Marie Cookpad

  We do eat a lot of chicken in our home.  Mostly because it is fairly economical and also because you can do a LOT with it.  As there are only two of us now, I tend to buy organic, free-range, cornfed chicken, but I totally understand why larger a larger family would not be able to afford it.  I just like to eat happy chicken, and I think the organic, free-range, cornfed tastes better.  I also make sure that it is RSPCA approved so I know that free-range really means free-range!    I love the thigh meat most of all, but I also like breasts, especially for dishes like the one I am showing you here today.  Lemon Sauced Crispy Chicken, which is a bit of a riff on Chinese Lemon Chicken, which I totally adore without question.   My chicken for this is panko crusted.  I love the Japanese Panko bread crumbs for coating things that I am going to fry. They are wonderfully crisp and always give me perfect results!  The chicken part is fairly simple.  Pound to an even thickness, dust with season

  I don't think I could ever under-estimate how much I love adore Mexican/South American flavours when it comes to cooking and eating.  I am sure that none of what I make is actually authentic, but my heart is in the right place and I always enjoy the results of my labours so that is what counts right?  I take every opportunity that I can to cook and eat with these flavours.  That's why I got really excited when I saw the May Degustabox!  There were some of my favourite ingredients in it, by way of some lovely Latin American Coconut & Black Pepper Soft Tortillas.  This is the brand I always buy and I knew right way that is what I would be highlighting with a recipe.  You are going to love these.  We do and did!  But first, more about the box.   I love these boxes. Opening each one is tiny a bit like opening a Christmas gift. Always a surprise, and always filled with things that pique my interest and desire to try. Degustabox is a monthly foodie subscription service

  I don't think I ever had a ready made bottled salad dressing the whole time I was growing up. My mom always made her own salad dressing from scratch.   It was always the same, and never varied, but we didn't mind because we loved it.  We always had a salad on Sundays with our supper and she would begin it early in the afternoon.  She would thinly slice some onion, or cut it into small bits and put it into a bowl.   On top of that she would pour a quantity of white vinegar, adding some salt and pepper.  She would let that sit for a while . . .  the onions almost pickling in the vinegar.  Finally she would add just plain old salad oil, nothing special, and maybe a pinch of sugar.  The lettuce and other salad vegetables would be tossed into it and and then it would all be tossed together and that would be our salad!  We loved it.   A salad is only as good as its dressing.  That is a fact.  I can't believe how many times restaurants get it all wrong . . .  salad that is.  Old

  This recipe I am showing you here today is a very, very old one.  It comes from a handwritten scrap of paper in my big blue binder, copied out in my own hand, I suspect from one of my mother's old cookery books from the early days of her marriage. It is the type of thing our Grandmother's would have cooked.   It is a testimony to the thrift of our forebears, and their ability to make simple things taste extraordinarily good, most times not even using recipes, but adding a bit of this and a bit of that, tailoring each lovingly to the tastes of her own family.   I confess, I have done the same, with the original recipe having nothing but salt and pepper and ketchup as seasonings.   I suspect it strongly relied on the individuality and ability of a home cook to play with according to what was in-house.    I have added onion and garlic powders, some dried thyme and a splash of Worcestershire sauce.  Oh, and a bay leaf.  Did you know that breaking a bay leaf in half helps to relea