At Home with Kristi

Guacamole is delicious and easy to make.  The homemade version is so much better than the store bought stuff.  Give it a try, you’ll thank yourself.

Ingredients

• 2 ripe avocados
• 1 medium tomato
• 1/4  of a large onion
• 3 cloves of garlic chopped
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 tbsp cilantro
• Juice of one lime
• Juice of half a lemon
• 1/2 tsp dried chili pepper
• 1/2 tsp black pepper

First of all, make sure your avocado’s are ripe.  They should be soft but not mushy when you press on the skin.

Using a large knife, cut through the avocado lengthwise all the way around, then twist and pull to revel the pit.

Next, lay the avocado with the pit facing up on a cutting board and take a large knife and swing it down into the avocado pit hard enough so that it goes into the pit about 1/8 of an inch.

Now twist and pull and the pit will pop right out (the riper your avocado the easier the pit releases)

Take a dish towel and grasp the pit and pull it off the knife.

Now take a smaller knife and score all of your avocado halves.

Using a spoon scoop out the avocado into a bowl

Repeat with all remaining avocado halves. You will be left with a pile of cute little avocado skin boats!

Now take a medium tomato and quarter it

Take each quarter and using your knife held horizontally to the cutting board, slice under the seeds and core, leaving just the meat of the tomato (tomato seeds in guacamole are just not good)

Dice up the tomato meat

I like chunky guac, but make the pieces of vegetable as large or small as you want

Dice 1/4 of a large to medium onion and add it to the bowl

Add 3 cloves or about 1 tbsp of chopped garlic to the bowl

I like to use a combination of lime and lemon juice in my guacamole.  You will need one lime and half a lemon

Cut the lime and squeeze the juice into the bowl, do the same with half of the lemon.

Next comes the spices

add the cilantro (use fresh if you have it, but dried works ok too), salt, pepper and dried ground chili pepper.

Stir well to combine.  The more you stir the smoother it will get, so use your own discretion there.

I recommend refrigerating it overnight for best results.

Back in the days when we first moved to St. Louis (late 90’s) we used to eat at Houlihan’s a lot.  They had this dish that Matthew got, he thinks it was called Tuscan Lemon Chicken.  It was a breaded chicken breast and a lemony alfredo sauce.  They don’t have that particular dish anymore so he requested that I try to replicate it.  I had never made alfredo sauce before and I did learn a few things.

First, I made the chicken from this recipe.   Then I started two sauces, the lemon garlic sauce from the same recipe as the chicken and the alfredo sauce.

The alfredo sauce ingredients

• 1 pint half & half
• 1/2 cup butter
• 1 1/2 cups Parmesan cheese

The procedure

1. Heat half and half and butter over medium-low heat and whisk to combine once the butter has melted
2. raise the heat to medium-high and whisk in the cheese

That is basically how you make alfredo sauce, now I make it into lemon garlic alfredo

1. Transfer the alfredo sauce to a tall sided container
2. Use and immersion blender to make it nice and smooth
3. Incorporate the lemon garlic sauce into the alfredo sauce in about for increments, blending well between each one

Have I mentioned that I now refer to my immersion blender as my “sauce saver”?

Return the now finished sauce to the pan.

Ladle the sauce over cooked noodles (I used linguine)

Throw the chicken on top

What I learned

1. use heavy cream instead of half and half so the heat can go higher to melt the cheese faster and make a smoother sauce

2. put the noodles in the sauce so you don’t end up with “clump o’noodles”

3.  Add a little lemon zest to the chicken breading

Ugh, I’m a messy cook!

Matthew said it tasted almost exactly like the old Houlihan’s dish, so I guess Mission Accomplished!

I saw Chicken Spedini on a restaurant menu recently and have been wanting it since. Tonight I decided to try making it for the first time.

First, pound out some chicken breast fillets flat.

Breadcrumb Mix

• 1/2 cup panko bread crumbs
• 2 tbsp grated parmesean/romano cheese
• italian seasoning
• 2 tbsp margarine
• 1 tsp garlic powder

Spread the crumb mixture over the flattened chicken breasts

Roll up the chicken around the breadcrumbs (jelly roll style)

Slice each roll into 3 or 4 pieces (depending on the size), and thread 3 or 4 slices on a skewer.  Then sprinkle with some of the remaining crumb mixture

Put the chicken in the oven at 375 for about 25-30 minutes.

Meanwhile put water for pasta on to boil and start the sauce

Sauce

• 2 tbsp margarine
• 2 tsp garlic
• 3/4 cup lemon juice
• salt
• pepper

Mix everything together in a small sauce pan and stir while the butter melts.   I then transfered it to a bowl and used the immersion blender to make it smooth and a bit more homogoneous.

Plate the chicken and pasta, drizzle sauce over both.

Get the pdf of this recipe