Monica Williams's Blog

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When I was a little kid, my mom used to make spaetzle all the time. Back then we didn’t have a fancy spaetzle grater so we used this piece of plastic with a grate pattern. A few years back, during one of my many early twenties moves, I lost that little piece of childhood. This Christmas, to my excitement, my mom replaced it with a fancy grater from William Sonoma.

With quarantine keeping everyone home, it seemed like a perfect time to rip it open and give it ago. And what better to eat with spaetzle than chicken schnitzel. You can make it with pork but after one very bad experience with pork – let’s just say – I’ll take the chicken version any day!

What you’ll need:
For the Spaetzle:

1 cup flour3 large eggs1/4 cup milkSalt & Pepper for seasoning1/2 tsp of onion powder

For the Schnitzel:

1 lb of chicken cutlets (you can also cut and pound down breast meat like I usually do)1 cup of flour1 cup of plain breadcrumbs2 eggs3 tbsp of dijon mustard2 tbsp of soy sauce1 tbsp garlic1 tbsp of worchester sauce1 tsp Chili flakesSalt & Pepper for seasoning

For Topping:

2 tbsp salted butter1 lemon2 tbsp parsley

When making this recipe, I usually prep the spaetzle first. To do this, you’ll need to mix your wet ingredients in a mixer; I have a stand mixer but a hand mixer will work just a well. Make sure your ingredients are well mixed but not frothing before moving to the next step.
In a separate bowl, mix your dry ingredients together. Once these are well mixed, you can combine the wet and dry on a low setting until your batter is thick and well-combined.

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You can put this aside until your water is boiling and your chicken is in the oven.

After getting said water on the stove and turning the heat up – about 6 cups in a medium sized pot should do – you can start preparing the chicken. You’ll want to make sure your chicken is even thickness throughout and well seasoned (see below).

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Once the chicken is prepped, you can put it aside for a few minutes.

You’ll need to prep a high edges to hold a 1-inch thick layer of vegetable oil. I usually put a cap-full or two of peanut oil in mine to increase how hot I can make my oil but it’s not required in any means. While that’s heating, salt and pepper your breadcrumbs and flour in separate bowls. Once these have been mixed, you can make the most important batter.

Combine the remaining ingredients in a bowl and mix until it’s all the same consistency. It should look like a brown, chunky uncooked scrambled egg mixture.

Each piece of chicken should be coated in flour, then the egg mixture, and lastly the bread crumbs before being fried. Before starting to fry the chicken, turn the oven to 400 degrees (this can be done earlier depending on how long it takes for you). Then fry each piece of chicken until it’s golden brown and place it on an oven tray.

When you’ve finished the chicken, place it in a preheated oven for 10 to 20 minutes depending on how thick your chicken is. While it’s cooking through, prep your hot water with salt and start working your way through your spaetzle batter. The spaetzle should cook quickly – about 3 to 4 minutes – and float to the top when it’s ready.

When you finish, strain out the water and put the spaetzle on the lowest heat setting. Throw in the butter and (optionally) parsley, mixing until thoroughly melted, and let sit until the chicken in ready. Be sure to stir every minute or so to make sure nothing burns.

When the chicken is cooked through, plate the spaetzle underneath the chicken and spritz the top with a quarter of your lemon.

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When making my favorite roast chicken, I think it’s important to pair an equally delicious gravy with it. As a lot of my dishes, this recipe came from what I had on hand and what I really wanted to eat but it’s slowly turned into a house favorite.

[image error]If you haven’t already seen my chicken recipe, check it out here –
https://cookingwithascientist.wordpress.com/2020/05/02/lemon-and-thyme-roast-chicken/

For this you’ll need the following ingredients:

Lemon juice from one lemon2 tbsp Corn Starch1 Cup of Chardonnay2 Cups of drippings from a roasted chicken1 tbsp Thyme1 tbsp RosemarySalt and Pepper

The recipe itself is relatively simple. Dump all the liquids into a pot and wait for it to boil. This should take roughly 5 to 10 minutes depending on how cold your wine is. Once this has boiled, you can start seasoning it with your fresh herbs and salt/pepper. What I’ve provided is what I usually use but feel free to add or subtract based on our own tastes.

Once the gravy has the flavor you’d like, you’ll need to add a thickener so the gravy clings to your chicken. For this, I use one cup of water with 2 tbsp of corn starch dissolved in by stirring it. It’s important to do this last so the entire dish is boiling or it won’t thicken properly. Add the solution in slowly while stirring to ensure it doesn’t clump.

From here, all you need to do is occasionally stir until you reach a consistency you’d like. I usually make mine on the thicker but you don’t have to. You can also substitute milk for water with the corn starch but I don’t think this mixes well with wine flavors.

Lemon and Thyme Roast Chicken

When I was entering middle school, my parents got divorced and my dad moved out and around the corner from our childhood home. He lived in a small, sparsely decorated apartment that sat directly behind the old McDonald’s drive-thru. It was anything but cheerful and my father worried we wouldn’t want to spend time there. Add in the burden of paying child support while paying for his new apartment, money was tighter than it had ever been. The only meal my dad could truly afford was doing a big chicken roaster (they were always cheap back then) and relatively easy to cook.

