Slow-Cooker Cream Cheese Chicken with Broccoli

     I'm glad The Wife is working more in the kitchen. Don't freak out; I'm not making any gender specific claims here. The Wife doesn't work much in the kitchen because that's my job. It's also because she didn't have a tremendous amount of confidence in her cooking. Lately she's been poking through recipes and messing around with the ingredients. Nothing ground-breaking, but she consistently achieves success. Her latest success was a slow cooker recipe she found in one of our many slow cooker recipe books. I was extremely pleased with how this turned out. It had great flavor and was great over pasta, rice or bread. My only complaint was that it was pretty salty, but that was down to the Italian salad dressing mix. She even used almost half of what the recipe called for. She also used half of the requested chicken. Next time I'd say go the full four pounds of chicken, or quarter the seasoning. Either way, I hope she makes this one again! As always, any notes or changes are in blue.

Slow-Cooker Cream Cheese Chicken with Broccoli
via Crock Pot Potluck For All Occasions

Igredients

• 4 pounds boneless, skinless chicken breasts, cut into 1/2-inch pieces (as we are not made of money, she used 2 pounds of chicken)
• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• 1 package (1-ounce) Italian salad dressing mix (her package was .6 ounces and we felt that was PLENTY)
• Nonstick cooking spray
• 2 cups (8 ounces) sliced mushrooms (she used one 4-ounce can of mushrooms, drained)
• 1 cup chopped onion (she went with 1/2 cup)
• 1 can (10.75 ounces) condensed cream of chicken soup, undiluted
• 1 bag (10 ounces) frozen broccoli florets, thawed 
• 1 package (8 ounces) cream cheese, cubed (she used 4 ounces, and as always, Neufchatel was used in place of cream cheese)
• 1/4 cup dry sherry (she used 1/8 cup dry Vermouth)
• Hot cooked pasta (We did serve it over pasta, but I also served it over herbed swirl bread for lunches a couple times)

Directions

1. Toss chicken with oil in a large bowl. Sprinkle with salad dressing mix. Transfer to a slow-cooker. Cover; cook on LOW for 3 hours
2. Coat large skillet with cooking spray; heat over medium heat. Add mushrooms and onion; cook 5 minutes or until onion is tender, stirring occasionally (since The Wife used canned mushrooms, she didn't add them until the next step.)
3. Add soup, broccoli, cream cheese and sherry (neufchatel and vermouth in our case), to the pan (hopefully you didn't just throw that stuff into the slow cooker, because if you did, you just screwed up,) cook and stir until heated through. Transfer to the slow-cooker. Cover and cook on LOW for 1 hour. Serve over pasta (or bread, or rice, or whatever you want. Don't give in to recipe bullying)

Good Times!

UPDATE: Now there is a video for this recipe:

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Linguine with White Clam Sauce

     There are some recipes that are so deceptively simple it defies logic. This linguine with clams from The Everything Quick Meals Cookbook is one of them. The flavor of this dish is outstanding and it comes from a simple handful of ingredients. I made this for my father-in-law a few years ago for his birthday and he gets so excited every time I make it. He says it's as good as his mother made. Why is that a big deal? He's Italian. His parents came from Palermo, Sicily. This is just a fantastic recipe. When I make it, I generally just double off the recipe, just to be safe. As always, notes and changes are in blue.

Linguine with White Clam Sauce
via Everything Quick Meals Cookbook

Ingredients

• 1/2 pound linguine
• 1/4 cup olive oil
• 4 cloves garlic, minced
• 2 tablespoons flour
• 2 tablespoons white vermouth (I used dry vermouth)
• 2 6-1/2 ounce cans clams, juice reserved (minced or chopped depending on how big you like your clam bits)
• 1/4 cup chopped fresh parsley (I ended up just eyeballing a reasonable amount of dried)
• Salt and pepper to taste

Directions

1. Cook linguine according to directions, drain. 
2. In a large skillet, heat the oil and saute the garlic until lightly golden, not burned (I can't imagine there is a recipe that calls for you to incinerate garlic)
3. Add the flour, vermouth and juice from clams; stir, bringing to a boil. Add the clams and parsley and simmer a few minutes. Season with salt and pepper. Toss with drained cooked pasta and serve immediately. 

Good times!