In this Feed Your Fire podcast episode, we craft a meal that truly celebrates family connection and creates the foundation for a mother's day recipe with lasting memories.
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Episode Transcipt:
Hi, I'm Kim Baker, founder of Kim Baker Foods, and this is Feed Your Fire.
Anyone fresh off of margaritas and tacos from Cinco de Mayo or maybe you're looking ahead to Sunday brunch on Mother's Day. Food isn't just a meal, it's a mood.
If you look online at suggested Mother's Day menus, it's quiche, ham biscuits, if you're in the south, salads, tarts, lemony chicken and fish. And while all that sounds like a tasty spring meal, none of those foods remind me of my mother. Do they remind you of yours?
Because the idea of authenticity is so important to us today, we're going to prepare a recipe that was a classic of my mother's that really does make me think of her as we discuss the role of family and our connection to food.
To do this episode justice, we need to remember that we all come into Mother's Day from a different place. Some people have very complicated relationships with their family, and others are warm and loving, and for me, it's a time of reflection and honoring my mother, who's no longer living.
What I love about food is its ability to connect us to that person, whether it is in spirit or around the table, food is almost like a photograph. My sister, the other day, sent some photographs that she stumbled upon, and they were hilarious. My mom doing some Tai Chi pose in the kitchen, a beautiful moment that I shared with my father. I love the way this holiday gives us a platform for remembering the stories that helped shape us into the people we are today.
So my mother's name was Madeline, and there were a lot of foods that she was really well known for. Her meatballs were amazing. She was once in a meatball contest that my brother entered her into. And anyone listening that knew her knows why I'm going to share the recipe for her chicken cutlets on this episode.
She had an interesting recipe for chicken cutlets that I think you'll appreciate, because it doesn't sort of follow the standard breading procedure, as we would say in culinary school, and they were better than any I've ever had. This was probably her most requested meal.
Anytime I came home from college, she would make chicken cutlets, and we would gather around the table and enjoy a family meal. Everybody would come together, and she would make tons of them, and they all got eaten. I mean, the amount of chicken she would prepare was kind of obscene.
The one thing about my mother and her kitchen was that everyone was welcome. She always made an abundance so that it could be shared, so that friends could come over and eat, and nothing ever went to waste.
In addition to making chicken cutlets, we're also going to make this breaded broccoli that follows the same procedure, but instead of chicken, we use blanched broccoli. This was one of my favorite foods as a young child. It's a little bit more of a less known thing about my mother, but I feel like the breaded broccoli is a little bit more of a treasured childhood memory, and it's easy enough to make both, and so we're going to do that together.
In all honesty, my mother used frozen broccoli. Today, we're going to step it up, and we're going to use fresh broccoli that we blanch in a little bit of salted water, and then we're going to put it in an ice bath so that it stays really vibrant and fresh before we dredge it in an egg mixture and bread crumbs.
Now, as I mentioned before, my mother did not follow a standard breading procedure, which follows the sequence - flour, egg, breadcrumb. She didn't use any flour, and she combined her eggs with sour cream to create this really thick mixture that was almost like a paste. She used egg whites, but I'm going to use the complete egg.
So let's go ahead and heat our oven to 450 degrees, and then we're going to create kind of an assembly line. We're going to start with our broccoli. So just pat it dry. And then in the next bowl, we're going to have our egg mixture. And in a bowl after that, we're going to have Italian seasoned breadcrumbs. And then beside that, we're going to have a sheet pan that we've generously coated with oil.
So take your broccoli, dip it in the egg, dip it, then drop in the bread crumb, get it all coated, and then put it on your pan. We're just going to repeat this until we've completed it all.
You can use the same pan for your chicken, if there's room, if not, just grab a second sheet pan for the chicken you want it to be really thin. This was really important to her. She would get her chicken from a butcher shop. I bought mine at a grocery store. So I'm going to take these chicken breasts and with a knife, kind of cut them into two or even three thinner slices.
Now everything will go into the oven for about 10 minutes, and once you see that the bottom of the chicken or the broccoli has like a beautiful brown kind of crunch to it, you'll turn them over and let them cook for about five more minutes.
One of the things that makes Mother's Day particularly special for me is that I share it often with my son's birthday and, kind of ironically, my brother's birthday also fell on Mother's Day, making it a day that they too shared. I love the idea of that alignment, and the fact that this Mother's Day represents so many things that are so important in my life.
For some people, Mother's Day can kind of conjure some sad emotions. It might have been a dream for them to be a mother that hasn't panned out, or they, too can be missing the mother in their lives, either the one that they had or the one they wish they had.
And while we can't always change our circumstance, we can change how we think about our circumstance and how we reflect on it and how we celebrate it.
My dear friend Joy had given me this gift. It's a platter that she had one of my mother's recipes imposed on, and it's in her handwriting. It's just this plastic platter, but it was so thoughtful and so beautiful to me. It might have been one of the best gifts I've ever received.
When I see her handwriting on that platter, and I see that recipe, and we prepare this recipe together, I'm reminded how much of our life is how we choose to relate to things. I can miss her or I can celebrate her. I could share what she taught me with my son, and I could share it with you.
Our chicken and our broccoli is now beautifully crispy, and we're going to take it out of the oven and put it on a plate lined with paper towels. I don't like to stack them when they first come out of the oven, because I feel like it makes the breadcrumb a little soggy from the steam. So lay them out on a thin sort of a layer, right without them piled up on top of each other, and then sprinkle them with a little bit of salt. I am also going to add a little bit of Parmesan cheese and some chopped parsley.
You can eat these as they are, or you can do as my mother would often do, and make them Parmesan with some tomato sauce and mozzarella. There are endless ways to enjoy this recipe. I'm going to serve them with some greens and balsamic dressing.
I encourage you to make extra when you prepare this, not just in the spirit of my mother and this idea of sharing and creating abundance, but because these chicken cutlets are fabulous, the next day, you can heat them up just a little bit or eat them cold with some Italian dressing. And I promise you, you will be happy. And as any mother can relate to a two for one meal is worth celebrating.
I'm going to plate these up using the platter that my friend Joy gave me so my mother's recipe is literally underneath this meal that we're sharing. It is the foundation. Her memory is right there with us.
As you look ahead to your Mother's Day celebration, think about what evokes your connection to your family, and enjoy the time together, because once the meal is over, the memory is what lives on.
Until our next episode, I say so long. Feed Your Fire, where food nourishes growth.