Now-a-days, our family isn’t struggling like we used to but baking the perfect roast chicken still made me feel at home and loved in ways I didn’t realize until I moved out. Much like my mom’s homemade manicotti and all her wacky baked goods, some meals just made me feel more grounded than ours. But as it is with age and wisdom, a lot of these meals have grown to become something more advanced than what I had as a child.

Here’s what you’ll need:

1 full-sized chicken roaster (I usually assume 1.5 pounds per person and 2.5 if you want to make soup afterward)Fresh herbs (Thyme, Rosemary, and Parsley)2 LemonsSalt and PepperMinced garlicCarrotsOnionsCeleryButter (roughly a stick) at room temperature

After removing the innards and washing your chicken off, you’ll want to pat it dry and place it in a glass dish wrapped in foil. This won’t create an excessive amount of juices so your bird doesn’t need to be swimming in space, just enough to hold about two cups of liquid.

After getting your bird situated, you’ll want to start massaging the skin from the bottom of the breastplate upward so you can fit your entire hand from front to back. If you have trouble with this, feel free to cut tougher strings with a knife. Once you’ve got it good and loose, take your room temperature butter and layer it under the skin. This will give your skin extra crisp and make sure your bird stays moist.

Once you’ve layered your butter, the rest is relatively easy. First, season your bird with garlic, salt, and pepper. Make sure the bird is well-coated or you’ll be unimpressed with the skin. Once coated, slice up your lemon into centimeter thick slices and place them evenly over the bird.

Next, roughly chop your herbs and the vegetables. Scatter the herbs on top of the bird and fill the cavity and remaining dish space with the vegetables.

For the herbs, I use about half a handful of each for a 5 pound bird which comes out to about 5 tablespoons each. This can be adjusted based on how much you like each of the herbs or size of the chicken you have.

For the vegetables, I use two carrots, one onion, and 4 stalks of celery for myself and my husband. Personally, I would never do less than this but depending on family size and preference, you can always bump this up.

When you’ve got everything in the tray, it should look like this:

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As a bonus, you can save the innards and cook them in the tray. They will add some great flavor to your gravy.

From here, cook your chicken in 30 minute increments until you reach an internal temperature of 160. The first 30 minutes should be cooked at 450 and proceeding increments should be cooked at 350. If cooking for over 1.5 hours, be sure to add a foil covering to avoid burning your lemons or chicken.

And that’s it – a delicious Sunday night meal! I’ll be sure to post my white wine gravy companion in the next few days!

One of my favorite lunches to make at the beginning of the week is a caprese salad. It’s light enough that you don’t have that 2 o’clock mid-meeting slump but with some light pasta it’s filling and satisfying and just what you need to start your week on a positive note!

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I could probably talk on and on about how much I love Italian food and this salad but I won’t bore you with that just yet!

Here’s what you’ll need:

8 oz of mozzarella cheese balls (the fresh ones!)8 oz of cherry tomatoes (I like the heirloom ones but that’s just me!)1 cup of dry pasta1 tbsp of oil1 tbsp of pestoA few leaves of fresh basil3 to 4 tbsp of parmesan cheese

First’s thing first – you’ll need to make about 1 cup of dry pasta – whatever you like; personally I like bowtie but you can really make it with anything (even elbow – no matter how weird that sounds).

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Once cooked al dente, you’ll want to strain it and put it into a big bowl. Add about a tbsp of oil (olive or avocado is recommended) and a tbsp of pesto (store bought is fine). Once you mix that up, put it off to the side and let it cool – you don’t want hot pasta melting your mini mozzarella balls!

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When it’s cool, you can either chop up or leave whole the mozzarella cheese and the cherry tomatoes and throw them into the bowl as well. Personally – I like to half the cheese and half/quarter the tomatoes so that you get different shapes and sizes.

Then, just slice up the fresh basil and grate the parmesan. Right into the bowl it goes, give it a good mix, and you’re all finished!! Dish it up and you’ve got meals for 4 days (or 2 if you feel like sharing with your husband or fiancé!)

Hiya and Welcome to my humble blog about good food, great places to eat, and two little maniac who would cry to sit at the tables producing the recipes I hope to share with you.

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I spent a lot of years suppressing this side of me because I was always told it wasn’t profitable, or a career path, or I shouldn’t do this without a degree. So I went and I got a degree in the only thing I felt comparable to cooking – chemistry. Say all you want about science, it’s done not but enhance my ability to master recipes, combine flavors, and provide recipes that most likely gave my fiancé real taste buds (his idea of a night out used to be McDonalds – we’re working on it folks!).

I spent a good time working under a Michelin star chef and we’re still close to this day. He taught me all the foundations of a good chef and I wouldn’t love cooking as much as I did without his help. He spent hours prepping and making sure everyone was in order and I spent every hour watching him and learning. But he spent just as much time teaching me how to properly spin crepes and make the best hotdog I’ll ever have. For that – I owe him my ability to make edible food the ‘right way’ – even if I don’t always do it that way.

If he taught me all the rules of cooking, my mother taught me all the fun of cooking. My mother was never a Michelin star chef but she ALWAYS had fun; from ‘animal pancakes’ that were most definitely always a caterpillar or bear of some sort to hand-making manicotti just to eat most of the rolls before they ever got stuffed. My mother taught me how to love and laugh in the kitchen and I hope to one day share that joy with my own child but for now – I hope to bring that joy to you!