Buffalo Chicken Strips

I know, I know. I'm the guy who never calls. I'm the friend that always flakes. I swear, I have a good excuse...




Between the annual Scottish Walk, SNOMG 2009, an hour long wait in a Target checkout line on Christmas Eve (brilliant plan, I know), Christmas, and New Years, I barely found time to document what I had going on in the kitchen.

Christmas was very good to me, however. Aside from some fabulous gifts (West Wing, the Complete Series!!), I received four cookbooks this year! It was just the motivation I needed to get my butt in gear... or so I thought. Time got away from me yet again. Work started to get busy, as January is our biggest month. My Christmas break with school ended. The New Year came and went.


I got back in the saddle this past weekend, so to speak. It's been a sad weekend. Well, for me, anyway. I finally took down the Christmas tree, packed away our ornaments in a box that says "CHRISTMAS ORNAMENTS, JUST ADD TREE!", and took down all the lights hanging around the apartment. It's my least favorite part about the holidays. There's so much build up and good cheer, and just like that, it's over.


There is one bright shining beacon in my life that helps me navigate the post-Christmas emo-fallout: FOOTBALL! That's right. The one thing that does happen right after the holidays is the NFL postseason. It is approximately one month of nail-biting temper-tantrum-inducing gridiron awesome. I love it!


Yesterday was the first weekend of the Playoffs, and it... did not treat me well. At all. Patrick and I have a bit of a rivalry in our house. He's a Baltimore Ravens fan (forgive him, Lord, for he knows not what he does), and I am a New England Patriots fan. I must admit that I more than enjoyed the Ravens' bitter loss to us earlier in the season (it was a close one); I may have gloated like a bratty nine year old a bit too much, but I will neither confirm nor deny such accusations against my sterling character.

Well, I got my just desserts yesterday, and boy, did Patrick enjoy every single minute of it. The Patriots lost... with flair. The final score against the Ravens was 33 - 14. It was brutal.


The only thing that got me through the turmoil of yesterday (other than Sam Adams Winter Lager and my own tears) was one of my favorite things about football season: tasty gametime food. And what we had was not only tasty (I enjoyed it very much in between cursing the Patriots with creative expletives), it was incredibly easy to make.

Buffalo Chicken Strips

Ingredients:

7 or 8 skinless boneless chicken breasts, cut into strips (can be pre-cooked, see note about cooking times)
1 1/4 cup your favorite buffalo wing sauce
1 to 2 cups seasoned bread crumbs (amount depends on your level of crumb coverage)
1 cup milk
3 eggs
8 ounces blue cheese, crumbled


Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

2. Pour bread crumbs out on a plate, and set aside. In a large bowl, whisk together eggs and milk.

3. Dip each chicken strip in your egg and milk mixture, coating thoroughly. Then roll your strip in bread crumbs, until they are covered completely. Place in a 9 x 13 baking dish. Lather, rinse, and repeat until all your chicken strips have made their way into the baking dish.

4. Drizzle buffalo sauce over the chicken strips evenly.

5. Bake for 25 to 35 minutes, checking periodically toward the end of the cooking cycle for desired level of done-ness and crispy-ness. (**SEE NOTE.)

6. Plate your chicken strips, and top with crumbled blue cheese.

**NOTE: If you are preparing this dish with pre-cooked chicken strips, reduce your cooking time to 15 to 20 minutes.

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Thanksgiving, Part II: Blue Cheese & Almond Stuffed Dates Wrapped in Bacon

Remember how I promised I was going to post a few more test recipes for Thanksgiving prior to the actual holiday? Yea, that didn't happen. This is mostly because whenever I thought about the daunting task I had before me of contributing six to seven dishes for TEN person Thanksgiving meal (that had to be made and prepped in Washington DC but transported to the Eastern Shore of Maryland), I usually wound up in some dark corner shaking and crying.

So here we are... post-Thanksgiving. Whoops. Sorry?

Anyway, this was my first big Thanksgiving. In my family, I'm an only child with no aunts, uncles, or first cousins. Thanksgiving was always a small affair. I was really excited about this year because of this newfound large-familyness. Regardless, I was still terrified.

In total, I spent about nine hours cooking and prepping, split between the night before Thanksgiving (until about 3am) and the morning of Thanksgiving. I must point out, though, that can't I take all the credit: I had a great sous chef.

Sadly the adventure was not free from catastrophe: for example, there was a point where I ended up with a face full of sweet potato and its subsequent mash splattered all over part of the kitchen. It was the Thanksgiving equivalent of a slasher flick. One dish had to be substituted with something else at the very last minute, literally... like 15 minutes before I was supposed to hop in the shower and get ready.

In the end, the sweat, endless dirty dishes, and tears were all worth it. Sweet breads, savory side dishes, two (admittedly store-bought) pies, four bottles of wine, and our dogs were all packed up in the car successfully on Thanksgiving Day.

I have to be honest and say I broke the golden rule of cooking on holidays: "Try out your new recipes before the big day! Don't make something for the first time for Thanksgiving!"

I didn't do that.

Instead I treated my future in-laws like culinary guinea pigs. I did play it safe by making some things I had made successfully in the past, such as my Zucchini Bread and my Cranberry Orange Bread with Walnuts, but there were some pretty big side dishes that I had never made before.

