HomeMadeMadeEasy

So I have a group of guinea pigs – friends that are testing out my service and helping me to decide what meals reheat well, how the presentation is, and make those “fine tune” adjustments necessary for my paying clients to be fully satisfied with the service I provide.

Yesterdays meal consisted of salad, risotto, chicken and zucchini.  First, the salad.  It was mixed greens with diced red and yellow peppers, grape tomatoes, sliced cucumbers, and green onions (which were omitted for those families that do not like onions) served with blueberry vinaigrette.  The vinaigrette had a few new additions this time around…a splash of fig balsamic vinegar in addition to the traditional balsamic and I used Australian olive oil.  I also used my flake sea salt as opposed to the usual crushed rock salt.  All feedback so far indicates that was a huge success!

The risotto was a pretty traditional recipe using chicken stock for most families and vegetable broth for the vegetarian crowd.  Cooked slowly, adding lots of liquid, and finished with a bit of Parmesan cheese.  Always a hit.

Zucchini was a pretty standard offering.  Cut into bite-sized pieces, steamed in some vegetable broth (that adds a bit more flavor than just using water) and lightly seasoned with some salt and pepper.  I was tempted to use some olive oil on this one, but I’m glad I didn’t.  Let the natural flavor of the vegetable really shine through.

Lastly, the chicken.  It was a lightly breaded pan-fried boneless skinless chicken breast.  I really prefer a light breading on chicken rather than a heavy “KFC” type breading.  I pretty much just use the natural juice from the chicken to get some of the flour mixture to stick.  Much of it falls off in the pan during cooking but it’s more for seasoning than to be a breading anyways so it works really well.  I pounded the chicken breasts out before frying them but was a bit disappointed when they sort of puffed back up during cooking.  I think next time I am going to try to find a brand of chicken breasts that adds less broth during the packaging process and see if that makes a difference.  Just the ponderings of the cook, I suppose.

Sorry no pictures to post on this one.  I forgot to take some before I delivered all the meals.  But I’ll be doing another meal delivery next Monday as well so hopefully I will remember to take some pictures then.  And depending on what I make here this week, I might have something to add before then.

Until next time, happy eating!