Foodie Files

Cooking chicken breasts properly in the oven makes them not only tender and moist but also delicious!

You can cook as much breasts in the oven as you like and store them in the fridge for a quick snack or later warm them up for a hot meal, they are high in protein and are very healthy, they go great with salad on the side and you can add a wide variety of flavors to them.

Once you have learned the basics how to bake chicken breasts you will be able to add any spices and other flavors to them, The breasts will always be great tasting.

Let's begin with the basics:

When buying the breasts you need to notice few things. First make sure they are fresh, buy meat from you local butcher. Secondly make sure the breasts are even in size, otherwise they might cook unevenly. Another important issue as I always note in my writing is to try to consume only organic meat which is healthier to you and reduces from the suffer of the industrial chickens,

Alright, now let's start the preparation:

Wash the chicken breasts properly and remove any excess skin, fat, meat. Cut the chicken breasts in half so you will have two large pieces. The breasts should be smooth and uniform.

If you ever asked yourself how to bake chicken breast and keep them moist and tender be sure to marinade them. Take 8 cups of water and mix with a third cup of salt and a third cup of sugar, add 2 table spoons of vinegar and mix everything until the solids dissolve in the water, this marinade is enough for 6 whole breasts (12 halves), adapt the ingredients accordingly to the amount you are making.

Marinade the breasts in the water from at least thirty minutes, but no more than one hour.

After you remove the breasts from the marinade immediately spice them with any spices you like, rub the breasts with freshly squeezed lemon juice and immediately place in a preheated oven.

It is now extensively farmed, so keeps pressure off the wild fish and provides lots of alternatives with the relatively inexpensive farmed Sea Bass. The Sea Bass is best served skin on, to show off the brilliant, shiny look of the fish.

Tip 1. Plain and simple

What could be more simple served fish and chip shop style. One of the small farmed fish will be ideal. Scaled, cleaned, and pin boned a pair of the fillets will make a great 'Posh Nosh' fish and chip meal at a very reasonable price.

Make your own simple batter with plain flour and a measure of beer to form a moderately thick coating. Fry at 180 degrees Celsius until cooked and serve on a bed of home-made chips with Tartar sauce.

Tip 2. Cooking with style and flair

For this dish, I would suggest you invested in a prized fillet of wild Sea Bass, it will cost more than the farmed but will be worth it. You will need a fillet, preferably mid cut, of around 175 g, that has been pin boned and de scaled.

Choose a cooking method. Poaching, steaming, grilling and baking will all be fine. My own preference is steaming, because it retains the nutrients in the fish and keeps the wonderful shiny nature of the skin.

The choice to serve it with is now open to thousands of choices. But try serving it on a raised bed of blanched, then char-grilled slices of fennel, surrounded by a shellfish broth with two or three Prawns. It will look great and will make your guests well and truly pleased.

Tip 3. Something a little different

A total variation on the classic Scandinavian seafood dish cured with salt, sugar and herbs. Instead of Salmon use Sea Bass.

Take a whole wild Sea Bass, of a size as large as you need or can find or afford, de-fin, scale, clean, fillet and pin bone the Sea Bass. You now have the staring point to create your own cured piece of luxury. Since you will be preparing the dish to be eaten within a few days, the amount of salt, which would help to cure and preserve the fish can be reduced. The amounts of salt and sugar are in line with recommendations to lower intake to promote a healthy body.

For a pair of fillets of 200 g each (400 g total) use 25 g of sugar and 50 g of salt, a teaspoon of ground black pepper and a bunch of Dill herb. For smaller or larger quantities scale up or down the portions. Rub the salt and sugar equally into both fillets. Place the Dill on top of one fillet and the other fillet on top of the Dill, with both fillets facing each other. Fit into as tight a container as you can find. Turn over the pair of fillets each day and baste the flesh surfaces with the liquid from the container. At all times keep refrigerated.

After five days you will have created a great novel version of cured fish. Slice it very thinly and serve on a chilled plate. To add an extra dimension why not add a measure or two of a spirit of your choice, such as one of the fennel based liqueurs. Or even go a stage further and spice the dish with some dried chilli flakes. The world is your oyster, or in this case Sea Bass.

About the author:- Henry Lord is a fanatical enthusiast and lover of all things seafood. He has been a professional chef for nearly twenty five years, so has experienced many traditional and innovative ways to cook and present food. He is also keen to promote seafood as a healthy source of our daily eating needs. The website http://www.cookingseafoodathome.com is written by him. It provides lots of tips on all aspects to helping you put a great seafood meal in front of your family or friends. Additionally if you visit the website now and enter your name and email address, you will receive for FREE the ebooklet on "Home Curing Of Fish". Other FREE ebooklets will follow each month.

I am a pizza enthusiast, a pizza restaurateur in fact, and never a historian. But it's always been fascinating to know a little bit of something right? For example, a little bit of history or background, and that's what I'm going to do - briefly state, for your information (and appreciation, hopefully), a little bit of something about spices in general, and basil, to be specific.

You know, early civilisations in many different parts of the world have begun using spices many centuries ago. If you dig in into your history books, you'd know that a great deal of trading activities back in the olden days was spurred by the demand for spices.

Yes, you heard it right, spices! It's no wonder then that some spices were eventually incorporated as ingredients of pizza, lasting to this day.

These spices may come from or take the form of a dried seed, fruit, bud, flower, bark, root, leaves or vegetative substance; and are used as an additive in food preparations for colour or flavouring, or as garnish. The term herb is often used in reference to mild leafy spices.

Our generation is, I should say, a little bit lucky since spices don't come cheap during those days. Due to high demand from the population as early as the Middle Ages, spices commanded a really high price.

The most common of these spices include the black pepper, cinnamon, cumin, nutmeg, ginger and cloves. Since most, if not all, of the spices were imported from plantations in Asia and Africa (most plant sources grow in tropical climates), it was really expensive to buy them then, especially in Europe.

It is interesting to note that the Republic of Venice had a monopoly of the spice trade with the Middle East from the 8th until the 15th century, according to some references. It made the region rich, including the neighbouring Italian city-states. Naturally, people back then would experiment on the use of these spices in their dishes, pizza included.

Ever wondered which is the most popular spice of pizza?

It has to be basil leaves, a variety of herb from the mint family which includes oregano, thyme, marjoram, savoury, sage, and mint.

Basil has been originally cultivated for more than 5,000 years in India, Africa, and other parts of Asia. The word basil, they say, came from a Greek word, which meant king.

King of herbs, sounds yummy if you ask me.

Some proponents claim that basil is believed to have grown at the spot where the Holy Cross was discovered by St. Constantine and Helen. In fact, there were quite a number of authors and cooks who believed, and who continuously believe, I suppose, that basil is indeed the king of herbs.

For starters, basil is characterised by its very unique, pungent taste and smell. It is best described as having a subtle peppery and earthy taste with a slight hint of sweetness, like that of liquorice.

You should not worry so much as where to source your fresh basil leaves. Apart from being widely available in most grocery stores and vegetable markets, it is quite easy to grow your own basil, whether in the ground or in small containers.

While basil is best grown outdoors, under the sun and in a tropical weather, it is also possible to grow basil indoors if placed on a south facing window, or with the aid of a lamp.

Once fully mature, a basil plant will be about one to four feet tall, with plenty of those silky, green basil leaves that you can freshly pick not just for your pizza requirements, but for so many other recipes as well!