Frannie’s Hot Tub Chicken (or Cornish Hen)

I’m a big fan of Cornish hens because they’re more flavorful than a chicken, fit in my slow cooker, and kids really enjoy the fact that it’s like a small chicken. I really love the combination of foul, tomato sauce, vinegar, herbs, capers and parmesan cheese which really makes this one of my favorite dishes to make – and it’s really easy too.

 

Ingredients:

• A Cornish hen (or a chicken if you have a big enough slow cooker)
• Either a can of tomato puree or about 4 large tomatoes plus enough water to cover the hen
• Capers and caper vinegar to taste, or in my case, about half a cup of pepperoncini vinegar
• Thyme, rosemary, basil and whatever favorite herbs you would like to add
• Garlic (In my case, instead of using garlic, I mixed in about half a cup of a cilantro garlic cream I had prepared a few days before)
• Onion
• About a teaspoon of salt (I usually eye it so I cannot be certain of the amount)

 

How to prepare:

1. Make sure to fully defrost the hen before cooking it
2. If you’d like, you can stuff it with a bit of rosemary and garlic
3. Place the hen in the slow cooker
4. Add the can of tomato sauce or the fresh tomatoes and water
5. Add herbs and the rest of the ingredients, except for the parmesan cheese
6. Slow cook for at least three hours, twenty minutes on high and the rest on the low setting
7. Flip it over after about an hour and a half so that it cooks evenly – if the juices coming out of the hen are pink or red the hen is not ready. You can’t really cook it for too long since the longer it stays in the slow cooker, the more tender and flavorful it becomes.
8. Place your favorite part of the hen on a dish, then drench it in the tomato sauce and sprinkle with parmesan cheese. The tomato sauce is excellent with any kind of pasta or rice as well.
9. Enjoy!

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Recipe: My Personal Pollo Alla Cacciatora

We finally did some grocery shopping and I’m very excited to finally have ingredients again to cook. I was getting tired of trying to make different pasta dishes with whatever weird stuff I could find. I have never purchased a whole chicken before, mostly because I thought they would be too expensive, but I found out that one chicken cost less than one little Cornish hen, and sure, the hen may have been healthier if it had been raised properly, but I doubt it. In fact, the two taste exactly the same when prepared this way.

What you will need…

Chicken Cacciatora.

• A whole chicken.

• Onions.

• Garlic.

• Canned or fresh cubed tomatoes.

• Capers.

• Olive oil.

• Parmesan cheese.

• Salt.

• Bacon.

• Thyme and rosemary.

How to make it…

1. Chop the garlic and place it in a pan with a teaspoon of olive oil. Allow it to brown a bit.
2. Add the onions and let them cook until transparent.
3. Chop the bacon and add that as well.
4. Keep stirring until the bacon cooks for a few minutes and add in the herbs.
5. Take a third of the onion mix and stuff it inside the chicken. Place a couple of capers under the skin.
6. Place the chicken in a big pot, dump in a large can of diced tomatoes, or chop up 4 tomatoes and add two cups of water.
7. Add a teaspoon of salt and a couple of more pinches of rosemary and thyme as you see fit.
8. Turn on the heat to medium and add a teaspoon of capers (or more, if you like) and half the jar of the capers’ vinegar.
9. Wait for the sauce to begin to boil around the chicken and then turn it to low and cover.
10. After an hour, flip the chicken around. You may want to baste the chicken with the sauce every 15 minutes to allow it to absorb the flavors.
11. Let it slow cook for a few hours. The longer you cook it, the more tender and blended the flavors become.
12. Place some of the chicken on a plate along with some of the tomatoes and sauce and sprinkle with Parmesan.
13. Eat up!

Tip: You can always brown the chicken with your preferred method before slow cooking it. Remember that you can always place the left overs in a slow cooker or back in a pot to reheat. The best thing about slow cooking is that you don’t really need to pay much attention to it especially if you use a slow cooker! Just dig in when you’re hungry.

Two Pasta Recipes: Pasta all’Aglio Olio e Pepperoncino and Creamy Tomato Garlicky Pasta

Since we didn’t do any grocery shopping until today, yesterday and the day before I had to come up with something that my boyfriend would enjoy once again with what little we had left in the apartment. Technically we could have survived another couple of days if not a month with what we had, but I guess he would have gotten a bit tired of eating pasta. The second dish was my attempt at making something that would look like mac-and cheese without using cheese (since we were out).

Pasta all’Aglio

What you will need…

Pasta all'aglio olio e pepperoncino

• Spaghetti (I usually go for the thinnest).

• Garlic.

• Crushed chili pepper.

• Olive oil.

• Rosemary.

• Thyme (my mom usually would use fresh parsley but this is all I had).

• Salt.

How to make it…

1. Chop the garlic (two cloves should do) and place in pan with olive oil.
2. Cook on medium-low heat until the garlic is crispy and brown on the edges. Don’t burn.
3. Add the herbs in the oil as well and turn the heat off. Add two pinches of salt and the chili pepper.
4. Boil up the spaghetti (mixing often to prevent sticking) for the amount of time mentioned on the box.
5. Drain the pasta and place in pan with oil.
6. Mix well and taste to make sure it is salted enough.
7. Place some in a dish and enjoy!

Tip: This is a very simple dish that only takes minutes and requires very little preparation. If you wish you can cook up some vegetables separately and even add some bacon to mix in!

Creamy Tomato Garlicky Pasta

Creamy Tomato Garlicky Pasta

What you will need…

• Penne.

• Garlic.

• Crushed chili pepper.

• Onion.

• Salt.

• Vegetable tomato juice such as V8.

• Heavy whipping cream.

• Thyme.

• Rosemary.

• Butter.

How to make…

1. Boil the penne according to the instructions (with a pinch of salt).
2. Fry up the garlic and the onions as explained in the above recipe but replace olive oil with butter. Also add the herbs.
3. Add a cup of V8 and a cup of cream.
4. Add the chili pepper and let it simmer for 20 minutes on low. To speed up the process you can mix two teaspoons of corn starch with cold water and melt it thoroughly then place in the sauce to help thicken.
5. Once the sauce is as thick as you like, mix in the pasta. You can add Parmesan cheese too add a nice cheesy touch to it.
6. Dish it out and enjoy!

Tip: Remember, you can always add whatever extras you want. I used minimal ingredients because we were completely out of food, but this dish would be great if you added broccoli and even Brussels sprouts or bacon to the onions and garlic.