Hay, Hay, It's Donna Day: Parmesan and Polenta Chicken

Another blog event from Stephanie at Dispensing Happiness: Hay, Hay, It's Donna Day. This is actually round 28, as you can see over at Chez Us. You might remember around this time last year my Triple Choc Pancakes for an earlier round of the same event. What follows is how I made mine, go and check out Stephanie's post for the original recipe, this would be great any way you made it!
(as I found out in the round up)

We had a lovely sunny spring day here today, so this went down great. Although Master One spat his out and made me heat up a can of pumpkin risotto, and Miss Three left most of her leaves behind. But it was a beautiful, fresh, light meal, and would be great for entertaining. I served with it garlic ciabatta rolls, and even had an Apple & Pink Grapefruit mineral water and Vodka with mine, very posh indeed.

Parmesan and Polenta Chicken
500g chicken tenderloins
flour for dusting
2 eggs, lightly whisked
1/2 cup polenta
1/3 cup finely grated parmesan cheese
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
400g baby spinach leaves
one bunch basil, leaves only
1 cup of frozen corn kernals

Combine the parmesan and polenta. (depending on the size of your tenders, you may run a little short like I did, just top up the bowl by sight near the end of coating if you find that happening). Put the corn in a microwave container and heat on high for 2 minutes. Put the leaves in a big bowl.
Dust the tenderloins with the flour, dip into the egg & press into the combined parmesan & polenta to coat. Heat the oil in a non-stick frying pan over medium heat & cook the chicken for 2-3 minutes each side or until golden & cooked through. Set aside to barely cool. Toss the warm corn through the salad leaves. Slice the chicken into small strips, and add to the salad. Smell that awesome sweet smell of the basil as the hot chicken and corn warm the leaves. MMM, heaven.

This is perfect for entertaining... if only we entertained more often!

We don't dress salads in this house very often, but if you do, here is the dressing that goes with:

2 teaspoons Dijon mustard
2 tablespoons lemon juice
1 clove garlic, crushed
1 tablespoon olive oil
2 teaspoons honey
sea salt and cracked black pepper

Place everything in a bowl and whisk to combine. Pour over the salad and top with shaved parmesan, just before serving.

Hay, Hay, It's Donna Day: Triple Choc Pancakes

I've learned quite a few things since starting food blogging. One of the most useful (and weird to outsiders - ie DP) is something I picked up from Stephanie over at Dispensing Happiness. Whenever she gets a new cookbook, she goes through it with a stack of page markers, flagging any recipe she'd like to try. Now I don't get new cookbooks that often, but I do get 2 or 3 food magazines a month, and I recently received over 50 food magazines from my MIL who didn't want them anymore. So I've been slowly making my way through those, and when this months new recipes+ came out, I decided to flag everything I wanted to cook 'sometime' - not just write in what I wanted to cook this fortnight in the menu plan. And I'm glad I did, because when I saw the theme for this month's Hay, Hay, It's Donna Day (hosted by Home Gourmets) I knew exactly what to cook - these delicious chocolate pancakes. The strawberries at Coles didn't look too great for $2 a punnet, so I switched vanilla ice cream with sliced strawberries for chocolate choc chip ice cream. DP said that these must be quadruple choc pancakes then, but I think that's a bit of a mouthful... just like the pancakes were really.

Triple Choc Pancakestaken from September 08 recipes+ magazine
2 cups SR flour
2 tbsp cocoa
1/2 cupbrown sugar, firmly packed
2 eggs
1 1/4 cups milk
1 tsp vanilla essence
1/2 cup Nutino (or Nutella, or whatever the favourite choc hazelnut spread is in your house)
8 scoops chocolate choc chip ice cream

Sift flour, cocoa and sugar together into a large bowl. Make a well in the centre.
Whisk the eggs, milk and vanilla in a jug, and gradually whisk into the flour until just combined.
If you work the batter too hard, your pancakes will be rubbery, so keep a light hand.
Fry in a lightly oiled frypan over moderate heat. Use 1/4 cup of batter for each pancake, and cook until bubbles appear (about 2 mins) then flip and cook the other side for the same amount of time.
Spread with Nutino and top with ice cream, then serve.

Check out the round up here