Rice Krispie Chicken and it's all alright!

One of the things I crave lately, thanks to my pregnancy are homemade Rice Krispie Treats, but I always have cereal left over and I don't eat cereal really. What waste! What horror! What's a preggers to do? Why make Rice Krispie Chicken of course!

(Oh, but of course!)

Rice Krispie Chicken was often made for the family gatherings on my Mom's side. Us kids (cousins and siblings) used to stand around the pan after it was pulled from the oven and scoop up the hot, buttery krispies with our spoons while the adults took pieces of chicken. I can't lie- a couple aunts joined in on the fun too!

Recipe below! But heed this warning- the stray buttery krispies left on the pan are surprisingly addictive so get your spoons ready when that pan comes out!

Preheat oven to 350°.

Rinse chicken and marinate in enough buttermilk to completely submerge the chicken, and place the covered bowl in the fridge for 1 hour.

Melt butter in a glass measuring cup.

Crack three eggs and make a seasoned egg wash.

In a large bowl easure out 8 cups of rice krispie cereal. Set the bowls side by side with the egg wash and with greased jelly roll pan nearby.

Dip each chicken piece in a seasoned egg wash and then dredge through the rice krispie bowl, coasting with a thick layer of rice krispie cereal. Use your hands to ensure chicken is thickly coated. Line on jelly roll pan. Sprinkle remaining rice krispie mixture over the chicken pieces. Season with salt and pepper.

Drizzle each chicken piece with melted butter (An alternative to the egg wash is milk and melted butter, or plain yogurt.)

Bake at 350 for 1 hour and 15 minutes. Check oven often for browning. If chicken begins to brown, cover loosely with foil and continue to bake until done and juices run clear.

Seeking a Triple Threat Italian Restarant in Tacoma

There's a now-deceased restaurant in West Seattle that I measure every Italian restaurant against

Now obviously an individual's preference for this restaurant or that restaurant is exceedingly taste-specific. This individual requires her Triple Threat Italian restaurant to have the following: star house salad, stellar artisan bread with flavorful dipping oil and superb pasta, preferably with a cream sauce of some sort.

Star + Stellar + Superb = Triple Threat.

Ristorante Ragazzi's in West Seattle is the only one I've come across in the last 13 years to fulfill the Triple Threat criteria and it's no coincidence that it set the bar in the first place. When it closed, my heart broke more than a little knowing I'd have a nearly insurmountable task in finding an equivalent.

Favorite restaurants that die live on in our memories and taste buds in a sort of restaurant-neverland that we can't get a reservation for.

Take a drive with me down (memory lane) California Avenue to Ragazzi's in the Admiral District and find street side parking. You'll walk past the Admiral theater, a hole in the wall Pizza by the Slice Place and finally happen upon the door of Rigazzi's. I'll insist this is much better than Angelina's and tell you that you're in for a nirvana experience. You'll enter with me and see a bar on your left and the restaurant going straight back as you walk up to the hostess and ask her to seat the two of us at a booth.

As you sit down with you, you spy the open kitchen across from us on the north side of the restaurant (the smells waft & linger and it's a heady experience that makes your mouth water)and there's an enormous fireplace roaring away. Over the years the decor changed but you'll immediately pick up on its warm and rustic ambiance.

Slices of crusty peasant Italian bread accompanied by a dipping oil of crushed garlic, red pepper flakes and rosemary leaves are brought to the table. You pour a puddle of oil on a small bread plate and tear off pieces of bread to sop it up. You'll order with me the best house salad you've ever had. It'll arrive on a small chilled plate with spring greens dressed generously with a creamy garlic dressing and topped with Parmesan cheese. Like me, you'll want to wipe up the last bit of dressing with your bread off your plate and you do. Without guilt and with much anticipation you order the gnocchi in cream sauce. It arrives in a bowl of generous proportions where individual puffs of the potato pasta float happily in the cream sauce which has a touch of garlic and a sprinkling of nutmeg. The little clouds of heaven melt in your mouth.

You want this meal to be your last meal on earth, you could die happy right now and you make plans to come back as soon as you can. You leave with regret that you don't have room for dessert, but you leave smiling anyway in a haze of having been well fed and fed well.


Back to the present.

Don't get me wrong- I like chicken marsala as much as my mother does and an authentic Florentine Rib Eye is enough to make me want to uproot my life and move to Firenze permanently. But to me, Italian food in America will always be about the pasta and when I crave Italian, I want pasta, not chicken marsala.

Last weekend I had the pleasure of eating at Ristorante Isablla's in Convington. It gets a two out of three! Star salad, Stella bread, but merely decent pasta. Most Italian restaurants only merit 1 out of 3- superb pasta, but so-so bread and eh salad. Or stellar salad, but non existent bread and unispired pasta. Definitely a repeat contender but not quite a Triple threat. The search continues.

