Here is a very simple, basic recipe for cooking boneless/skinless chicken thighs in an airfryer. There are many variations on this recipe that you can make by altering the seasonings or spice mixtures. But this is a start. This was a serendipitous discovery as I was planning on making my Low Carb Airfryer Fried Chicken recipe, found here, but we had taken boneless/skinless chicken thighs out of the freezer to thaw by mistake and so, I had to improvise.
This is an update to a recipe I originally posted in 2010. One of my former co-workers is a chow-hound like I am. She and her sister made this dish and knowing I would probably like it, brought me the recipe, originally found on allrecipes.com. It was posted there by a Chicago denizen after she made this dish with her sister.
It is an easy dish to make ahead of time, throwing everything together at the last minute in a casserole dish, and baking for an hour. For convenience, buy frozen, peeled, de-veined shrimp and thaw at the last minute in a colander under cold, running water, tossing occasionally until all the shrimp have thawed, about twenty minutes.
This is a terrific breakfast casserole idea - if I could just get the cheese sauce right! I think I made it too thick and it wasn't a very good recipe to begin with, thanks to the Southern Living website. On a re-heat, I zapped some jarred salsa con queso (the Tostitos brand, to be exact) and sauced-up the leftovers. The dish was enhanced significantly! I'll post the recipe as I made it with the exception of the cheese sauce.
My Number One Fan found this recipe in the mid-'90s and made a copy of it directly from the recipe book or magazine it came from. The recipe has survived but there is no identifying text that indicates from where it originated; but we've made this recipe dozens of times and they are a delicious alternative to beef burgers on the grill.
Ah, the lowly cauliflower, a member of an unusual vegetable species known as Brassica Oleracea which also includes broccoli, Brussels sprouts, cabbage, collard greens, and kale. I hate it. And actually, a lot of people do, which is why the cauliflower has undergone something of a Renaissance in recent years being used as something other than the de facto vegetable it is. In fact, cauliflower products have increased 71% in the U.S. since 2017 and cauliflower production since 2013 is up by over 63%. Cauliflower mashed "potatoes" came about more than a decade ago during the low carb craze, a recipe for which I have posted here and have made countless times. But more recently in the Keto and gluten-free hysteria, all manner of cauliflower dishes as a substitution for something else have come to market, like, cauliflower pizza crusts, cauliflower breadsticks, cauliflower fried rice and cauliflower bread substitute.
Readers of Kitchen Tapestry, both of them, may recall me promoting cheddar biscuits as an accompaniment to such dishes as Shrimp Étouffée Over Cheesy Biscuits, found here, and Crock Pot Beef Stew, located here. Specifically, I touted a commercially prepared product by a national restaurant chain, Red Lobster. The last time I ate at a Red Lobster was in the mid 1990s and then, only because a hotel I supervised in Beaumont, Texas had leased out space to one and I felt politically obliged to dine there.
This is a simple, quick dish to accompany any entree where a Mexican flare is needed. It's quick but looks like one of those dishes you'd spend a lot of time making. It also opened my eyes to a whole world of stuffed peppers using Anaheim and its cousin, Poblano chili peppers, both of which are generally mild in heat. Poblano peppers are darker in color and have more of a bell pepper body shape, whereas Anaheim peppers are more slender. When you buy a can of "Green Chilies," you are generally getting Anaheim peppers.
The generally accepted origin of the term "Monkey Bread" is that it was so-named because it is eaten with your hands, the way a monkey would. This explanation inspires incredulity because what bread exactly isn't eaten with one's hands? Some say it came from a pejorative Southern expression "monkey food," which strikes me as asinine and wholly untrue but believable if one thinks everyone in the South is racist. Allegedly, the dish originated from 19th century Hungarian immigrants who called it arany galuska, meaning "golden dumpling" which doesn't sound anything like "monkey bread."
