This week we made Chicken Basin Street for our family night dinner. This recipe hails from McCall's Great American Recipe Card Collection, 1973.
This dish is really easy to put together. My teen learned how to brown chicken in a pan without burning it, which was a first.
Once you put it all together and get the sauce cooking with the chicken, the aroma is really mouthwatering.
Steaming the rice was interesting for my daughter because she kept wanting to open the lid to check on it. I told her the whole point of steaming rice is to keep the lid on. She resisted the urge and the steamed rice came out perfect.
This Chicken Basin Street dish came out really well and was tasty. Personally, I would prefer to de-bone and skin the chicken prior to putting the sauce together. We will make this chicken dish again to try it without bones.
When choosing something for this week's family night dinner, my husband wanted to know if there might be something he could grill. I told him I was sure we could find something. We came up with this Chicken Surabaja recipe from McCall's Great American Recipe Card Collection (1973), The Pacific Coast.
The dish is really simple. You marinate your chicken, grill it on skewers, and serve it up!
As you can see we opted to dress up the chicken as if it were kabobs. We added pearl onion, mushroom, and yellow and green bell pepper.
Since the recipe called for soy sauce, my intuitive daughter thought it might be nice to give it an oriental appeal. We served the chicken over fried rice with egg rolls.
The dish was good and went over well with everyone. The only thing we are going to change is to eliminate the soy and butter topping. It's really potent. If you are not into soy sauce, you will not like it. The marinade alone gives the chicken just enough of the soy sauce flavor.
This week we decided to try a stew recipe: Brunswick Stew. A few weeks ago we tried Sunday Supper Soup, and found it was so delicious, we wanted to try some other soup options in the collection. Brunswick Stew comes from McCall's Great American Recipe Collection (1973), The Old South.
The teen learned about saving money buying in bulk and freezing. Instead of using a whole chicken, which I would have had to purchase, we used leg quarters I had purchased previously on sale and froze.
With this recipe she also learned how to cut raw bacon. She did not like that too much. I taught her how to brown bacon and onion without burning it: Toss ingredients frequently to avoid scorching.
Cutting raw boned chicken was new to her also. The technique here is to find the joint and cut into the bend and follow the natural line. This always works for me. It worked for her, no mutilated pieces or cut fingers.
We had to buy celery for this dish. We do not use celery as often as we probably should, but in light of the occasion, I introduced her to our trusty FoodSaver. She was stuck cutting an entire bunch of celery for future recipes. I told her this will save money and time later.
These handy pouches are in the freezer ready and waiting for the next recipe! I love my FoodSaver!
The results of the chicken Brunswick Stew were fantastic. For those not akin to Lima beans, you could not even tell they were in there by taste. The okra made the dish almost like a southern gumbo. Take a look at our chicken Brunswick Stew:
This week's family night dinner idea recipe is chicken Kiev. This is a dish I would usually buy frozen and bake. My daughter saw the card and thought it would be a good learning experience for her and me. Let me tell you, it was. The recipe comes from McCall's Great American Recipe Card Collection (1973), A Worldwide Medley.
I decided not to enter into this without first doing a little chicken Kiev recipe research online. The instructions seemed a little vague cutting the chicken in half. I found chicken Kiev can be done in a variety of ways. You can do it as these instructions direct you. You can cut a cavity in the breast for the butter filling. From what I gather, as long as the filling gets into the chicken breast, you can do anything you please.
Compared to some of the recipes I saw online, I felt the herb butter filling was a bit lacking. I also saw a few that included Parmesan cheese in the crust, which I liked the idea of. Still we followed the recipe as it was written.
The flavor was pretty good and everything came out as expected. My daughter was able to experience safe food handling, meat flattening, herb chopping details, and food frying precautions.
We will make this dish again but I'm going to change a few things next time. Here's the results of our efforts:
