Winey Chicken and Roasted Carrots

It's a two-fer! (There's also garlic mashed potatoes and peas but there isn't much to say about them... follow box directions for the potatoes, and microwave the peas with some butter. Ta-da...)

Winey Chicken

Ingredients
Chicken (I used tenderloins, about 10 of them... 1 package)
Red wine, about a cup
Minced garlic
Olive oil, 1 Tbsp
Paprika
Brown sugar (about 1/2 cup)
Salt

Equipment
Skillet (with a lid), stove

Instructions
Put the oil in your skillet and put it on medium heat. Add garlic and let it cook until it's tender and starting to turn golden. Add the chicken in one layer and cook it ten minutes on each side (until it's almost entirely cooked; no pink on the outside). Sprinkle the brown sugar and paprika on the chicken, and pour in the wine. Cover and simmer for 15-20 minutes. (If you want even color, turn the chicken about halfway through. You can see in the photo that I didn't do this.)

Yields
About 3 servings, for us. Scalable to a degree.

Total time
About 45 minutes.

Cleanup rating 3/5
You get a gunky pan but if you wash it quickly, it's not a problem. (I didn't wash it quickly.)

Difficulty rating 5/10
You really have to pay attention to this one at all the stages, and it takes a long while. It's helpful to have a few other things going (like I did) but then you have to orchestrate everything.

Flavor rating 5/10
Good... not great. I feel like I can fix it somehow. Maybe more sugar and paprika? Maybe I needed to flip the chicken? I'm not sure. But it was good.

Roasted Carrots

Ingredients
Baby carrots
Vegetable oil
Seasonings, including kosher salt (I used shallot-pepper seasoning)

Equipment
pan, oven, foil

Instructions
Preheat the oven to 400F and line the pan with foil. Toss your carrots in the oil, coating them evenly. Lay them in a single layer on your foil-lined pan and sprinkle with kosher salt and the seasoning of your choice. Bake for 40 minutes.

Yields
How many carrots did you use? Scalable.

Total time
45 minutes

Cleanup rating 1/5
Wait for foil to cool; throw away foil. Easy-peasy!

Difficulty rating 2/10
Other than testing to make sure the carrots are done, there isn't much to this. You can do it.

Flavor rating 7/10
I love roasted veggies, especially potatoes and carrots. YUM. Just... just yum.

Sweet-and-Spiced Chicken

Birk suggested chicken. I couldn't decide how to flavor it. I turned to Pinterest. This is what I adapted from what I found.

With oven potatoes - with onion thrown in this time! - and peas... and red wine.

Sweet-and-Spiced Chicken

Ingredients
Chicken breasts (I actually bought the tenderloins because I wanted them to bake faster)
Light brown sugar (about 2 Tbsp)
Cumin (1 tsp)
Paprika (1 tsp)
Garlic powder (1 tsp)
Onion powder/flakes (ours is dried minced onion) (1 tsp)
Oregano, dried (1 tsp)

Equipment
Oven, bowl for dredging, baking sheet with a rim

Instructions
Preheat the oven to 425F. Line your rimmed baking sheet with foil (trust me on this one) and spray it with Pam or your favorite equivalent. Wash and pat dry your chicken. In a bowl, mix together the sugar and your spices. Break up the brown sugar so that it's more powdery than it is clumpy. Dredge your chicken pieces in the mixture and lay them on the baking sheet. Bake for about 20 minutes if you're using chicken breasts; 12 if they're tenderloins. (Obviously check them for doneness.) The brown sugar will burn, but mine didn't burn ON the chicken... it sort of ran off and made a puddle shape outlined with burnt sugar, but there wasn't an iota of burnt sugar on the chicken. So maybe turn on a fan or something before you take it out of the oven, if you have a super-sensitive smoke alarm like ours.

Yields
Well, how much chicken did you use? Scalable.

Total time
This took about 30 minutes, what with preheating and baking. (Prep takes less time than the preheating.)

Cleanup rating 1/5
If you don't use the foil and the spray, you'll have a 6/5 on cleanup. But with the foil, all the cleanup you need is to throw away the foil and dump out the remainder of your sugar/spice mixture (you put raw chicken in it, don't you dare use it for anything else).

Difficulty rating  3/10
Dredging the chicken and getting it evenly coated when you aren't using a sticking agent like a beaten egg can be tricky (make sure the spices don't settle in the bowl and hide under the sugar) and you have to get the timing right on removing it from the oven (chicken needs to be done, but sugar shouldn't be too burnt) but it's pretty straightforward. If you get chicken cut the way you like it, you don't even need a knife.

Flavor rating 7/10
Yum! It was different, and I think I could probably tweak the spices a little bit, but overall, quite good.

Mushrooms, Part Two

Remember how I got my mushrooms drunk last night? Well, tonight I made them breakfast.

