Alright! :)
You found Part 2 and the story goes on so let's venture to a restaurant that we're all pretty familiar with: Cheesecake Factory! I found the recipe for Cheesecake Factory's Chicken Madiera and will share it with you. If you aren't familiar with it, it's chicken with Madiera wine sauce, mozzarella and asparagus and served with garlic butter mashed potatoes. My friend Anna really likes this dish!
My first run didn't turn out quite like the restaurant's because the flavor was there, but the thickness of the sauce wasn't. The sauce was too thin which diluted the flavor. I tried adding cornstarch and that made it much better because the sauce condenses a little and becomes more flavorful. I also didn't have Madiera wine available at my grocery store so I used Marsala wine which is closet to Madiera. It's about $5-$6 a bottle.
So here is the recipe with the thickening agent added into it:
CHEESECAKE FACTORY'S CHICKEN MADIERA
Ingredients
1 tablespoon olive oil
4 boneless chicken breast
8 asparagus spears
4 slices mozzarella cheese
Sauce
2 tablespoons olive oil
2 cups fresh sliced mushrooms
3 cups Madeira wine
2 cups beef stock
1 tablespoon butter
1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper
1/2-1 tbspn corn starch
Directions
1.Cover chicken breast with plastic wrap; pound to 1/4-inch thick.
2.Sprinkle each filet with salt and pepper.
3.Heat 1 tablespoon olive oil in frying pan over medium-high heat.
4.Saute fillets 4-6 minutes per side until done and browned just a bit.
5.Remove from pan and wrap in foil to keep warm while you make the sauce.
6.In chicken pan add olive oil and sliced mushrooms; saute for about 2 minutes.
7.Add Madeira wine, beef stock, butter, and pepper.
8.Bring to boil then reduce heat; simmer 20 minutes until reduced to about 1/2 original volume. When sauce is done it will be thick, and brown.
9.While sauce is reducing, bring a pan of water to boil.
10.Add salt to water at boil; blanch asparagus (3-5 minutes). Drop asparagus in ice water to halt cooking.
11.Set oven to broil.
12.In baking dish arrange chicken, cross 2 asparagus stems over each piece of chicken and top with a slice of cheese.
13.Broil until cheese melts. In the meantime, add 1tsp-1tbspn cornstarch to 1/2-1 tbsp warm water, mix and add to the sauce.
14. Put chicken on plate.
15.To serve, top with 3-4 tablespoons sauce on each piece.
I served this on garlic fettucine noodles instead of potatoes and asparagus drizzled with the leftover wine sauce on the side. Try it! It's a very do-able recipe. This is the last time you'll have to pay $15 + tax and tip for Chicken Madiera. :)
Shellfish Tower Anthony Bourdain Style
Time for seafood! In Texas, my friends and I used to have crawfish broils where we get pounds of crawfish, boil them in a big pot with spices, sausage, corn and potatoes, cover a table with newspapers and spill the crawfish onto the table. We rolled up our sleeves and ate until we were full. On a episode of Anthony Bourdain, he went to Brittany and he kept looking for a "shellfish tower". What's a shellfish tower? A shellfish tower is a ...*drumroll*...a shellfish tower! Piled up, cooked, assorted shellfish! So we made our own shellfish tower and sesafood broil. We took the idea of lots of shellfish and combined it with the crawfish-eating style on the table. Of course, this is a meal to be shared with our friends so Amy and Henry came over. :)
We covered the table, whipped up some pina coladas (non alcoholic version) and into the pot went the lobster tails, shrimp, scallops, potatoes, corn and sausage, and we drained and spilled it on the table! It was accompanied by sides of homemade KFC coleslaw and a pan of homemade bacon-mac and cheese. For these shellfish towers, the more people, the higher the shellfish tower will be so tap us on the shoulders and let us know if you want to do a shellfish tower together sometime!
Seafood Sushi Style
Yuki Hana Japanese Restaurant
375 Liberty Street
Little Ferry, NJ 07643
Kee, Sung and I also ventured to a sushi restaurant in Little Ferry called Yuki Hana. yuri + kee= yuki. =P We ordered one of those boats for three of us (Tammy's cruise boat!) The sushi was good and they gave us a whole roll with four kinds of fish for service! It had Korean owners and is a BYOB place which was nice . Afterwards, we were right around the corner from Ritas. Ritas ice cream is open! We discovered the fat-free custard to keep off the weight for summertime. It's pretty good, but you won't get the same as the real deal. Mango Gelati...Mmm! Sung bought us a whole quart! Thank you, Sung~ :)
SURF TACO
And finally, the epic journey of March came to this weekend. I went on a family retreat with some friends and there were a lot of young couples. My friend Sonia told us about a fish taco place between home and the retreat center that she had been to before. There are multiple locations and she's aiming to hit them all one day! The retreat was out in Long Beach Island near the Jersey shore which is coincidentally the island that my husband and I go crabbing on during the summer. So after the retreat ended, we all headed out there in a carpool of 7 cars and tried some of these bad boys.
I had a fish taco which was tempura-battered, deep fried cod fish topped with a mixture of thinly sliced vegetables wrapped inside a tortilla. It came with a side of corn chips which we could dip in an assortment of fresh salsas from the salsa bar. yum! I got three to go for my husband since he had to work and couldn't make it to the retreat. He scarfed them down too, but we'll get him fresh ones at the restaurant next time since we know that it's on the way to crabbing. Pit Stop!
What a great month in the culinary world as it comes to an end. We anticipate much more in April since BBQ season is right around the corner!
Bon Appetit!
FY
