I have been neglectful this week. I had some people from my past turn my life into a turmoil, but hopefully, that is all behind me now.
So, I made the parm cheese chicken, using smaller pieces of chicken, egg to coat it, then I cooked it on top of the stove for several minutes before putting it in the oven. It worked! At least in terms of the breading sticking to the chicken. I still left it in the oven for 20 minutes, so it might have been overcooked. I don't know if the stove-top cooking it in a little oil makes it any less fried than baked, but since the original recipe called for baking it in oil, I just don't know. Maybe it's just as well to cook it in a frying pan?
The chicken was a few days ago. Today I decided on a frittata, with turkey sausage. Turkey sausage tastes like shit - or at least the Jimmy Dean brand tastes like shit. I cooked the sausage, and took a taste, and I thought, "whose bright idea was it to make sausage taste like eating dirty socks?" It is pretty gross. Let me make this clear: I don't like all the grease in regular sausage. When I cook it, I squeeze the cooked patties between paper towels to get some of the grease out, and there's a LOT of grease that squeezes out of regular sausage. The turkey sausage didn't have anywhere near that mess, but it isn't worth eating.
I've never had so much difficulty making a frittata. I used about a half cup of egg sub, which was supposed to approximate 2 eggs. I cut up 2 turkey sausage patties, ate most of one just to taste it, and added the rest to my eggs. I added some jarred mushroom slices, dried onion, salt, pepper, and once the eggs were solidifying, I sprinkled shredded cheddar on top and put it under the broiler for about 6 minutes, until the cheese started browning. This was the worst frittata I've ever made. It tasted okay, but there was liquid in the bottom of the pan, and that didn't happen when I made this in the past. Maybe because I've made it with ham and the salt in that draws the water. I don't know.
At any rate, the sausage frittata isn't something I will try again. I probably should have just scrambled the eggs with the sausage and threw some cheese on top and microwaved it in a burrito or something. I do not recommend shoe-leather turkey sausage. Then again, I'm not a fan of turkey, so that might be a clue.
meatbawlz! i think jesse liked his dad's better but liked mine well enough (he didn't like the texture of onions, spicers you know).
ReplyDeletein a mixing bowl take some ground beef (preferably expensive low fat ground sirloin). add an egg, and bread crumbs, like mom, i used lots more breadcrumbs then most folks. to that add garlic powder, onion powder, oregano, salt and pepper. you can also add chopped fresh peppers, if you like. form them into meatballs (make them smaller so they cook faster). now, here's the martha o'bryan cooks way of making many meatballs fast. place them on an ungreased cookie sheet and heat your oven to 350 to 400. BAKE the meatballs in the oven for about 20 or 30 minutes. you don't need to turn them and they will have kind of a flat bottom but the grease stays on the pan when you slide them off to add to your sauce. i always stabbed one meatball after 30 minutes and cut it in half on the cookie sheet just to make sure it was cooked thru. throw the meatballs in a pot of pasta sauce and let them simmer on low heat (with a lid tilted on top to keep from spattering sauce all over the stove) for 15 to 30 minutes because this really makes them awesome as they take on the flavors of the pasta sauce. <3 i will never make meatballs and angel hair pasta again. jesse's favorite foods are too hard for me to cook now. </3