Tuesday's Dinner

Tonight I attempted to cook something "fancy" which I have been wanting to attempt for a few weeks now. Mind you, my forte is in "flat bread-y breakfast foods." Also, I can count the number of times I have made chicken myself on one hand, so I was not sure how it would go.

Several weeks ago at a restaurant I had some pecan crusted chicken with a cranberry sauce. I like the idea of using fruit in dinner dishes and cranberries have a nice color. Though science might argue (if I could find that article...) that reds appeal to me because I'm female.

I grew up liking a lot of cheesy dishes. Cheese as in the food, not cheesy-haha. In recent years my stomach has grown somewhat lactose-intolerant. I keep telling it to love and tolerate, but it never listens. Suffice to say, the time is gone when anything can be made delicious by applying cheese. Fruit seems like a good alternative, and healthy too.

After the tasty restaurant food I went hunting for recipes. Below are my findings and what I took from them.

Pecan Crusted Chicken
Pecan Crusted Chicken Tenders with Cranberry-Orange Sauce

• Combined the flour, panko and pecans and did not measure any of them. When I cooked the chicken, the breading got a little burnt and some came off the chicken.
  • Next time I will try this recipe's breading method, including finely chopping up the pecans.
• Completely ignored their sauce.

Pecan And Cranberry Crusted Chicken

• Was going to use some parsley, but I forgot!

My Pecan Crusted Chicken

• pecans (somewhat crushed)
• panko
• whole wheat flour
• egg
• chicken

Mixed the dry ingredients in a bowl, and cracked an egg in another bowl. Dipped the chicken in the egg and then rolled it around in the dry ingredients. Cooked the result in a ceramic pan. As I said before, it got a little crispy and the coating did not want to stay on.

Had a fair amount of egg and dry mix left over, so I combined those and a bit of baking mix and cooked up a pecan-biscuit/dumpling in my pan as well. Some people seem to think that is gross, using the leftover chicken battering ingredients, but it has never gone wrong for me yet! The biscuit was quite tasty, especially with a little bit of Monterrey Jack. (Cheese made it into my meal, after all.)

Cranberry Sauce
Apparently cranberry sauce traditionally has a lot of sugar in it, so I looked for healthier recipes. The sauce I had at the restaurant was not terribly sweet in the first place.

Cranberry Sauce

• Followed this recipe's cooking instructions but ditched the juice, orange zest and pineapple.

Sugarless Cranberry Sauce

• Used this recipe's apple sauce idea.

My Cranberry Sauce

• 1/2 cup water
• 1/8 tsp ground ginger
• 1/8 (generous) tsp cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp lemon juice
• 1/4 (generous) cup unsweetened apple sauce
• 6 oz frozen cranberries
• 1/3 cup whipped honey

Plopped the frozen cranberries in a measuring cup (for lack of another container) and rinsed them. This seemed to help defrost them as well. I have no idea how one usually handles cranberries, but I removed the ends where the stems had once been.

Combined the water, ginger, cinnamon, lemon juice and apple sauce in a pan and and brought it to a boil. Added in the cranberries. Let it cook for about 10 minutes, occasionally mashing and stirring.

After ten minutes I stirred in the honey, took it off the heat and poured the sauce into a bowl to cool.

Glorious Results


The chicken needs some work, but the cranberry sauce came out well. It has a powerful flavor. I did not need as much sauce as I put on my chicken!