Menu Monday

I missed What’s for Supper Sunday, so how about Menu Monday (I leave off the question mark, because I’m not really asking; I fully intend to write a cooking post).

Regular readers (I do love my regular readers) may recall that I invented a recipe for Chicken Florentine. Then recently I saw a commercial for one of those pre-made entrees you heat up in a skillet on the stove — it may have been Bertoli — of Chicken Florentine. It did not look anything like what I had done. It actually looked way easier. I said, Hmmmm….

No, I did not run to the freezer section of my local Hannaford looking for Bertoli. I opened my refrigerator at home and looked for ingredients.

For once I cooked with wine by actually putting wine in the food. I chopped up an onion and put it in my cast iron frying pan with a good dousing of some Chablis I happened to have on hand.

Just a side note: I had purchased the Chablis because Steven and I had recently watched Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. That movie, in case you didn’t know, features a fascinating character named The Lady Chablis. But I digress.

While the onion boiled in the wine (I put in a lot of wine), I crushed up some garlic and set the timer for 15 minutes, the length of time I’ve read it should breathe. At the end of 15 minutes I added it to the frying pan and let it cook a few minutes before adding the chicken and spinach.

I took both of those items out of my freezer. The chicken was fully cooked breast strips by, I believe, Tyson. The spinach was Hannaford brand frozen chopped.

The wine had pretty much cooked away by this time so I added a little olive oil and covered the pan. After a bit I sprinkled on some lemon pepper and Perfect Pinch Salt Free Savory stuff.

I had intended to put the mixture over pasta, but there wasn’t any sauce per se. The chicken had not dried out or anything, there was just no extra liquid such as one likes to put over pasta. I did not feel like messing with it and perhaps letting the chicken dry out (breast meat can be so touchy), so we skipped the pasta.

Instead, I made garlic toast with some French bread I happened to have on hand. Butter, garlic power, basil, oregano in a 350 degree oven. Oh, don’t shake your gourmet fingers at me over the garlic powder. My garlic press was soaking in the sink and I didn’t have 15 extra minutes to let the garlic breathe anyways.

But as long as you are shaking your fingers at me, though, I’ll confess that I used Country Crock instead of real butter. As usual, I had not planned ahead and I felt like using something I could spread easily.

It was not a bad supper. I believe, however, that I will want to tweak the recipe if I desire to make such a dish in the future. It will probably rate a blog post if I do. As always, I hope you’ll stay tuned.