Not on the menu for the week.....GF Chicken-Broccoli "Divan" Casserole

So this recipe was not on the menu for the week, but I am sure am glad I prepped the "wrong" ingredients on Tuesday night.

The night that I should have been prepping the bbq sauce, I prepped the "ingredients" for this meal.   Good thing, too, because after shoveling the snow today I really didn't want to make a complicated dinner that I hadn't made before.  In fact, I have made this recipe more than a few times and can almost make it from memory.  almost.

On Tuesday, I spiced (poultry seasoning, paprika, and garlic powder) and cooked 6 chicken breasts and steamed 2 bags of broccoli.  Once the chicken was cooled, I chopped it into bite-size pieces and put it and the cooled broccoli in the fridge.

Tonight, all I had to do was grab the broccoli and chicken from the fridge along with my milk and shredded cheese, and butter.  From the pantry I grabbed my GF bread crumbs, and 2 boxes of GF Cream of Chicken soup.  From my cupboards I obtained one 9x13 casserole dish.  My source recipe uses a 9-inch pie plate, but I have always doubled this recipe, just because that's fewer meals I have to make each week and it's a REALLY easy recipe.

1. Pre-heat the oven to 450.
2.  Spray the 9"x13" with non-stick spray (trust me, you want to that with this recipe).
3. Mix together the 2-12 oz boxes of soup with 2/3 cup of the milk of your choice.  I have used white wine for this once in the past, it doesn't really do anything, so I just stick with the milk.  This time I also spiced it up with the spice mixture on the chicken.  I stirred in a couple dashes of paprika and poultry seasoning.  I did not add garlic powder to the soup mixture since there is plenty of garlic flavor already in the soups.
4.  Melt 4 tbsp of butter (oil of your choice) and mix in 2-3 tbsp of GF bread crumbs.
5. Toss the cooked chicken and cooked broccoli into the greased pan.  To be completely honest, when I make this recipe all in one day, I try to under cook the chicken by just a hair so that it doesn't turn out dry in the end product. However, since I knew I wasn't going to be cooking the casserole the day I cooked this batch, I cooked my chicken all the way through. 
     When I say toss the chicken and broccoli I mean exactly that :)  You have to make sure the broccoli and chicken are evenly distributed in the casserole.
6.  Pour the soup-milk mixture over the chicken and broccoli  and make sure it is evenly covered.
6.  The next step is up to you, either you put the breadcrumb mixture on top of the broccoli-chicken or you put the cheese on next.  Up to you.  I've tried it both ways and I think don't have a preference.  Either the cheese melts and the breadcrumbs get toasty, or the breadcrumbs get a little crispy and the cheese gets nice
and toasty.  You win either way.
4. Put the casserole in the oven for 20 minutes.  The chicken and broccoli are already cooked or mostly cooked, so you really just need to reheat or finish cooking and give time for the flavors to get to know each other.  You also want the cheese to get nice and melty and the breadcrumbs to turn a nice golden-brown.

At this point I started to clean up a bit, because I was planning on going back out to shovel the rest of the snow and really didn't like the idea of having to clean up after my arms fall off from shoveling for the second time today.

7.  *BEEP*  *BEEP* I open the oven to find my golden delicious dinner ready to be pulled.  I pull it out of the oven and leave it to cool on top of the oven for about 5 minutes.

Dish of Golden Deliciousness

8.  Grab your favorite casserole serving scoop and dive in!



The BEST part of this dish after a tired day is that you don't have to cook anything else.  It has chicken and broccoli.  DONE!

I think if I didn't live in a GF household, I might have put noodles or rice in the casserole, or cooked some on the stove, and I have done that in the past, but not tonight....definitely too tired to think of anything else tonight.

At Home Chinese Dinner - Revisited again - with Shrimp -too much salt :(

     The menu BGS had this week had a beef and ginger meal that we had 2 weeks ago, so I substituted the Shrimp Noodle dinner I made a couple years back - because I felt like it :)

The players

Sad part is I didn't read my recipe early enough to help myself this time.  Case in point, I forgot to defrost my 1 lb of shrimp.  And now begins the peeling and de-tailing of frozen shrimp. Cue frozen fingers.  *sigh*  Oh well, we move on.

The players have changed up this time around so pay attention: 1 lb shrimp, 1 10 oz bag of broccoli, 2 tbsp sesame oil 1/2 cup low-sodium chicken stock, 1/2 cup GF Soy sauce, 1 garlic clove smashed, 2 tsp fresh grated ginger, 2 tsp cornstarch, 4 tsp room temp water, 1/4 tsp five-spice (again, this five spice has seven spices), and rice noodles.

Last time I made this BGS was not yet GF, so I used egg noodles.  I also used low-sodium soy sauce (one of my pantry staples).  This time signals got mixed and the GF soy sauce that was purchased was most definitely not low sodium.  With the soy sauce being 1/2 of the sauce for this dish, the meal came out much saltier than BGS or I liked.  And he doesn't usually mind extra salt.

Before I started documenting tonight's meal, I ran to Amazon.com to add some low-sodium GF soy to my cart.  I think I will also add a different style rice noodle.  Tonight's noodle worked, but I think I would prefer noodles that were thinner and/or shorter.  Maybe something like this soba noodle (a BGS request).

At Home Chinese Dinner Revisited - Chinese Braised Shrimp, Broccoli and Noodles

My husband like the braised beef so much I thought I would try it with another protein - shrimp, but I wanted a veggie this time also, so I added broccoli.  For this giant dish I used my wok :)

Today's Players: - same as last time except for the shrimp
1 lb  raw 35-40 ct frozen shrimp - defrosted
1 -  Manischewitz Egg Noodles Fine (12 oz pkg)
1 10-oz bag steam-ready broccoli
1 clove garlic - crushed
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp fresh ginger, grated
1/4 tsp five-spice powder
2 1/2 tablespoons oil - I used sesame
1/2 cup soy sauce - I used low sodium
1/2 cup chicken broth - again, low sodium
2 tsp cornstarch
4 tsp water

1.Defrost the shrimp according to packaging - then peel


2. Steam the shrimp according to packaging - make sure to drain the excess water from the broccoli before adding to the dish


3. Cook the noodles in salted boiling water until just tender, then drain and rinse under cold water - to stop the cooking

4. Mix together the garlic, salt, ginger, five-spice powder and add to the thawed shrimp - I used my hands to make sure the shrimp get the spices all over

5.  Heat the oil and saute the shrimp over high heat for until pink - abt 4-5 minutes


6. Mix the soy sauce and chicken broth together and add to the shrimp


7. Mix together the cornstarch and water - stir thoroughly - and stir into the shrimp.  Stir and cook beef until the sauce is smooth and thick.

8.  Gently fold (so as to avoid a massive mess) the noodles, mix well and heat through


9.  Gently fold the broccoli into the dish.


10. Serve immediately



This time the majority of my prep time went to peeling the shrimp.  After that it was a piece of cake and it turned out ok.  The shrimp absorbed a lot of the salt from the soy sauce, so I think when I make this again I might cook the shrimp separately and add them with the broccoli at the end.