Peppered Chicken with Demi-Glace Sauce

Happy Turkey day everyone! (From Canada, that is!)


I just spent the week in Ottawa with my family, completely derailing my diet. I have just realized that my family's roots lie in white bread, potatoes, and pumpkin pie. The main food groups of my parent's house are russet potatoes, overcooked ground beef, kraft dinner and burgers from wendy's.

Sigh.

Back to the real world tomorrow! And back to basics, low-carb style.

Coming up this weekend is Chris' birthday. Christopher is my wonderful boyfriend whom I have been dating for almost 3 years. I am planning quite the 'do' for us both for next weekend, but if he is free on his real birthday and not doing anything, I think a little home cooked meal is in order from his woman.

I was looking through the weight watchers cookbook I bought (and never used), wondering if it had any low-carb recipes...and it turns out it does.

And so, for the birthday dinner, I think I will try a new recipe, Peppered Chicken with Demi-Glace sauce! (Doesn't that sound fancy?) This recipe is featured in Weight Watcher's "My Turnaround Program Cookbook".

Ingredients:

1 1/2 teaspoons whole tri-colour or black peppercorns
4 (1/4 pound) skinless boneless chicken breast halves
1/4 and 1/8 teaspoon salt
3 teaspoons unsalted butter
1/4 cup finely chopped onion
2 garlic cloves, minced
1/3 cup white wine
3/4 cup demi-glace
1 tablespoon dijon mustard

Method:

1. Place the peppercorns in a zip-close plastic bag. With a meat mallet or the bottom of a heavy skillet, crack the peppercorns.
2. Sprinkle the chicken with the 1/4 teaspoon salt. Press the cracked peppercorns onto both sides of each chicken breast half.
3. Melt 1 1/2 teaspoons of the unsalted butter in a large nonstick skillet over medium-high heat. Add the onion and garlic; cook, stirring occasionally until softened, about 1 minute. Add the wine and simmer until it is almost evaporated, about 2 minutes. Add the demi-glace and mustard; cook until the mixture begins to thicken slightly, about 3 minutes. Remove the skillet from the heat and swirl in the remaining butter and the 1/8 teaspoon salt. Serve the chicken at once with the sauce.

WW Tip: Demi-Glace is an intensely flavoured brown sauce that takes a while to cook from scratch. Fortunately, you can find prepared demi-glace in gourmet stores and in the meat department of some large supermarkets.

The recipe makes 4 servings. 195 calories, 7g fat, 4g carbs, 1 g fibre, 26g protein. (And 4 WW points. heh.)

What I thought..

This recipe sounds delicious. Anyone following WW should purchase this book (I bought mine at my local WW centre, I'm not sure if you can get it from chapters but it's worth a look). It has many really delicious family friendly recipes, for every meal and occasion. It is a non-scary approach to cooking, it has neatly organized sections and the graphics are energizing and clean. It also has some great recipe photos, though not every recipe gets a photo. Check it out!

Running around like a chicken and other tales...

ok ladies and gents,

I am a low-carber who has had a glass of wine, so my typing is sure to suffer for it.

But regardless, I'd like to share something with you that I've been TRYING to find the time to cook for at least 1 week. Sheesh. Who thought finding time to make food would be so hard when I don't even have a family to trail after?

Apparently my time-management skills are lacking. (Either that, or I like watching two and a half men more than cooking... but I'm working to change that. :)

This week's recipe is a bit of a downer for me, because I didn't particularly cherish the results...and I have the leftovers in my fridge to prove it. HOWEVER, I am going to show you what I did, where I went wrong and what (I think) you can do to fix it and make this recipe fabulous!!

Here we go...

Chicken with Basil Cream Sauce

(Recipe courtesy of www.low-carb-diet-recipes.com)

Calories: 157, 2 carbs, 15g fat, 4g protein.

Ingredients:

• 1/2 cup of chicken broth
• 1/2 tsp garlic powder
• 1/2 tsp italian seasoning
• pinch of salt, pinch of pepper
• 1/2 cup heavy cream
• 4 tbsp prepared pesto sauce (look with the spaghetti sauce at the grocery store)
• 2 tsp grated parmesan
• 4 chicken breasts
• I added spinach...which was not in the original recipe

Directions:

1. Sauté the breasts in frying pan, then lower the heat and cook covered for another 10 minutes until no longer pink inside. (i.e. cook the chicken. lol).
   
2. In a large skillet, bring chicken broth, garlic powder, italian seasoning, salt and pepper to a boil. Let it keep boiling until it reduces to about 1/2 volume.
   



3. Stir in the cream, and again let it boil until it reduces to about 1/2 volume. (At this step, I added spinach so I got some extra veggies also..)


4. Whisk in prepared pesto and parmesan. Serve sauce over chicken.

Here's what I did differently:

1. I misread direction 2, and added the pesto right away. I really don't think this made any difference.
   
2. I did not have italian seasoning (honestly I don't even know what it is..) so I used some mrs. dash garlic and herb. That sounds italian-y doesn't it?
   
3. Because I have a hard time adding enough veggies to my day, I decided to throw spinach into this recipe as well. I think in cream sauces, spinach is divine. It gets all wilty and wonderful! How often can you say that wilted veggies are wonderful?

The result:

Ok. It was just....ok. VERY SALTY. I am not a huge fan...I think it LOOKS wonderful (despite my bad photography...) and it smells pretty wonderful. But, for a person who doesn't really dig salt...you're going to find this dish very salty. I attribute this to the canned chicken broth I used, as well as the mrs. dash, and the pinch of salt, obviously. I also think that the chicken I used was not of the highest quality (I got it in the freezer section of walmart. It was a week for penny-pinching). and possibly there was sodium added to it as well.

What I would do differently:

I definitely think that this recipe can be fixed. What I would do is substitute your favourite white wine for the chicken stock, FORGET adding the salt all together, and use a good quality, fresh chicken breast.

I would also not break my favourite pot lid by dropping it ontop of a can opener...

Sigh :)

Anyways..I'd love to know if someone else has better luck with this recipe than I have had...let me know!!

Enjoy...;)

Date Night Chicken

Ok so I want to keep this in my memory, but will not be able to make this recipe right now as I a) do not have a hot date night coming up and b) think this is too much food for me to eat before it goes bad! oh and c)... I don't actually own a casserole dish.

But man, if I have people over...I would love to do this recipe!

Date Night Chicken by Kitchen Parade

Basically it is a chicken casserole with broccoli, cheese and a SUPER yummy sounding sauce. Now...they suggest as an ingredient "egg noodles, tossed in butter". But there is no step where you add egg noodles, so I would just leave them out to make this truly low-carb! Perhaps have this with a caesar salad instead. The site says it is 14g per serving of carbs, but that is including the noodles. I'd say it's 6-8g per serving with the carbs coming from cheese + a bit of mayo.

If anyone makes this, please do post your thoughts...!!!!