I got lucky! Everything turned out well, and there were even a couple of new standouts, including the recipe I am about to share with you. They were so good that, as soon as they were out of the oven, I had to keep swatting at Patrick to keep his grubby little mitts off of them. Inevitably, he was successful, but that was okay as he proclaimed these little gems as one of the best things he's ever tasted. (Small transgressions such as food thievery are easily forgiven when there are compliments involved.)

Blue Cheese & Almond Stuffed Dates Wrapped in Bacon

Ingredients:

36 pitted dates
18 slices of bacon, cut in half vertically
7 ounces crumbled blue cheese (this amount varies on how stuffed you want your dates)
1/4 cup light brown sugar
Slivered almonds (you'll need about three per date)
Toothpicks

Directions:

1. Preheat your oven to 375 degrees.

2. Cut your dates in half and remove the pits. (I prefer to cut my dates almost all the way around, but not entirely, so the dates open up like a book.)

3. Stuff with three slivered almonds and a heaping amount of blue cheese. Close the dates back up, and make sure your contents are enclosed almost entirely within the date. If you see a peek of cheese here and there, it's not the end of the world.

4. Sprinkle each piece of bacon with a pinch of brown sugar. Wrap each closed and stuffed date in piece of bacon (with the brown sugar side against the date), and secure it with one toothpick.

NOTE: You are now ready for baking! I have a couple of recommendations here. The bacon, when cooked, will produce quite a bit of grease. Because of this, if this recipe is baked only on a baking sheet, your dates will be sitting in a big grease puddle by the time you pull them out of the oven. There are two solutions to this. First, you can simply cook them on the baking sheet, and then pat your dates free of grease with a paper towel before serving. It works well, but it is a bit of extra work. Second, you could cook your dates on an oven safe rack (or even a vented broiler pan) placed on a baking sheet to catch the grease. Now that we've gone over this, you're ready for step five!

5. Bake for 30 minutes, or until bacon is crisp.

6. Let stand for at least 5 to 10 minutes before serving.

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The "Villany" of Foodie Elitists

A lot of people think that foodies are this huge, elitist group in the sky that are there to critique and to judge. Can I tell you? If you eat, you're a foodie. If you have an opinion about what you're tasting, that makes you a foodie. Your job in life is to enjoy your life.

--Sandra Lee

What is a "foodie" exactly? Some of the definitions I've found are quite hilarious:

"Either a 27 year old woman with a boob job, or a gay man with a great job. Both claim to have many friends that are also foodies. They see Rachael Ray have foodgasms and expect the same from Burger King.

They spend too much money trying to emulate food celebrities they see on Bravo, and do ridiculous activities like going out in a party of 10 to a Kobe beef tasting."

Another definition...

"A person that spends a keen amount of attention and energy on knowing the ingredients of food, the proper preparation of food, and finds great enjoyment in top-notch ingredients and exemplary preparation.

A foodie is not necessarily a food snob, only enjoying delicacies and/or food items difficult to obtain and/or expensive foods; though, that is a variety of foodie."

And another...

"A dumbed-down term used by corporate marketing forces to infantilize and increase consumerism in an increasingly simple-minded American magazine reading audience. The addition of the long "e" sound on the end of a common word is used to create the sensation of being part of a group in isolationist urban society, while also feminizing the term to subconsciously foster submission to ever-present market sources."

No matter what definition you subscribe to, one cannot deny that the label of "foodie" has an upturned-nose connotation. You cannot just be a foodie; you are silently anointed and inducted into an elite club.

Frankly, it's rather sad. While I don't find myself often reaching for Sandra Lee recipes, I whole-heartedly agree with her sentiment. I don't think you need to know about Citronelle or know who Todd English is in order to be a foodie. You don't need to know how to make the perfect puff pastry dough or poach an egg to be a foodie.

Of course it could simply be a case of a few bad apples ruining the rest of the foodie bunch with snobbery and elitism. It's a shame, too. Good food and the appreciation of it should be something open to the masses. Someone's opinion shouldn't be discounted because they aren't a member of this picky club. Someone shouldn't be ousted for having the audacity to frequent a chain restaurant willingly.

For me? My kitchen is woefully lacking in terms of proper tools. My food processor is on its last legs, and I am desperate need of a rolling pin and about... eighty other things. The thought of doing something as basic as roasting a turkey makes me want to run screaming out of the building. There are times I amaze myself with how much I lack in the chopping "skills" department. I have yet to make a successful meatloaf. I have been bested by two (two!) recipes so far.

Do these things make me any less of a foodie?

I love food. I love making it. I love going out to restaurants, from chains to unique ventures; I don't discriminate. I love learning about different flavors. I even love my kitchen failures, and trust me, they happen. Ask me about my attempt at Eggplant dip one day.

The class system that has developed in the food world is not all that surprising; it happens with everything. It is, however, still tragic. Go out. Enjoy food. Have an opinion on it. Don't let someone else tell you what is good and what isn't; that's for you to decide. And don't let anyone tell you your opinion is less informed or less important just because you can't julienne a zucchini, or even know what that means.

It's not a crime to eat at a chain restaurant, or to eat food that come out of a box. What is a crime is that a group of people have decided to claim "good food" and knowledge of what makes food good all for themselves.

In the immortal words of Mel Gibson, "Everyone needs to calm down and eat a fruit cup or something." And sorry Mr./Ms. Foodie, the fruit cup is not organic.

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