Baked Lemon Tarragon Chicken

When dinner has to be quick-and-easy, I don’t usually think of baked chicken. But this recipe fits the bill.  You can make it in less than an hour and most of that time the chicken bakes unattended. The dish requires few ingredients and it is delicious cold if there are leftovers. 

If those attributes aren’t enough, baked lemon tarragon chicken is a budget meal too. I made enough for 4 people for about $8, including the price of the seasonings. With rice and a salad, this meal costs less per serving than a Chipotle chicken burrito, a McDonald’s McChicken meal, or a grilled chicken sandwich at Potbelly Sandwich Shop. And it tastes a heck of a lot better too!

As you are making this recipe, remember the chicken basics, especially rules #1-7 and #10.  It’s always better to be safe than sorry when it comes to handling poultry.

Lemon Tarragon Chicken

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Not-Quite-Homemade Chicken Mole

Chicken with chocolate sounds weird, no?  But if the chocolate is spicy and not sweet, in a sauce that envelopes shredded chicken and the dish is served (in an enchilada or on its own) with rice and a salad of oranges and red onions, the result is delicious.  

Maybe you’ve had mole in a Mexican or Tex-Mex restaurant and didn’t even realize there was chocolate in the sauce. This quick-and-easy version uses prepared mole in a jar, but it’s still good enough to serve company.

I do plan to make mole from scratch someday, using Pati Jinich’s recipe for mole poblano, but that requires many ingredients and lots of patience.  By contrast, this chicken mole has only 4-5 ingredients (salt is optional) if you don’t count water.  I checked the ingredients in the 2 brands of mole in a jar that I have recently used (Goya and Dona Maria); both brands contains many of the ingredients in Pati’s recipe and no preservatives or other additives. 

Chicken Mole

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How to Make Vegetable Stew

How often do you get to enjoy a poem while making dinner?  

Recently I was at a family wake, saying goodbye to our beloved Uncle Bill.  Family and friends gathered and chatted quietly – a somber scene, but also one with lots of hugs and promises to keep in touch in good times as well as sad or difficult moments.  As the winter afternoon turned into dusk and the crowd thinned, we said our goodbyes and made plans for dinner. 

Cousin Pat mentioned that she was going home to make vegetable stew.  Pat is one of my favorite people in the world, not to mention the source of my favorite soda bread recipe, so my ears perked up.  At that moment, I couldn’t imagine anything more wonderful than a steaming bowl of comfort.  

I asked her for the vegetable stew recipe and Pat obliged, but warned me that it wasn’t an ordinary listing of ingredients and directions; rather, it’s a poem she wrote.  Last week, I printed the poem (off the email she sent me), took a look into my refrigerator, and made my own version.  It was indeed a wonderful experience – rather liberating to set aside the measuring cups and scales – and a tasty result.  This vegetable stew can be either the main course or a side dish and it's great reheated as leftovers.

Your ingredients may differ and so may your timing, but that’s the joy of this dish.  Enjoy your creation, especially if you share it with folks you love. 

How to Make Vegetable Stew

by Pat Brisson

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