Unfortunately the avocado that I got for this wasn't quite ripe yet, so I had to make it without that particular ingredient. It was still tasty though! A bit more involved than most scrambled eggs, but good if you have the ingredients on hand and want something particularly hearty for breakfast.

Photo goes here.

Elegant Scrambled Eggs

Slightly adapted from The Big Book of Breakfast by Maryana Vollstedt

Ingredients

• 4 tsp. butter, divided
• 100-150g mushrooms, sliced
• 1 shallot, chopped
• 1 c. chopped cooked chicken breast
• 1 avocado, diced
• 1 tsp. lemon juice or red wine vinegar
• 8 large eggs
• 1/2 c. milk
• 1 Tbsp. dry white wine
• 1/4 tsp. coarse sea salt, ground
• 1/8 tsp. black peppercorns, ground
• chives and/or roasted red pepper, to serve
• sour cream, to serve (optional)

Directions

1. Melt 1 Tbsp. of butter over medium heat.
2. Add the mushrooms and shallot and cook until softened (5-10 minutes).
3. Add the chicken, avocado, and lemon juice/vinegar, remove from skillet, and set aside.
4. Beat the eggs with the milk, wine, salt, and pepper.
5. Melt the remaining 1 tsp. of butter over medium-low heat.
6. Pour the eggs into the pan and cook for a couple of minutes.
7. Add the chicken-mushroom mixture and continue to cook, stirring occasionally, until eggs reach desired doneness.
8. Serve garnished with red pepper and/or chives and a dollop of sour cream.

This came together gratifyingly quickly. The longest part was pressure-cooking the beans, but that gave me time to dismantle the chicken and mise-en-place all the ingredients.

Quick Green Chicken Chili

Cook's Country August/September 2018 (recipe card)

Ingredients

• 1.5 C mixed dry black and great northern beans
• 6C half-strength chicken or vegetable stock (or 6C water + 1 stock cube)
• 2 tsp (~0.5L worth) Better than Bouillon stock concentrate or equivalent
• 1 tbsp oil
• 1 large onion, finely chopped
• ¾ tsp pepper, ground
• 3-4 garlic cloves, minced
• 2 tsp cumin, ground
• 1 C premade green salsa
• 1 grocery store roast chicken, skinned and shredded
• ½ C fresh cilantro, chopped
• Yoghurt and hot sauce (for serving)

Directions

1. Add beans and stock to pressure cooker. Pressure cook high for 40 minutes.
2. Depressurize and drain beans, reserving 1L of cooking water. If you have less than 1L, top up with tap water.
3. Stir stock concentrate into the bean water; set aside.
4. Heat oil in a dutch oven over medium heat.
5. Add onion and pepper and cook until translucent and softened, ~5 minutes.
6. Stir in garlic and cumin and cook until fragrant, ~1 minute.
7. Stir in beans, bean water, and salsa. Increase heat to medium high and bring to a boil.
8. Reduce heat to medium low and simmer 10 minutes.
9. Mash some of the beans against the side of the pot for thickness, if desired.
10. Stir in chicken and cilantro and cook until warmed through, ~2 minutes.
11. Serve with yoghurt and hot sauce; we found that this tomatillo-based sauce worked nicely.

Quick Chicken Jambalaya

I'm not sure whether I can honestly claim to have made this recipe or not. I made a lot of substitutions.

Okay, so I almost always use brown rice in place of white, so that one maybe doesn't count. And we cook it in the InstantPot because that's generally easier than whatever method the recipe uses by default. And I swapped out the olive oil for bacon grease because I had it on hand and I thought it'd be tasty. Okay, so that's all alright. But then we start straying farther from the path...

First there's the shredded rotisserie chicken in place of the skinless, boneless chicken thighs. Then, in the absence of the traditional andouille sausage, we opted for some sweet Chinese sausage instead. And because it needs to be cooked before eating, we tossed it in with the rice to cook rather than adding it to the skillet with the chicken. After that, we came to the bell pepper. Having used up our last bell pepper this morning, I decided to use this frozen "spaghetti" mix instead. It's a mix of chopped onion, carrot, celery, green bell pepper, and just a touch of red bell pepper. I figured that the addition of onion and celery along with the bell pepper would be at least "in the spirit" of the recipe since those are the three components of the Cajun/Creole "holy trinity". I guess, by also including carrot, it may have entered into some unholy union with mirepoix, but... oh well. We were already far enough off the rails at this point that I wasn't worried about a little bit of carrot messing things up!

We're almost finished with my deviations now, I promise. Last thing: since the "spaghetti mix" already included onions, we decided to just omit the green onions from the recipe. I'm not usually one to turn down more alliums, but they didn't really seem necessary with onion already in there doing its thing.

Okay, yeah, so I know that's a lot of changes. As I said, I'm not sure I can say that I actually made the dish described in the recipe. But I made something and it was tasty!

Quick Chicken Jambalaya (or something somewhat like it)

Adapted from Cook's Country June/July 2019

Ingredients

• 1 1/2 c. long-grain brown rice
• 1 1/2 c. water
• 225-350g sliced Chinese sausages (or andouille sausages if you wanna be all authentic and accurate)
• 2 Tbsp. Worcestershire sauce
• 1 Tbsp. tomato paste
• 1 Tbsp. ketchup
• 2 tsp. Creole seasoning, divided
• 2 Tbsp. bacon grease or olive oil
• 1 1/2 c. frozen "spaghetti mix" or Creole "holy trinity"
• 300-400g shredded rotisserie chicken

Directions

1. Place the rice, water, and sausage in the InstantPot and pressure cook on "high" for 18 minutes with a 10-minute natural release.
2. Meanwhile, combine Worcestershire sauce, tomato paste, ketchup, and 1/2 tsp. of the Creole seasoning. Mix well and set aside.
3. Melt bacon grease over medium heat.
4. Add spaghetti mix/holy trinity and cook, stirring occasionally, for 5-8 minutes.
5. Add chicken and remaining 1/2 Tbsp. of Creole seasoning and cook for another 3-5 minutes. Remove from heat and set aside until rice has finished cooking.
6. Once rice is ready, return pan with chicken to medium-low heat and add rice and sausages.
7. Stir in sauce and cook, stirring frequently, for ~5 minutes.