would have been much, much faster
than two!  By then, it was too late.  They were busy saving the
universe.)
I did think there looked to be way too much onion (we're not big onion
fans) but I was totally wrong, thank goodness.  I ended up "sauting" the
vegetables in a dry pan for a while, then near the end added olive oil
and turned down the heat a little.  

Time saving tip #1 -- Don't do the chicken first.  Rather, brown the
chicken in one pan at the same time as you do the vegetables in the
other. This way, I didn't need to put the chicken on a plate to put
aside, just shoved the frying pan off the burner, *and* since I used a
non-stick pan, it wasn't any more difficult to clean up than the
plate-on-the-side would have been.  And, I "saved" ten minutes of
cooking time.  As I was using a relatively good pan, I browned for 4
minutes each side....I did end up with large pieces of chicken instead
of whole breasts because I defrosted the breasts in the microwave.  It
worked fine and looked better, IMHO, on the plate.

Time saving tip #2 -- I cut 2 minutes cooking time off the browning of
the chicken, 5 minutes from the saute time, and another 6-8 minutes off
the vegetables when I was simmering with the liquids....I just made sure
everything looked right (was soft/cooked/warmed through, whatever), and
everything turned out great.  I cooked it by eye rather than by time,
and the chicken was moist, the flavours in the liquids well blended,
etc.  The time I *did* actually follow was the 25 minutes of simmering
with the chicken.  Also, on that last part, I put the lid on the chicken
- was this right, Vicky?  The first simmering (15 min, after the
addition of the liquids only), specified "uncovered", so when the second
simmering didn't specify, I assumed it must by default mean "covered".

anyway, it was easy -- the kind of thing which didn't need much
supervision, except for the adding of the ingredients at certain times.
I've put the recipe in our recipe box :-) 

Cheers,
Barbara



PRB, April 3

I finally made one of the recipes from the Cooking Club. I started with
Vicky's since I had everything I needed. Ok - not everything. I
substituted sliced mushrooms for the carrots. I also didn't have any
dried Rosemary as such but remembered I had some Rosemary tea that I had
bought because it was on my "homebirth supplies to buy" list (and I
still don't know why but apparently they made me some as it was opened
and I don't recall ever making any). I wasn't sure if I could use this
but the box said something like "nothing but pure"... whatever in their
teas so I figured it must be the same thing. 

Anyway... we *loved* it. That is a very tasty little dish w/o being too
spicy (which I have to sort of try to avoid these days). I am always
looking for more things to do with chicken especially the boneless,
skinless breasts since that's what I like to buy and use. We eat a lot
of chicken and I don't really have too many different things that I do
with it. Anyway, this dish is definitely going into the rotation.  And,
while it isn't exactly "quick fix" it *is* easy and quick enough that I
can see making it regularly. 

So now that that worked out so well, I'm looking forward to trying the
rest of them and getting caught up on the CC thing. 

Rose