Italian Chicken Breasts

Tonight I needed something fairly fast and easy - today was soccer opening day and I was tired and grouchy. So I made one of my standby fallback meals: Italian chicken breasts.

I usually use Italian seasoned diced tomatoes for this, but I had part of a can of petite diced tomatoes in juice in the fridge, so I went with that. I drizzled a little olive oil in the big cast iron skillet and got it hot. Then I threw in the chicken breasts to get a little caramelized on each side. Usually I slice up an onion and cook that too, but I was out. So I just sprinkled on some garlic salt. It worked.

Then I dumped in the tomatoes, and sprinkled on some oregano and basil. Covered and let simmer until done, turning once or twice.

It's good over pasta, over rice, or in this case, alongside some pasta salad and steamed broccoli.

Cream Caramel Ice Cream - my childhood revived

Growing up, when we went to the doctor's office in Berkeley we'd often get a treat of a cone at Bott's Ice Cream. It was the best ice cream ever. The shop had the same wall paper from when my mom was a little girl. The most important thing was the product. My favorite flavors were orange ice cream - yes! Orange ice cream, not sherbet! It was wonderful. And cream caramel ice cream. A double scoop of the two flavors was luscious.

I set out to replicate that cream caramel ice cream. I found a recipe in Amanda Hesser's book Cooking for Mr. Latte. Sunday night I prepared the ice cream base. I caramelized a cup of sugar in a heavy pan. But went to far and had to discard it. I used lower heat the second time and was successful. When I dumped in the half and half the caramel seized up and adhered to the bottom of the pan! After much stirring and prodding, it dissolved. I added the rest of the ingredients - more sugar, egg yolks, vanilla and salt, strained and chilled.

Last night I put the very thick ice cream base in my ice cream freezer and about 25 minutes later I had it. Cream caramel ice cream - smooth and silky and just a little salty to punch up the caramel flavor.