lutong nanay – Jellybeans in the City

Even while stuck at home because of the quarantine, I’m still a busy working mom. The demands of my job often precludes me from spending too much time in the kitchen.

This means that I rarely get enough time to devote to discovery and exploration of culinary possibilities to expand my family’s menu beyond the usual staples or to make dishes and ingredients from scratch.

This is why I’m so glad that I have a jar of The Saucier Homemade Classic Pesto in my ref.

In case you’re wondering, a saucier, also known as the saute chef, prepares the sauces, stews and the hot hors d’oeuvres as well as sautes food to order.

With The Saucier’s homemade and preservatives-free sauces and dressings in my cooking arsenal, it’s like I have my own saucier right in my kitchen. Coming up with an extraordinary home-cooked meal is so much easier when half the work is already done.

For our dinner last night, I made a new fam favorite: Creamy Pesto Chicken. Check it out!

Ingredients:

Half-kilo of boneless chicken thigh fillets (I prefer chicken thighs to chicken breasts as these tend to be juicier and more flavorful. Fortunately, I can get a pack of boneless filleted thighs at Landers.)
Salt and pepper to taste
2 1/2 tbsp The Saucier Homemade Classic Pesto
2 cups cherry tomatoes
1 tbsp all-purpose flour
3 cloves of garlic, finely minced
1 cup evaporated milk
1/2 cup grated parmesan

Procedure:

Rub the chicken pieces with salt, pepper and pesto sauce.

Prepare the sauce by whisking together the flour, garlic, pesto sauce and evaporated milk. Season the mixture with salt and pepper and mix well.

Heat the olive oil in non-stick pan then fry the chicken pieces for up to five minutes on each side or until thoroughly cooked. Set aside.

In the same pan, cook the cherry tomatoes in medium to high heat for up to a minute or until they begin to soften.

Add the sauce mixture to the skillet and bring to a boil.

Place the cooked chicken back into the pan and cook for up to three minutes until heated through and well-coated by the sauce, then remove from heat.

Serve your Creamy Peato Chickeb with pasta, rice, or in my fam’s case, some sliced Ciabatta and Special Dip from Chef Jessie which really strengthened our meal’s Italian flair.

Once again, my foray into the kitchen has yielded a hit with the fam!

Try this recipe out and let me know how it goes!

For more details or to get your hands on The Saucier’s sauces and dressings, as well as its tasty Mushroom Burger, visit The Saucier on Facebook or call +63 2 76233600, +63 2 79015526 or +63 917 8870125.

Looking for other easy-to-cook dishes to try out while in quarantine? Check out my other kitchen adventures:

Today, I was faced with a Mommy Problem: What do you do when dinner time is near and all that’s left in your freezer are some Hungarian sausages?

How did I get to this state? Well, I blame it on the quarantine… and, okay, on me too.

I thought I stocked the ref with two week’s worth of meats for the fam’s ulam, but apparently, I was one day short. Here’s the thing: during the quarantine, my city imposed specific market days when residents of a certain area can go to the wet markets or grocery stores to restock on food items.

When is our area’s next market day? Tomorrow. When did we run out of beef, pork or chicken for our ulam? Today.

Yikes!

Fortunately, I espied a package of Hungarian sausages and some fusili pasta that I bought at the nearest Landers branch during my last grocery run. Plus, a friend of mine recently sent me a bottle of Creamy Sundried Tomato from The Saucier.

So I had an idea: why not make a Sausage Pasta using The Saucier’s Creamy Sundried Tomato?

In the culinary industry, a saucier, also known as the saute chef, prepares the sauces, stews and the hot hors d’oeuvres as well as sautes food to order.

As I discovered, if you have a bottle or two of The Saucier’s homemade and preservatives-free sauces and dressings, it’s like you have your very own saucier in your kitchen.

Sun-dried tomatoes, in case you’re wondering, are made by drying out ripe tomatoes in the sun after treating them with salt so that they lose most of their water content. This is a traditional way of preserving tomatoes in Europe, guaranteeing a steady supply that can be enjoyed and provide nutrition during the winter months. Sun-dried tomatoes also have a more intense sweet-tart flavor than fresh tomatoes, making their use popular across a variety of dishes throughout the world.

The Saucier’s Creamy Sun-dried Tomato is made of sun-dried tomatoes, cream, olive oil and spices, definitely no preservatives. Since it already has cream incorporated in the sauce, it saved me the effort of experimenting the ratio of cream to sauce that would have plagued me if what I had on-hand was just plain sun-dried tomato. Whew!

Wanna know how my bright idea turned out? Here’s the recipe I used:

Ingredients:

250 grams fusili pasta, cooked according to package instructions and drained well
5 links of Hungarian sausage, boiled for twenty minutes until cooked, then sliced thinly
1 tbsp olive oil
2 tbsp butter
3 cloves garlic, finely minced
2 tbsp all-purpose flour
1 chicken bouillion cube, dissolved in 1 cup hot water (my substitute for 1 cup chicken broth)
1/2 cup The Saucier’s Creamy Sun-dried Tomato
1/4 cup grated Parmesan (apparently, I also ran out of this cheese, so I used the remaining half tablespoon of parmesan and substituted the rest with ordinary cheese)
1/4 tsp red pepper flakes
salt and pepper to taste

Procedure:

In a large saucepan or casserole over medium heat, melt the butter in the olive oil. Add the garlic, and cook for up to two minutes, stirring frequently until fragrant.

Whisk in the flour for one minute until it turns light brown, then gradually whisk in the chicken broth whisking constantly for up to two minutes until the flour is well incorporated into the broth.

Stir in the creamy sun-dried tomato, cheese and red pepper flakes. Season with salt and pepper.

Stir in pasta and sausage until these are well-coated with the sauce.

The resulting pasta dish is rich in taste and has a creamy texture.

Well, if the emptied-out casserole and the happy faces of my fam are any indication, I would say this makeshift dinner was a success, thanks in large part to the new and wonderful flavors introduced by The Saucier’s Creamy Sundried Tomato.

For more details or to get your hands on The Saucier’s sauces and dressings, as well as its tasty Mushroom Burger (more on this coming soon!), visit The Saucier on Facebook or call +63 2 76233600, +63 2 79015526 or +63 917 8870125.

Looking for other easy-to-cook dishes to try out while in quarantine? Check out my other kitchen adventures: