Bon Appetit Cheaters Fried Chicken Sandwich

I love when days start out with blue skies – it immediately picks up my mood!

When I went to my my potato crusted quiche for my boss and I yesterday, I reached for my zucchini to shred and put into the quiche.  Sadly, it got frozen in the back of my fridge, as did my radishes which was going to pickle this weekend.

But I have to tell you, I don’t think my boss missed the veggies at all.  She kept saying “this is so rich tasting – I love it!”  This is where making baked potatoes ahead of time comes in handy.  I cooked a couple extra the night we had the Steak Diane.

Potato Crusted Quiche

• 4 servings:  293 calories, 15 fat, 612 sodium, 18 carbs, 1.6 fiber and 19.9 protein

Ingredients:

• 1 large baked potato, skin on, sliced
• 6 eggs
• 1/2 cup non-fat buttermilk
• 2 ounces Swiss cheese, chopped
• 2 ounces deli ham, chopped
• pinch of black pepper
• pinch of Italian seasoning

Heat oven to 350.  Spray you pie plate with Pam.  Lay the sliced potatoes over the bottom of the quiche.  Mix the eggs, buttermilk, cheese, ham, pepper and Italian seasoning and blend until the eggs are beaten well.

Pour into pie pan over potatoes.  Bake for 30 minutes, or until the center is set. I didn’t add any additional salt, because I had salt and pepper on the outside of my potatoes when I baked them, and I think there is enough salt in the cheese and deli ham.

Early last week I started a 60 day strength straining app called Volt Exercise.  Um, just yesterday I did Day 2!  All it said was “Plyo” and since Day 1 was just a fitness test, I had no idea what to expect.

Holy shizz – all lower body for 42 minutes!  Granted there were a few breaks and stretches sprinkled in, but my legs were on fire by the end.  In one set you had to do lunges on one side for 1 minute, followed by 1 minute of jump squats, back to lunges on the other leg for a minute, then ended up with mountain climbers for 1 minute.  Whew!

I had to share, that even though it’s only been a few weeks since I got my hair cut, I can now put it in a pony tail!  I should take a picture of the back because it’s the shortest pony tail!

I was doing squats when I saw that Tony had sent me a text message.  All I could see was the caption said “OMG” and I saw what looked like a taco.

Yep, he found Burger King tacos at a BK in Carpentersville!  I texted him a picture of my sandwich when I got back to the office, and he looked at my lunch and said “yuck, I had tacos.”

I still have panini’s on the brain since I still had focaccia leftover.  This time I used the leftover steak from the Steak Diane.  Two ounces of steak, habanero jack cheese and romaine. #winning!

Unbeknownst to Tony, I had planned on making chicken tacos for dinner.  But since he had tacos for lunch, I went with plan B.  I googled “fried chicken sandwich” and quickly found Bon Appetit’s recipe.

However, their version was a bit complex.  You had to make your own pickles, make a spicy chipotle mayo.  Here is my cheaters version:

For the slaw (this is for 1 because Tony can’t handle the spice):

• 1/4 broccoli slaw
• 4 pickles (I used Fickle Pickles – so complex in flavor!)
• 1 tablespoon pickle juice

Just rough chop the pickles with the broccoli slaw, put in a small bowl and add the pickle juice.

For the chipotle mayo:

• I used a tablespoon of buffalo sauce (I used Frank’s)

For the chicken for two:

• 2 boneless chicken breasts (ours were 4.5 ounces each)
• 1/2 cup non-fat buttermilk
• 3/4 cup flour
• 1 tablespoon cracked pepper (seems like a lot, but it isn’t), divided
• 1 teaspoon kosher sea salt

I used our deep fryer, but you can also put oil in a cast iron skillet – bring to 350 degrees.  Put the buttermilk in a dish.  Add 1/2 the black pepper and 1/2 the salt to the buttermilk and mix well.

In another dish, add the flour and the other 1/2 tablespoon of pepper and 1/2 teaspoon salt.  Mix well.

Dip chicken in buttermilk, then flour, back to buttermilk, and flour again.  You’ll have leftover of both, you don’t need to use it all.

Fry the chicken, depending on how thick it is, for 3-7 minutes.  Ours took about 6 minutes.  I threw the fries in half way through so they would be done at the same time.

I took 1 slice of American cheese, put it on the top bun, and nuked it for 20 seconds to melt.  My sandwich: bottom bun – buffalo sauce, chicken breast, spicy slaw, cheezy bun topping.

Yep, that was amazeballs.  The chicken was cooked perfectly, still juicy on the inside, crunchy on the outside – but I have to say, the pickle slaw totally made this sandwich!

I like to think that I worked off at least some of that sandwich because I ended up having to throw out all the stuff we lost to the flood last week.  I ended up with about 8 extra large bags of garbage, plus about six empty boxes.  You can see the water line on this box – it took me about 20 minutes to take out the garbage last night!

Time to get my stuff ready for work.  Guess what?  No Souper Friday at work today.  Today is . . .

Grilling Friday!

I am making grilled chicken tacos for lunch.  It’s a new marinade, so I hope it works out well, but it has orange juice, cilantro, olive oil and chipotle peppers.  Fingers crossed it works out!  On the side I made a black bean and corn salad, and last night I made two batches of my baja fresh salsa. 

Make it a great day!