Toasted Cornmeal Chicken and Garlic Flower Mashed Potatoes

Now that I’m eating actual food again, I have something to post about!  I ended up going one full week without a real meal– last night was the first successful meal I’ve had.  (Hooray!)  It looks like the culprit is most likely Crohn’s disease, but I’ll keep you posted.

Joe made this simple meal with the goal of satisfying my very hungry soul without upsetting my very angry stomach.  I’m very grateful that he succeeded.

The key to the chicken is good toasted cornmeal– it has a rich, distinctive flavor that’s so good, our dog has stolen and eaten it before.  (Really.)  We get it at the Fair Food Farmstand in the Reading Terminal Market for about $1 a bag.

Take some fairly thin chicken pieces– we used Trader Joe’s tenderloins– and coat them in an egg wash.  Roll in cornmeal.  Brown in a hot cast iron pan.   They brown very quickly and might look a bit charred, but don’t let that fool you– the browning only makes the toasted-corn flavor richer.

Now for the potatoes– last time we went shopping at the RTM, the nice man at Livengood Farms gave Joe a garlic flower– the same thing that will grow naturally if you plant a garlic bulb.  The green shoots of the garlic plant, it turns out, are delicious.  You chop it like a green onion, and the flavor is somewhere between green onion and garlic.

Make mashed potatoes.  (This is easy stuff– peel a potato, chop it up, boil the pieces, mash them with some butter and salt.)  Stir in garlic flower pieces and some grated cheddar cheese.  Serve hot. 

Leave a comment