Pecan Chicken with Peach Jezebel Sauce

Sorry about the picture. This dish was so good that we ate it all before taking the shot. After eating this dish at Magnolia's in Charleston (twice in one week!), we decided to try to replicate the recipe. We mixed bread crumbs and ground up pecans; a large shallot, diced; and tossed in a handful of parsley from the garden. Then we melted 3 tablespoons of butter and dredged the chicken breasts in it and then the pecan mixture. We cooked it on the stove first and then finished it under the broiler. For the Jezebel sauce, we took an entire jar of peach jam and mixed it with 2 tablespoons of horseradish and 2 tablespoons of French mustard. We spooned if over the cooked chicken. You can't tell from the picture, but we had mashed potatoes, too.

Everyone liked the pecan chicken, and it will be a new favorite at our house- even though we didn't replicate the Magnolia's dish exactly. I don't know how they get the crust so thick and brown. Next time, I'd like to try cutting cold butter directly into the pecan mixture and spreading it onto the chicken before baking it.

Chocolate Peanut Butter Cupcakes

Region: Candyland
Recipe from: delish.com

These are easily the best homemade cupcakes we have ever had. Inside is yummy core of confectioner's sugar and peanut butter (you are supposed to use creamy, but we accidentally used crunchy and I feel that it has made absolutely no difference). Outside is a dreamy cushion of chocolate muffin that is dangerous to anyone with a cocoa addiction and the topping is a butter icing that tastes absolutely delicious. This cupcake is perfect for any sugar craving, anytime of the year.

Pizza

regional : United States
recipe taken from: The Joy of Cooking

This is honestly some of the best pizza that could ever be had. It has a thick, fluffy crust, but it's not so much crust that it's hard to take a bite, or that it overwhelms the other flavors. For the sauce, we drained the watery excess from some marina sauce and when we ran out of that, mixed in some tomato bruschetta. Then we added some broccili that had been left over from the night before, two small, sliced mushrooms we bought that afternoon and the most delicious pepperoni that we got from Whole Foods- asking the deli man for just enough pepperoni for a pizza.

This recipe was also incredibly easy to prepare. We allowed the dough to rise in a covered bowl, outside in the summer heat while we were out for the afternoon. Then we came home and prepared the pizza in less then 20 minutes, and waited another 25 minutes for it to cook.

Second Stop- India

We landed on India next and decided to make Tandoori Chicken, Naan and Dal served with Ice Tea with Mint. I've never had Indian food before and was hesitant about these dishes, but they were so good!

The Tandoori Chicken recipe was a combination of several that we found on the Internet. We bought 3 skinned chicken breasts and marinated them in Greek yogurt, garam masala, cilantro, lemon juice, salt, cayenne pepper, garlic and onion. After broiling them in the oven for 15 minutes, they were cooked through but not dry.

We let the Naan rise for over 6 hours just because it fit our schedule. Luckily, it tasted great and we have another new favorite food.

The Dal recipe was too time-consuming for a weeknight for us. So we bought Black Gram Lentils Curry- Dal Bukhara from Kitchens of India. It was very good and we plan to make it from scratch on our second visit to India (preferably on a weekend).

We do have some left overs, so come on over!

First Stop- Chile

We closed our eyes and pointed at a map. The first place we landed on was Chile. After twenty minutes online, we found two appetizing dishes. The first was a shrimp recipe called Gambas Pil Pil. After crushing 10 cloves of garlic and letting them sautee in a pan with oil, we added 1 1/2 pounds of shrimp, with some sliced jalepeno pepper, a dash of cayenne pepper and three tablespoons of brandy.

The second dish was called Chapalelas. It's basically the Chilean version of the potato pancake. First, we made four cups of mashed potato. Then we added 1 cup of flour, 1 egg, 1 tablespoon butter, and two pieces of bacon that we crushed up. The original recipe called for pork rinds, but we swapped that out with bacon.