Creole Chicken

Finally a dish inspired from my old time working at the Keg.  Seems like ages ago, and to be fair it was pretty much ages ago.  Crazy how much things have changed.  Used to make this dish for customers on a daily basis, and now I'm making it for fun on a Friday night.  Feels good.  For those of you paying attention, you'll notice the plate/table change in the photos.... unfortunately my time at the luxury condo rental has since expired, and I am now in my own place.  It's not fully furnished with all the bells and whistles, but it's still pretty nice.  Actually, the cookware I picked up is pretty outstanding..... gotta love crazy sales at Bed Bath & Beyond.  Anyways, onto the food.

Garlic Butter Rice


1/2 Cup of white rice
1/3 cup of butter
1 Chicken bouillon cube
1 Cup of water
2 Minced (ie finely chopped as I don't have a garlic press) garlic cloves

After melting the butter in a pot, and stirring in the bouillon cube and rice, making sure that the bouillon is completely disolved, I had the water, cover the pot and bring it to a boil.  Once boiling, turn the heat down to basically the lowest and let the rice slow cook.  After about 90% of the water as been absorbed into the rice, add in the garlic and mix in thoroughly and recover and allow the rice to cook until the rest of the water is fully absorbed.


Pan Seared Chicken

1 Chicken Breast

Straight forward on the main protein for the dish.  Heat up a medium sized frying pan to a decent temperature (5 on my dial, which only goes to 6) and spray some pam to prevent sticking.  On a side note, I do have non-stick pans, but I still put the pam on as I just don't trust non-stick surfaces apparently.  I cooked the chicken on the one side until about 2/3 of the way done to ensure a decent golden brown sear.  Simple flip and finished cooking the chicken on the other side.  Like I said, straight forward.

Seafood Topper


4 Scallops (20/30 count)
6 Shrimp (41/50 count)
Diced Tomatos
1/2 Tbs Butter
1 Tsp Creole Seasoning

First off, for those who are confused by the whole count business in the ingredients listing, I'll throw out a quick explanation.  Normally seafood is listing by the number of items that would take to make up 1 pound.  So in this case, for the size of scallops I'm using, it would take somewhere between 20 and 30 of them to make up a pound.  Simple right?

Now onto the cooking of the seafood.  If you've ever seen Hell's Kitchen, you'll know it's really easy to screw up scallops.  So first off you need to oil up the pan and let it get nice and hot.  Pretty much as high as it'll go in order to get a nice sear on the scallop.  If you don't have the pan hot enough, the scallops will be Today I used peanut oil, for no particular reason other than I had it handy.  Also, don't forget to season the scallops a little before cooking, mostly with just a dash of salt.  Be sure after you place the scallops into the pan, don't move them.  They won't get that nice brown golden sear if you move them.  After you start to get a nice sear on the first side of the scallop I like to turn the temperature down a bit and flip of the scallops to finish.  It takes a little while to learn when a scallop is finished.  In my experience a finished scallops will have two signs.  First it will start to firm, just like most seafood.  Secondly, you'll see the edges start to separate a little.  I'm now realizing that this is pretty tough to describe, and I should have taken pictures.... lesson learned for me.

The shrimp I had tonight were actually precooked.... sad I know.  So basically all I did was add them into the pan when the scallops were just about finished in order to heat them up.  At the same time, I drained out any excess oil, and added the butter and creole seasoning.  After the butter gets nice and melted, I like to add in the diced tomatoes and make sure everything gets mixed in together.  Delicious. This finished topping simply gets placed on top of the cooked chicken, and a fabulous meal is ready to go.