Mom's Chicken-in-a-Biscuit

Chicken:

1 chicken, cut-up (3 pounds)

1 onion, quartered

4 celery stalks, halved

Seasonings (bay leaf, salt & pepper, simon & garfunkel)

10 cups water

Biscuit:

2 cup flour

1 tsp salt

1 1/3 cup milk

4 eggs

2 tbs cooking oil

Oil for deep frying

I always make a lot of this. The biscuit wrapped chicken makes for a great snack to grab from the fridge, or to pack into your lunch the next day.

Bring chicken to a boil. Reduce heat to a simmer for 30-40 minutes. Chicken should be cooked through and starting to draw off the bone. Remove chicken, rinse, and let cool. Separate all the meat from the bones, the pieces should be varying in size from bite-size up to larger tenders.

Mix all the biscuit ingredients together a

nd add a shot of water. Fold in the chicken pieces.

Put a layer of brown paper bag (or paper towel) on a rimmed cookie sheet and warm the oven to about 250

Pour oil into deep frying pan, about 1 ½ inches deep. Heat oil to point where a piece of bread will sizzle when pl

aced in the oil. Using a large spoon (I use one that holds about ¼ cup water), remove a portion of batter and chicken and pour from spoon into the hot oil. The size of the portions depends on how you like the finished product. Some people like just one large tender in the biscuit, I tend to like a lot of smaller s

craps mixed together. An assortment makes for a good presentation at the table. Fill the pan, but don’t crowd the portions. I’ll usually do four or five at a time.

Once the batter sets in the oil, nudge it to make sure it’s free of the bottom of the pan and is slightly floating. When golden brown on the bottom, use tongs to turn them over to finish cooking to golden brown. Remove from oil and place in oven on cookie sheet to drain and stay warm.

Traditionally, chicken-in-a-biscuit is served warm with mashed potatoes, corn, and cranberry jelly. I also mix up a honey-mustard sauce using Goulden’s brown mustard and dry mustard powder. Sweet chili sauce also makes a nice condiment.

Mom's Banana Bread

4 mashed bananas

¼ cup soft butter

1 cup sugar

1 egg

1 tsp baking soda

2 cups flour

If you like a light fluffy bread with a taste of banana, then get a box mix cause this recipe makes a hearty moist loaf. This is my Mom’s recipe, which I think she got from her Mom. The ingredients above are enough for one loaf; I always double the recipe.

Banana bread is an exercise in patience. You can’t make a good banana bread with freshly ripe bananas; you need to wait until they are over-ripe. I’m not talking darker yellow with a few freckles of brown. You want those skins all brown, moving into black, and the bananas inside browning. The darker the banana, the sweeter the bread. You have to be patient and wait for them to be ready; not for when you want it. When I was a teen, Mom had a great deal going with the produce guy down the street at Danny’s Market. She had commented how she could never find bananas ripe enough for banana bread, because he kept taking them off the display when they went past ripe. So they struck a deal – he’d hold the over-ripe bananas aside and when she wanted some, he’d give them to her free in exchange for a loaf.

Mash up the bananas, I use my Kitchen-Aid stand mixer on a low speed. Add the soft butter, the sugar, the egg. Mix the baking soda and flour together first, then slowly add to the wet ingredients. I’ve taken to weighing flour on a digital scale, rather than trying to figure if it’s too tightly packed or loosely sifted. 5 oz is a cup. I don’t add nuts – I like a plain and simple banana bread. Tho, sometimes I do scatter a handful of dark chocolate chips into the batter – not too many, it’s not chocolate-chip banana loaf. – just a handful.

Grease a loaf pan and pour in the batter. Bake at 350 degrees for an hour. Let cool about 10 minutes and invert pan to remove. Patience: let the banana bread cool completely before cutting. When cool, just slice and eat. Mom always liked a little soft butter schmeared on her slice.

Creamy Coconut Adobo Chicken

Creamy Coconut Adobo Chicken


Adobo is a Philippine way of cooking in a marinade of vinegar, garlic, and soy sauce. The recipes for that marinade vary by family and household. Even if the ingredients remain the same, the proportions can vary to result in entirely different tastes. You can have adobo chicken, pork, beef, squid…it goes with everything. It is sweet and tangy and, like arroz caldo, a wonderful comfort food.

This version of adobo chicken uses coconut milk to create a creamy sauce.

Adobo:
1 ½ cups rice vinegar
1 cup coconut milk
¼ cup soy sauce
1 head garlic, peeled and crushed
3 bay leaves
Ground pepper
3 lbs boneless chicken thighs

Mix all adobo ingredients together in a sealable bowl and add chicken. I prefer to use the boneless chicken thighs, they take the flavors well and don’t dry out in the cooking like breast meat can. Cover bowl and let rest in refrigerator at least overnight.

Adobo cooks with a strong aroma. Traditionally, we’ll make sure all the laundry is put away and the bedroom doors are shut before firing up the pan.
Heat the adobo to a boil in a large non-stick saucepan over a high heat. Reduce heat to a simmer,stirring occasionally to keep chicken covered in sauce. The chicken will take about 10-15 minutes to cook thru. Remove the chicken from the sauce.

Bring the sauce to a boil on high heat until thick - about 15 minutes. I break-up any remaining garlic with wooden spoon as it boils to incorporate it to the sauce. Remove the bay leaves when done and add chicken back to sauce to coat and heat.

Serve with white rice and steamed broccolli.

A note on leftovers: this is a meal that you want leftovers. Overnight, the flavors in the cooked adobo continue to mull and layer. Once I even made the entire meal for company a day ahead, just so that it could sit in the refrigerator overnight before I served it.