Bruschetta Chicken

October 4, 2016

I write to tell you one thing, a thing that has burdened my mind in the force of my need to tell it.

Make this meal. Just do it.

I've been doing it for seven years and I've never regretted it, not once. 

Yes. I am now sharing my love of cooking with you. It is the right thing to do. FOOD is always the right thing to do. 

HOWEVER,

I have just read a Facebook comment in which someone was frothing at the mouth in fury over having to read an entire blog before getting to the advertised recipe. So...I'm going to NOT do that and, instead, give you the recipe and THEN do the...blogging.

But I promise that the words that come after the recipe are interesting. (Worth your time? I don't know. That might be pushing it a little. How much is your time worth? Are you...important?)

Ingredients

1 lb chicken breast halves boneless, skinless, and trimmed
1/4 cup balsamic vinegar
6 tomatoes chopped
1/2 cup fresh basil thinly sliced
2 tbsp extra-virgin olive oil
2 cloves garlic pressed
to taste Himalayan pink salt
to taste black pepper
1/4 cup Parmesan cheese shredded (optional)

Instructions

First, place the chicken and vinegar in a resealable plastic bag. Knead the chicken to coat with the vinegar, and refrigerate for 1 hour. 
Meanwhile, in a large mixing bowl, combine the tomatoes, basil, oil, garlic, salt and pepper to taste. Cover, and let sit at room temperature for 1 hour. 
Then, rub a grill rack or broiler rack with grapeseed oil. Preheat grill or broiler. Grill or broil the chicken for about 7-8 minutes, turning once, or until the chicken juices run clear. 
Finally, cut the chicken into thin slices on the diagonal. Serve with tomato mixture spooned over top of chicken and cheese if using. 

YIELD: 4
READY IN: 1 hr 25 mins

BLOGGING WORDS

I cook. I do. I cook because I LOVE to cook and I LOVE to eat.  In another life I’d go to culinary school. Because. Passion. PASSION.  

Whether I'm any good at it or not, well, you'd have to try my food for yourself. I’ve been called a wonderful cook, an extraordinary cook, an amazing cook. That's what people say. But you'd have to come over and have a bite to determine the validity of these statements. 

It's not just the cooking that I love.

I love the planting and the tending of things I can eat. My father passed on that love. 

I love going to grocery stores and farmers markets to wander amongst aisles offering up succulent faire, stopping to fondle the basil and pick choice ingredients.

Part of that has to be genetics, the passion of generations of farmers and grocers trickling down through the code of my DNA to manifest itself in basil fondling. 

Because, if it's not...that's just...weird. 

I love perusing magazines and blogs and cook books, taking in new information, contemplating mechanics and fads and flavor combinations. (I don't love the chopping and the grating and stuff; if I was crazy rich I'd have a sous chef.)

My kids aren't quite old enough.

You give them knives and the red-headed boy has them between his knuckles like Wolverine and the oldest is screaming about safety protocols and the red-headed girl is trying to cut potatoes with a butter knife.

Let's not even talk about the baby. I don't give knives to babies. 

I'm not just a cook by chance. My mom is a wonderful cook. She taught me a great great deal. She taught me the mechanics and she passed on the skill of flavoring and experimenting and just Knowing when something is going to be right together, like vanilla ice-cream and balsamic vinegar.  

Some things are genetic. Some things can't be taught. Like pitch.

My paternal grandmother cooks as well. She's short and Sicilian and bossy about her kitchen and one time I was on the phone with my little sister, while she was canning, and she was BOSSING her husband and a friend around LIKE A BADASS MOFO and I thought, ye heavens, she's manifesting Grandma Rose! 

(This is Jo I'm talking about, the one who said - in regards to the first draft of my first novel -  "It made me want to fucking kill myself.")

You're welcome, Jo.

Let's just see how many times I can quote that one over the course of this blog.

