Lemon Sage Chicken

So today I was looking in the fridge and thinking about what I was going to make for dinner. Zucchini... potatoes... cucumber... lemon... sage... chicken. So I googled "Lemon Sage Chicken" and came up with a ton of different responses. My favourite was the following recipe from Good Housekeeping. This is the original recipe, but keep in mind that I altered it to make one serving since I was only cooking for one!

Ingredients

4 chicken breasts

Salt and pepper

1 tbsp olive oil

1/2 cup reduced sodium chicken broth

1/3 cup white wine

1 tsp grated lemon zest

2 tbsp lemon juice

2 tbsp chopped parsely

1 tsp chopped fresh sage

1 tbsp cold margerine

Directions

1. Butterfly your chicken breasts. Between two pieces of plastic wrap, hammer the meat until it is 1/2 thick.
2. Season both sides of each breast with salt and pepper.
3. In a pan, heat oil over medium-high heat. Add chicken breasts and cook until chicken is no longer pink throughout.
4. Set chicken aside and cover with foil.
5. Add chicken broth and white wine to skillet. Simmer until sauce is reduced by half.
6. Stir in lemon zest, lemon juice, sage, and parsely.
7. Remove skillet from heat and stir in cold margarine.
8. Drizzle sauce over chicken and serve.

Notes

As I mentioned before, I altered this recipe to fit one serving. Also, I didn't have parsely, so I left it out. I also substituted veggie broth for chicken broth, because I didn't have chicken broth.

A few tips...

• Don't use white wine that is too sweet.
• I continued to reduce the sauce after I added the sage and lemon because the sauce was really thin and I wanted it to thicken up. Looking back, I wouldn't have reduced it for so long because the sauce became too sweet.
• Don't use too much lemon juice - it will overpower the sage.

I really liked this recipe otherwise, and would definitely make it again with the aforementioned alterations!

The Pierogy House

So it's been a while since my last post... My apologies, but I went for most of the summer without an oven or a stove! (Long story... don't ask!)

So this next recipe isn't a new one, but it's one of my favourites. As a child, I would go visit my great-grandma, a Ukrainian-Canadian, and we would spend the entire day making pierogies, hundreds of them! Grandma Stella's favourite memory of our pierogy-making days is a day when I posted a sign on her front door that read: "The Pierogy House".

So here's my Grandma Stella's recipe for pierogies with potato and cheese stuffing, and her famous sauekraut stuffed pierogies!

**Disclaimer: This recipe isn't going to have any specific amounts. Grandma Stella cooks from memory, and when I asked her for exact amounts, she said "Just enough of each that it seems right". So I will try to explain what "right" feels and looks like. **

Potato and Cheese Filling

Ingredients

Potatoes

Grated cheddar cheese

1 medium white onion

Butter or margerine

Directions

1. Boil a pot of water.
2. Peel and cube the potatoes and add to the boiling water. Boil until soft.
3. Meanwhile, heat butter in a frying pan on medium-low.
4. Dice the onion and add to the butter.
5. Sautee the onions until soft and transparent. Be sure not to carmelize them.
6. Drain the potatoes and put back into the pot. Mash the potatoes.
7. Add the onions.
8. Add the grated cheese. If you're using cheddar, the potato and cheese mixture should be a soft orange colour. My best advice would be to taste it and see if you like it!

Sauerkraut Filling

Ingredients

Sauerkraut

1 medium white onion

White mushrooms

Directions

1. Chop the onion and sautee in a deep frying pan on low, just until transparent and soft.
2. Chop the mushrooms and add to the frying pan with onions. Sautee until soft.
3. Meanwhile, put the sauerkraut in a strainer and rinse it. Add it to the mushroom and onion mixture.
4. Stir on medium-low until the juices in the pan start to evaporate.

The Dough

Ingredients

Flour

Water

Vegetable Oil

Directions

1. In a large bowl, combine flour with a bit of water and a dash (about 1 tsp) of oil.
2. Mix with your hands. The dough is "right" when it no longer sticks to the side of the bowl.
3. Flour your counter or flat surface, or wherever you plan to roll the dough.
4. With a rolling pin, roll the dough until it's about 1/4 to 1/2 centimetre thick. **Hint - flour your rolling pin before rolling to prevent sticking**.
5. Using a cup or a round cookie cutter, cut a circle about 10 cm in diameter out of the dough.
6. Add a tablespoon of your filling to the center of the circle, leaving a centimetre rim around the edges.
7. Fold the dough in half to create a half-circle and pinch around the edges tightly, ensuring a tight seam.
8. Set your finished pierogy on a flat surface between two tea towels.
9. Continue making your pierogies. If you run out of dough, make some more! If you run out of filling but still have dough, you can freeze the extra dough.

So now you've made all of your pierogies. If you are eating them immediately, put them into a pot of boiling water for just a few minutes!

If you plan to freeze them, you need to flash freeze them to prevent the dough from sticking together. Don't know how to flash freeze? Here's what you do:

1. Clear some space in your freezer!
2. Lightly flour some cookie sheets.
3. Lay your pierogies out of the cookie sheet, making sure none of them are touching.
4. Cover them with a tea towel and put them in the freezer.
5. Once they're frozen, you can put them in a ziploc bag.

Unfortunately, I couldn't tell you how many this will make... sometimes you'll make 3 dozen, or like the last time Rob and I made them, you may end up with 9 dozen or more!

So good luck, and I promise you, it's not as complicated as it sounds. Grab a friend and soon enough you can have your own Pierogy House on the go!