Mushroomelette

Ingredients
Eggs (I used 3)
Mushrooms (I used 3 button mushrooms)
Butter (about 1 Tbsp)
Cheese, shredded (I used Jack)
Seasonings (I used shallot-pepper)*

Equipment
Stove, pan, cheese grater

Instructions
Dice your mushrooms. (Just like last night, they don't have to be perfect, just evenly-sized.) Put your butter in a pan over medium heat. Once it's melted, add the mushrooms and stir them around to get them all buttery. Leave them alone for the most part (stir around occasionally) and go grate your cheese if you haven't already, and beat your eggs in a bowl. Once the mushrooms are tender, add the eggs and stir around until they look approximately like this:

Add the cheese and keep stirring around until the cheese is melted and the eggs are done.

*You can season at several different points: while the mushrooms are sauteeing, while the eggs aren't yet done, after you add the cheese, all three... whatever.

Yields
This was enough for two, because I used three eggs. This one, like last night's, is easily scalable.

Total time
Darn my lack of accountability on this front. I would guess about 15 minutes again, because I baked biscuits at the same time and they took a little over 15 minutes.

Cleanup rating 2/5
Eggs are pretty easy to clean up because they don't really stick to the pan. There are still a handful of dishes that need to be cleaned up, though (cutting board, knife, pan, bowl from the eggs, spoon).

Difficulty rating 3/10
You do have to pay attention when making this, but it's not terribly hard.

Flavor rating 5/10
Pretty good. Not great. I could have used more seasoning probably, but generally pretty good.

My Mushrooms Are Drunker Than I Am

(Well, I'm not at all drunk, so that's not really a fair comparison.)

I've never cooked mushrooms before. In fact, only in the past year or so have I even started eating mushrooms. Melting Pot stuffed mushroom caps, then Bonefish Grill's chicken marsala, then Madame Georgescu made the best little mushroom caps with some kind of Italian cheese in them, and Noodles & Company has great mushrooms in their Japanese pan noodles. So it turns out I quite like them. Tonight, I cooked them. And got them drunk.

This is one of those times where I used logic and experience and my own tastes to figure out how to make dinner, so the recipe is less-than-conventionally written.

Drunk Mushrooms

Ingredients
Mushrooms (I used three or four mid-sized button mushrooms)
Butter (I used about a Tbsp)
Garlic (I used somewhere between 1 and 2 tsp of the pre-minced stuff)
Wine (I used the cheap tiny carton of Pinot Noir from Target, probably 1/4 cup?)

Equipment
Pan, stove, stirring spoon

Instructions
Chop up your mushrooms. Don't worry if you have no idea how to cut mushrooms; I didn't. Just try to make even-sized pieces and you'll be fine.

Put your butter in your pan on medium heat. When the butter is melting, add the garlic and stir everything around to make things even.

When the butter is all melted, add the mushrooms. Stir them around to make them buttery.

Leave it alone for a while (I was cooking another recipe so I didn't mess with them much) and inhale the delicious odor emanating from your pan. I mean, yum, right?

Once the mushrooms are getting tenderer (poke them with a fork... I probably waited about 5-7 minutes?) add the wine.

Wait for about half of it to evaporate (stir occasionally) and then put your mushrooms on whatever you want (I used garlic mashed potatoes). Devour.

Yields
Well, that's up to you, isn't it? I'm categorizing this one as "scalable" since it's easier to make more or less. I made it for one person; you could easily make it for eight.

Total time
This one's tough, as I made about four different things in the kitchen tonight and didn't really watch the clock as much as I watched the food. I would estimate fifteen minutes.

Cleanup rating 2/5
The only reason this isn't a 1 is because you have to clean a pan. Also, you're working with red wine, so if you spill any, that will be difficult to clean, and there are little bits of mushroom and garlic that can get all over the place if you're reckless.

Difficulty rating 6/10
Cutting button mushrooms? Not super easy. They're round and have a weird texture and getting even pieces was a little difficult. Then again, this is the first time I've ever cut mushrooms. Also, you can get them pre-sliced if you're so inclined. You have to kind of know what you're doing here, though. Mushrooms feel almost tender when they're raw, so you have to pay attention to get your timing right. And don't burn the garlic. And don't add too much wine. And don't crowd the mushrooms. (Seriously, let them breathe in the pan. If you have too many mushrooms, use a bigger pan.)

Flavor rating 8/10
I think I can improve on this. I didn't really know how they'd turn out, so I was hesitant to season them, so maybe I'll experiment with some of that. But if you can manage to make these, you can probably guess at some kind of seasoning you might like with them. I've seen similar recipes mention rosemary, so that might be a good jumping-off point. But I loved these as they were, with my mashed potatoes and peas. Delicious.