"Chicken Parm" w/ Sun-dried Tomato Risotto

It's been way too long since my last post, so if you're even reading this, thanks. It's hard to give a shit about a blog that barely exists.

I've been busy. Let's see, between the 50 hour work weeks, the sudden emergence of grad-school classes, and failed match.com adventures, it's been hard to find time to sit down and get back to doing something I actually enjoy. But regardless of the significant lapse between blog posts, I have not forgotten how to be a Fat Kid. This is what I do people. So let's get to it.

I felt like chicken parm. It's good comfort-food.
Good cold-weather-food.
Good I'm-not-concerned-with-calories-induce-massive-black-out-coma-food.

I was in need of all three of these things.

I decided I wanted to switch it up though. Traditionally, chicken parm arrives on your plate, breaded and deep fried, covered in layers of melted cheese, accompanied with its friends spaghetti and marinara sauce. There really is no reason to change anything about this. This is a beautiful thing already. But...I'm going to change it anyways.

I decided I would sub the pasta/marinara for a risotto that kind of tasted like pasta/marinara? But better? You'll catch my drift. I also decided to use bone-in-skin-on chicken breast.  

Chicken needs skin to be happy, and bones make things taste better. This requires no explanation from me. Or maybe it does, but you can Google that.

Risotto takes time so I decided to get to the chicken later.

I always use chicken stock as my cooking broth for risotto. But this time I added a bunch of chopped sun dried tomatoes to the pot and let that simmer for about 20 minutes to impart its sweet flavors upon the stock.

I then strained the broth to get rid of all the dried tomatoes. This left me with a lot less liquid than I started with. I would need more liquid to cook my risotto, so I turned to these bad boys.

These are the best fucking whole tomatoes in a can. They may cost like a dollar more than the other brands, but it's money well spent. Just take my word for it. If you're planning on making any kind of tomato sauce, start with these things.

I strained the liquid that comes in the can and just set the tomatoes in a bowl. Once you crush these things by hand, there will be plenty of delicious juice to add to your already simmering broth. I added enough so that my pot didn't spill over, so there was a little left over. This was kind of an experiment so I got a little wasteful.

I chopped a shallot, some garlic, and a whole bunch of basil. I then sautéed the shallot in some extra virgin olive oil and a little butter. Once the shallot was cooked, I added my garlic, some of the basil, and crushed red pepper.

Once the garlic was cooked (about 30 seconds or so), I added a cup of arborio rice and stirred constantly, for about a minute, allowing the grains to become opaque. At this point I added about a 1/3 of a cup of red wine. Once that cooked down, I began the process of slowly adding my stock, constantly stirring, and repeating. The basic method of cooking risotto. I added salt and pepper as necessary.

This process usually takes about 20 minutes. Once the rice was cooked to my liking, I added the rest of the basil I had chopped, a bunch of parmesan cheese, and some butter, and stirred all that up until it looked like this.

Now I needed to cook my damn chicken, so I covered this and set it aside.

I seasoned my chicken and whisked together some olive oil, parmesan cheese, crushed red pepper, and panko bread crumbs in a small bowl. I wanted to use this to crust the chicken, rather then top it with melted cheese. Just something different. I'm also not deep frying anything here.

I had pre-heated the oven to 400, placed my cast iron skillet over high heat and added some olive oil. Once it was smoking hot, it was time to sear that motherfucker.

After searing for about 2 minutes on each side, I spread my olive oil/parmesan paste over the tops of the breasts and put the skillet in the oven. The chicken needs to cook for 10 minutes or so. You don't want bloody chicken. After about 10 minutes, I put the broiler on high to finish it off and really brown the paste on top of the chicken. My substitute for deep frying I guess.

Once they were nice and crispy, I was ready to get my Fat Kid on.

A little arugula salad went nice with this as well. Honestly though, preparing the perfect bite of chicken and risotto on the same fork and placing it in my mouth brought all the classic flavors of chicken parm to life, but with a slightly different twist.  You still get all the cheesy, bready, crispy chicken action of the classic, but in a way you've never really tasted it. The spaghetti/marinara thing just gets a little boring to me. This is rock-and-fucking-roll in your mouth.

I realize this is not a recipe that anyone can really follow.

My blog sucks.

- Fat Kid