faux KFC

For some reason Yum! Brands shortened Kentucky Fried Chicken to simply KFC a few years back. In any case the food is quite unchanged and a lot of people, myself included, have a fondness for the standard Original Recipe. I found this list of seasonings to emulate KFC Original Recipe on the Yahoo Pressure Cooker Recipes group nearly two years ago. It’s by a guy named Edward Evans. I just recently got around to trying it.

The recipe called for mixing the ingredients with flour and dredging the chicken in it, which makes perfect sense. Beyond that, the cooking instructions were rather odd, and omitted any mention of liquids, which are essential for pressure cooking. Here’s what I did:

I browned a boneless chicken breast in my Cuisinart CPC 600 electric pressure cooker, being careful, as one must with a pressure cooker, to only use as much oil as the chicken would absorb. I removed the chicken from the cooker and inserted the trivet.

I returned the chicken to the pressure cooker and added water to just below the level of the trivet, a little less than two cups. I had heated the water in the microwave while I was browning the chicken so my Cuisinart came up to pressure very quickly. I cooked on high for ten minutes and allowed ten minutes for natural pressure release before manually releasing the remaining pressure.

I was quite pleased with the result. The chicken really did have a taste reminiscent of KFC.

spicy chicken with orange-chipotle sauce

I pulled this recipe for spicy chicken with orange-chipotle sauce out of my Living Cookbook database for a recent Saturday dinner. It originally appeared in Coastal Living. I followed the recipe pretty closely although I omitted the salt and chives as usual.

I generally don’t like to cook with sweet stuff, such as the orange marmalade that this recipe calls for, but this one worked out really well. It’s the orange marmalade, vinegar, and chipotle sauce that really makes this dish, and I’m glad that I served it on the side.

I made a rice mix for the starch and was quite happy with the combined result.

guacamole

I generally don’t buy avocados in the grocery store, as much as I love guacamole. The avocados often seem to be either under or over ripe. I can depend on the packaged Wholly Guacamole to be reliable.

Recently, however, my sister-in-law gave me three avocados. I used one of them to make guacamole when I fixed carne asada tacos (with our homemade tortillas, of course).

I didn’t follow a specific recipe. Rather, I took ideas from a couple of different recipes and included a few different ingredients. I put in a splash of red wine vinegar and some lemon juice. I seasoned it with granulated garlic and medium hot chili powder then added some diced tomato.

I was quite pleased. Maybe Wholly Guacamole has something to worry about.

chicken tetrazzini

We had some leftover slow cooker whole chicken in the freezer, so I pulled out this recipe for chicken tetrazzini. It was a little bit of work, but really not bad at all.

I made quite a few modifications to the recipe.The recipe called for egg noodles, but I used penne pasta as that was what I had on hand. It called for parmesan cheese, but I used Romano because the fresh parmesan at the grocery store was exorbitantly expensive.I used half-and-half rather than milk or cream, which the recipe mentioned as an option. I used water rather than broth since I was remiss in keeping the pantry properly stocked. I omitted the salt, of course.

As for seasoning, this recipe was seriously lacking. As you’re likely aware I don’t cook that way. I kicked things up somewhat by adding Harris Ranch lemon garlic spice. It all came together quite nicely and made for some good leftovers.