DANGEROUSLY FABULOUS

This recipe is a bit of a long story, but turned out SO delicious!  So, here we go.  The night before I decided to make rib-eye and some grilled veggies (red pepper, red onion and zucchini).  In my quest for a starch I realized we had a baguette in the freezer that would work great for bruschetta so once I grilled up the veggies with Italian Seasoning and balsamic vinegar I combined them with garlic and a can of fire roasted tomatoes and threw them all in the food processor to chop.  Goat cheese and these grilled veggies topped my baguette.  As always happens, I had WAY too much of it, so we threw it in the fridge for leftovers.  

Now tonight I was trying to think of something I could make that my 8 month old could partake in as well.  I was leafing through her Infant cookbook and came across an eggplant parmesan, perfect!  So with that recipe as inspiration and a few other ingredients in the fridge, this is it:

Grilled Veggie Bruschetta:

1 zucchini

1 red pepper

1 red onion

1 can fire roasted tomatoes

3 cloves of garlic

1/2 cup kalmata olives

olive oil

balsamic vinegar

Italian Seasoning

salt and pepper

Season sliced veggies with S&P, Italian herbs, olive oil and balsamic vinegar.  Grill 4-5 minutes per side.  Place in a food processor and add fire roasted tomatoes, garlic and kalmata olives.  Set aside.

Chicken & Eggplant Parm

2 boneless skinless chicken breasts

1 eggplant, sliced

1 bin sliced mushrooms

1 yellow onion, chopped

2 cloves of garlic

Italian seasoning

Olive Oil

1 can diced Italian tomatoes

Parmesan cheese or marble if you thought you had Parm and you really don’t ;)

Preheat oven to 350 F.  

Slice chicken breast.  Take 1 tbsp oil, 1 tbsp of Italian Seasoning and salt and pour over chicken, set aside.  

Place a skillet med-hi heat.  Season eggplant with S&P and Italian Seasoning.  Add oil and put slices of eggplant into the skillet in batches, add more oil if needed.  Saute 5 minutes per side and place in a casserole dish.  Add onion, saute until soft.  Add garlic and mushrooms and saute about 3 minutes, place in casserole.  Add chicken to skillet and brown on each side.  Remove to casserole and add 1 can of diced Italian tomatoes and the remainder of the yummy grilled veggie brushetta sitting in the fridge.  Stir to combine and top with cheese.  (Again thought I had parm, couldn’t find it so used marble cheese instead.  Later this evening I found the parmesan in the freezer…I’d like to blame my husband for that! :)

Bake in preheated oven for 30 minutes and broil for 5 minutes.  I served this with a grilled veggie and sausage rice that I had leftover in the fridge, but it would be great on top of some pasta as well.  I loved this and my 8 month old, though hers was a slightly blander version, ate 2 servings!

What the heck is a fig?!  I had no idea until a couple years ago what a fig was.  I ordered a salad at East Side Mario’s and there were these black mushroom-esque things that were mushy and crunchy…a rather confusing combo.  I gave the salad another try next time I went to East Sides and found their texture much less reprehensible and kind of appealing!

So, one day I was watching Rachael Ray and she was cooking up a Chicken recipe in the crock pot with figs in it…oh yeah….figs!  I forgot about you.  So the recipe was added to that week’s menu and the figs became the star of my grocery list.  Unsure of where I would even find figs in the grocery store I went on the hunt and came up with 2 types: black figs and the white figs.  Ummm…what is the difference between the two?  I consulted my two year old and we picked the black ones.  Now all I needed for the recipe was fennel….I rounded the produce section 3 times and finally accepted the fact that they just didn’t have any.  Stupid grocery store, didn’t they know I had a new recipe I need to try!?  Sadly I pushed my cart to the check out and decided to keep the figs in the cart anyways to make the dish another time.  

Unable to wait until I could hit up the grocery store for fennel, I scoured the internets for a different fig recipe.  I came upon this one at Allrecipes.com.  Kimber, whoever you are, this recipe was awesome!  Everyone loved it and I chopped up the leftover fig mixture for a salad later in the week.  

Eventually I did get the ingredients for the Rachael Ray Fig and Fennel Chicken recipe, and I am sorry Rach, but it just was not good, normally our taste buds jive, but we were definitely out of sync on this one.  When I try a bite and immediately apologize to my husband for the meal, that is never a good sign!  There were a number of things working against this one.  The recipe calls for Marsala and I have never been able to find Marsala at any liquor store, so I use a substitute of white wine and brandy.  I have used this combo before in other recipes and it turned out well, but this time not so much.  I think another part of the problem is that I just don’t like the texture of of chicken in the crockpot; I find it to be stringy and dry.  So I have officially sworn off chicken and slow cooking and will not be adding this recipe to my book for favourites.