chicken breast strips in duck sauce, corn with jalapeño.jpg

This is two pantry tins and one small prepared frozen chicken breast. What a cop out! Just a few fresh vegetables would change this right up but tonight it's just slumming it by combining corn and jalapeño.

Even so, with a few chefery touches even two tins and one frozen breast can turn out very nicely.


It takes a small pot and a small pan. Both are started with butter. The corn is drained mostly and dumped into the pot with hot butter. 

The pan of butter is spiced up with whatever strikes you that moment. My choice invariably includes chile powder of one form or another. And salt. And from there it can go in any direction. Earlier I was thinking about sage but then dropped it later and went with oregano instead. But it could have had cumin, coriander, cinnamon, clove, or any of the anise-y flavored spices and herbs. Turmeric, garlic and ginger powders, those sorts of things. 

So the butter in the pan is spiced up heavily, a little too heavily for each piece of chicken.

The chicken fries until it is cooked through, a few minutes. The pan is deglazed with wine. This not only dissolves the bits on the pan it also produces the magic of butter and wine combined. I used Japanese sake. Duck broth that was chilled earlier from the roasted duck earlier is poured over the seasoned cooked chicken pieces in the pan. The coating that is covering each chicken slice is lifted off the chicken bits and mixed into the broth. Butter, wine, reduced duck broth, spices. 

Meanwhile the little pot has butter, tinned corn, tinned hot jalapeño. Plus the duck sauce from the chicken strips. The mixture is pleasant. 

See? That there is what you call technique.

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