The closest gnocchi that nears the heights of Ragazzi's is in Rome- hardly practical or economical for the Tacoma Pregnant Lady. It did have the most amazing Gorgonzola cream sauce of the likes I've only found in Rome.

Vince's in the Renton Highlands and Federal Way has a memorable pesto-cream gnocchi that I go back for again and again. But their house salad is something I avoid and the bread isn't anything worth writing about.

One place I need to check out- at the insistence of co-workers, friends and yelp.com is Salvatore's on Roosevelt Avenue near my work.I feel a glimmer of hope or maybe that's just hunger.

I'm hoping to find my Triple Threat somewhere closer to my home in Tacoma....til then, I'll keep reminiscing of Ragazzi's.

Bruchetta Love

This is my favorite Bruchetta recipe. My aunt Jeri inspired this and I've mostly kept it the same. Nothing says summer to me than this tomato bruchetta recipe. It's super easy, filing, healthy and a huge crowd pleaser.

BRUCHETTA

Heirloom or Roma tomatoes
Basil
Garlic
Olive Oil
Balsmic Vinegar
Sugar, Salt, Pepper to taste

Ciabata bread, sliced

Cut tomatoes into a medium or large dice
Roll up several basil leaves together and shred finely
Peel one clove of garlic, crush and mince

Place all three ingredients in a bowl or on a large platter and toss.

Sprinkle sugar, salt and pepper to taste and toss again.

Drizzle with olive oil, toss one last time.

Drizzle the top with balsmic vinegar and garnish with extra basil and set aside to marinate for at least twenty minutes.


Brush your sliced ciabata bread with olive oil and broil in the oven until lightly toasted. Serve warm and pile the bruchetta on each slice.

Enjoy!

Blackberry Dreams: When the deep purple falls, over sleepy garden walls...

Nancy Leson talked about foraging for blackberries in her Seattle Times blog All You Can Eat last Friday.












Link
http://blog.seattletimes.nwsource.com/allyoucaneat/2008/08/15/urban_foraging_a_berry_good_pa/


It got me to thinking about the last time I foraged for blackberries and made a summer dish. We lived in Lacey at the time and behind our block was a huge field overgrown with blackberry hedges. We'd arm ourselves with long sleeves, jeans, sturdy shoes and a bucket or two. Afterwards we'd come back with our buckets overflowing, our arms scratched, our fingers and lips stained for our efforts.

We'd reserve half the blackberries for pie making and the rest for later. The pie blackberries would be washed and tossed in a mixing bowl with sugar, flour and nutmeg and let sit for an hour to thicken. Then we'd pour the sticky, gooey blackberries into a pie dish which were covered with either home made or store bought pie crust and baked. Since it didn't have a pie crust on the bottom of the pan, technically it was a blackberry cobbler.

The remaining blackberries we'd eat throughout the week, plopping them into our cereal bowls, eating with yogurt and topping our vanilla ice cream with.

Is there anything more simple and instinctive than berry picking and hauling them back to the kitchen to make a summer dessert?


I had an amazing nectarine crisp the other night, courtesy of the culinary goddess Marilyn Smith. My dainty bowl had warm slices of nectarine crisp topped with an oat and brown sugar crust, and a dollop of whipped cream. It was intoxicating and quintessentially Northwest. There were many eyes-a-rolling in ecstasy around the table that night.

So now I have berry pies, fruit cobblers and fruit crisps on the brain.

Makes me want to get out my basket and go urban foraging before the summer is over!

Pregnant Lady Eats

This blog should really be titled Pregnant Lady Eats because what I'm eating and more to the point, how I'm eating is completely different from what/how I normally eat (Before pregnancy: gourmet, unusual, spicy, flavorful. During pregnancy: quick, easy, doesn't make you puke.)

So while I haven't left my palette at the OB-Gyn's office entirely, I'm still not as refined as I normally am when it comes to sampling the best Tacoma has to offer. But the word normal no longer exists for me in pregnancy-land.. so hopefully this blog will still be relevant to someone.

However, I'm not apologizing for that. If there's anything I like more than talking about food, it's writing about it, even if its during these inauspicious/auspicious times.

About my culinary philosophy because Garlic-knows if I ever compete for Top Chef or the Next Food Network Star I must have a culinary philosophy or I'll be voted off with disdain by Mr. Oh-so-sexy but oh-so-finicky Flay... (gentle superfine sugar-coated sarcasm, the better to finish creme brule with.)I rather like that: Finicky Flay Throws Down with Pregnant Lady Eats.

I'm a foodie, but not a food snob. I'm a cook, but not a chef. I'm pregnant, but not totally without taste.

I think food should be a fun, hedonistic and indulgent experience, but one that is accessible to everyone and easy on the wallet. Flavors should be familiar enough that it borders on nostalgia with a "what is THAT?" kick that elevates the dish to a new level.

And that's what I call good grubbing.