Who doesn't love a good chicken noodle casserole? Granted, in this age of celebrity chefs, it wouldn't get much air-time on a television cooking show unless someone decided to make everything from scratch. And it wouldn't surprise me at all if that hasn't already happened. A couple of decades ago, Alton Brown of the Food Network decided to reinvent the traditional Thanksgiving Green Bean Casserole by making it completely from scratch, poo-pooing the more traditional can-o-dis approach. But it was the Campbell Soup Company that invented the recipe in 1955 as a means to get you to buy their venerable Cream of Mushroom Soup. I'm betting there weren't ten people that actually followed Brown's complicated recipe. I mean, why put yourself through all that effort for a modicum of enhanced quality, particularly when you've got seven other things to prepare for Thanksgiving Dinner? Sometimes, less is more.
My Number One Fan developed an aversion to pesto sauce during some rather onerous medical treatments over a decade ago. It seems that a pesto chicken sandwich from a local sandwich shop became negative reinforcement to the chemical onslaught of chemotherapy. This caused physical revulsion at even the aroma of pesto, which was interesting because she still enjoyed the flavor and scent of basil, the predominate ingredient in pesto, along with garlic, pine nuts, Parmesan cheese and olive oil.
This is about the roasted tomatoes as much as it is about the Crostini itself. They are delicious served on toasted bread this way, of course, but they are also very versatile as toppings and garnishes for salads, chops and seafood. As such, I'll segregate the roasted tomato recipe from the rest of this dish. Incidentally, this is called "Crostini" and not "Bruschetta", because the bread has not been brushed with garlic and olive oil, which is the only differentiation between the two culinary terms. For some additional information on the origination of Bruschetta, go to my New Year's Tenderloin Bruschetta recipe found here.
My Number One Fan requested that I make a Yankee Pot Roast and it got me to thinking, what exactly constitutes the "Yankee" part of a pot roast? To be sure, a pot roast is generally accepted to be a cut of beef braised for long hours in a savory liquid with a variety of seasonings and varying vegetables. I have posted several such recipes, including Pot Roast with Tomato Red Wine Gravy, Italian Pot Roast (that had artichoke hearts and sun dried tomatoes), and a dish called San Antonio Beef, which as I explained in that post was really more of a Cajun pot roast than something representative of Texas. But, strangely, no where in my repertoire did I have a Yankee Pot Roast recipe. Until now.
I guess one cannot have too many chicken salad recipes. I posted one I created during the 2020 pandemic while at the same time, adding My Number One Fan's favorite chicken salad recipe. Hers is arguably more Southern in its ingredients and flavor profile because it contains boiled eggs. Today was really a serendipitous discovery of a recipe that would incorporate some things in our pantry we needed to eat sooner than later, namely a bag of Sun-Maid Golden Raisins, some Granny Smith Apples, an opened bag of pine nuts and a can of Swanson's Chunk White Chicken. The latter would be the big departure from my other chicken salad recipes, found here, which make use of boneless, skinless chicken thighs that have been cooked and diced.
Coming home from a road trip with a bad case of the GIs, and having not eaten anything in nearly 24 hours, I was finally in the mood for some real comfort food but did not want to expend any energy I didn't have in a complicated, multi-step preparation. What could be more comforting on a careworn digestive system than chicken and brown rice? And what could be easier than a can-o-dis recipe in a Crock Pot and taking a nap?
The problem was that all of my Internet research for such a recipe came up nil. Either I had to sauté the onions or what-have-you beforehand; or I had to use instant rice, which I hate; or I had to make other last minute adjustments, like stirring in a roux. I found the same thing with casserole versions of a recipe, and a number of food bloggers who confused Crock Pot cooking with casseroles. They are not the same and you cannot have any such thing as a "Crock Pot casserole".
This is a recipe I found in an old church recipe book that my mother had in her cookbook collection which I inherited. It ended up being real comfort food on a night when I guess that's what My Number One Fan and I needed most. The cookbook was one of those where parishioners contribute their favorite recipes, which are assembled by meal course and amateurishly printed and spiral bound; then sold as a fund-raiser. This recipe dates from the1960s and came from a West Texas Catholic who, I'm sure, never ate this on a Friday.