I have to be fair and also state that Jo is amazing. She's a free-lance writer and most of the reason that I'm still working on ANYTHING, beyond delightful to work with, and a huge part of the reason this blog exists.

If I'm going to do shout-outs I'd have to shout-out to my other sister, Arielle, who has spent a million minutes actually doing all that weird technical stuff with code to make this thing happen. Besides that, she is my  biggest cheerleader and does that older sister thing where she thinks that everything I create is magic.

We all need people like that in our lives. 

And, of course, MUCH thanks is due to Kellee, who was the one who looked me in the face and actually said, "Blog." (That was the end of a long conversation that clearly I'll have to share elsewhere because it doesn't have anything to do with Bruschetta Chicken.)

Where the heck was I?

When I got married I had to deal with my husband, who enjoys food, but could care less whether I fed him Hamburger Helper or Boeuf Bourguignon. That was disheartening. So much of my enjoyment of cooking comes from the food I cook being enjoyed, appreciated, desired. I put love in the sauce.

You do know that’s the secret of cooking, right?

Not the love, the sauce.

Even sauces without love taste good. Just don’t make them with bitterness. Or too much salt. I did that once, nine years ago. People are still talking about it. 

Feeding people gives me great joy. Hospitality gives me great joy. Come by some time and you'll see.

Bring a bottle of wine and we'll open the door even faster. 

People ask me for recipes every five point seven seconds. Problematically, I’m one of those people who use recipes as a general starting point. If you want to cook Meatloaf or Ginger Chicken thighs like I do, you’re going to have to give me some time to write it down.

And even then, it probably won’t turn out the same. 

This meal isn’t fancy. It isn’t time consuming. It isn’t some grand creation that I spent hours preparing. And I DID NOT invent it. But people, friends, human beings whom I wish to share delicious things with, as I was eating this dish last night I couldn’t help but thing, "ye heavens woman, tell the world about this."

Tell them again. Tell them well. 

The recipe comes from Wheat Belly. It's meant to be served over shiitake angel hair noodles. 

I don’t use shiitake noodles because I think they’re slimy like snot. I make zucchini noodles. I have a spiralizer from The Pampered Chef; it works well and it's easy to clean, so I'm happy. Also, the childrens can use it so that's a major plus. (Also, I usually make pasta for the childrens.) 

The Red Heads share a rare moment of team work. Brown Head photo bomb.

I generally just broil the chicken in the oven, which does take skills.

Ain't nobody want no dry chicken so, if you're not good at broiling, just bake it or grill it or something.

Don't microwave it. That would make Julia Child cry out from her grave. And the cooking police would come beat you to death. Also, I make this meal fast...I let the chicken and tomatoes sit for about 30 minutes, then I whip it up. (Even letting stuff sit for an hour isn't bad. You prep and then you wait. It's not like you're standing there stirring a pot.)

I need a new broiling pan. I just don't have the heart to clean this one anymore.

I sautéed the zucchini after my kitchen-preparatory-childrens-in-training did their thing. I turned the heat up higher then normal to try to kill all of the Things that got into the noodles from Tansy repeatedly sticking her fingers into them.

If I was 5 it would be a tempting tactile experience, no doubt.

But ye heavens. I think my Relational Brain was completely off by the time I got the noodles in the pan because if I'd said, "TANSY! GET YOUR FINGERS OUT OF THE ZUCCHINI!" once I'd said it like fifty times. Bad parenting, friends, Tired parenting. 

Of course I'm me, so I have to mess with the recipe a little bit. I add vinegar to the tomato mixture because, well, I'm addicted to vinegar and I love the whole idea of a sauce being made JUST of vinegar.

And, because I'm me, I usually have interesting things in my cupboard like Rosemary infused Olive Oil and Calamansi Balsamic Vinegar from Vom Foss, so that's what I was using last night and it was SPECTACULAR.

Even John said, "This tastes good."

Yeah it does, buddy, yeah it does. 

There you have it folks. It's simple. It's easy. It's crazy good for you. You're welcome.