I've cooked my way through all 264 recipes
in The New Mediterranean Diet Cookbook!

November 30, 2010

Brick Chicken (p. 416) and Gratin of Mushrooms and Potatoes (p. 325)

Brick Chicken, or Pollo al Mattone is just chicken in a simple marinade cooked under a heated brick. I let my chicken breasts sit in a marinade of olive oil, salt and pepper, red pepper flakes, dried thyme, and chopped rosemary and parsley for about an hour.


The recipe is normally made on the grill under a cooking brick or tile. I have neither, so I used the alternate recipe of heating two heavy skillets in a very hot oven and then cooking the chicken on the stovetop, crushed between the two pans.


Unfortunately, I stuck with the cooking time that was recommended for grilled chicken, and it was entirely too long for the stovetop version. My chicken was very dry and tough, though smelled lovely and looked quite pretty.


I would make this again, but keep a very careful eye on the cooking time throughout.

With this, I served a Gratin of Mushrooms and Potatoes, which is a pretty simple recipe involving both dried and fresh mushrooms.

Soak the dried mushrooms in very hot water until soft.


Meanwhile. sauté the fresh onions (sliced) in olive oil.


Assemble the gratin starting with very thinly sliced potatoes in the bottom of an oiled dish.


Pour in the water that the dried mushrooms were soaked in (strained of any sediment from the mushrooms) and layer in the two types of mushroom.


Add sliced tomato on top.


Cook for about 25 minutes, until the potatoes are cooked, top with cheese, and continue cooking for about 10 minutes.


This was pretty good, but nothing ground breaking. Really, I probably just liked it because of the amount of cheese on top.

All in all, not the best meal, especially before I head out of state for the rest of the week. Poor Matt will be stuck home alone with the kitty eating who knows what out of the pantry.

chicken breasts -- $4.14
Total Cost of Brick Chicken: $4.14
($2.07 per serving)

dried mushrooms -- $6.99 (half left)
fresh mushrooms -- $1.56
tomato -- $1.82
potato -- $.70
Total Cost of Gratin of Mushrooms and Potatoes: $11.07
($2.77 per serving)

1 comment:

  1. Love that gratin using tomatoes. It reminds me of one in Julia's Mastering the Art of French cooking that was one of our favorites that I'd forgotten. Thanks for the reminder.

    Glad to see you used rosemary. I can't live without my rosemary bush.
    Sam

    ReplyDelete

Thanks for dropping by! Love, Katrina.