One Man One Pan — Bobcat Weighs In
8 March 2006If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!
J. Robert, my legal consul, sends this One Pan One Man offering from his lair in Lexington. As a defense attorney his time is always at a premium. Yet this is the man who´s already declared that his tombstone shall read, “Eating well is the best revenge.’ So for the Bobcat, better not eat at all than eat ill-prepared food. A discriminating palate can be a curse as well as a sensualistic blessing. Here is how a man with more taste than time deals with the dilemma of eating well but eating quickly….
PS – My Socratic scholar friend has the compounded problem of reducing his bodyweight from 182 pounds to 165 pounds in order to compete in a power competition at the end of this month. The briars on this pathway are particularly thorny: keep the protein intake up in order to retain muscle mass - yet reduce body fat and bodyweight a full 17-pounds without losing all semblance of strength.
Convenience Protein Sautee
Ingredients
Convenience chicken breasts or thighs
Package of frozen farm-raised shrimp
Two pieces of Canadian bacon
Dry vermouth
Olive oil
I call them “convenience” chicken parts. They’re usually skinless breasts or thighs sold in freezer bags; ice-glazed to discourage freezer burn, they don’t require defrosting and they contain some chicken broth already. Don’t salt them unless you like salty chicken. Just make sure you cook them in some liquid and something like chicken broth will appear. The shrimp I usually get are from Thailand, but I’ve used shrimp from China and I’m sure there’s farm-raised frozen shrimp from other countries, too. Canadian bacon lasts awhile, contains remarkably little fat, and adds a nice smoky flavor to the whole affair. Dry vermouth is relatively inexpensive and comes in bottles with screw tops. You can use a good enough white wine instead if you have it around.
Prep
Rinse convenience chicken under cool water to remove glaze.
Defrost shrimp in running water.
Place the pieces of Canadian bacon one on top of the other on a cutting board. With a very sharp knife cut the Canadian bacon into thin strips. Now rotate the cutting board ninety degrees. Slice the Canadian bacon again, so that you now have small rectangles.
Cook it!
Place a small amount of olive oil in the pan and raise it to medium high heat. Toss in the Canadian bacon and sauté it, moving it around with your plastic spatula or wooden spoon. Now put the chicken in and sear it. Turn it over and sear the other side. Add vermouth to taste. You can add more vermouth (or water) later if the pan appears to run dry. Cover the pan, reduce the heat and cook. Chicken is done when the juice runs clear if you cut the piece of chicken. Throw in the shrimp in at the end. Shrimp does not need to cook long, and if it does, it is likely to toughen. Now remove the chicken, shrimp and as much of the Canadian bacon as is practical from the pan and put it all on plates. Add some more vermouth or water, turn up the heat, and keep stirring with your plastic spatula or wooden spoon. You are going to loosen up all those delicious molecules that have collected on the inside surface of the pan. Keep stirring until the liquid is reduced by at least half. Pour the sauce you have just made over everybody’s main course. If you want, you can hold some of the liquid back and cook some frozen mixed vegetables in the same pan. They’ll pick up the nice flavor.
In case you’re wondering what that “Jim Wright” form is above, we will be conducting a teleseminar with Dr. Jim Wright. Jim was the health and science editor for Flex and Muscle & Fitness magazine for a decade - we’re trying to judge interest - we’re just looking to cover his airfare (not make anything) and we were thinking that if we could charge $25 a person we could have a nice size group - it would be an ideal time to talk with one of the nation’s formost experts on nutrition.
Sign up using that form so we can keep you posted on the details of the teleseminar. We’ll pin down a date very soon. It’s going to be sometime in mid-April. When you sign up, make sure you check your email and click on the “Confirmation” link. Lee will be running that show. Tags:
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