Girl's Night Holiday Dinner 2012 + Engagement Chicken

My 2nd Annual Girl's Night Holiday Dinner was quite the success this year. Last year I cooked up an Italian themed pizza and pasta meal, and this year I went with a new American style wholesome meal. If you follow my Facebook page, I was even considering serving hormone free chicken and organic vegetables. Well laziness got the better of me so the veggies were mostly from Safeway and Costco and the chickens were from Costco. Most likely not hormone free. Would it have mattered?

 Glamour Magazine posted a recipe for engagement chicken a few years back and I really wanted to try it. I was already engaged at the time so the recipe sat just sat in the back of my mind. Engagement chicken is a recipe which has been sworn by many women to convince their boyfriends to propose within a few months of being served the chicken. Many of my girlfriends are in relationships and I was curious to see ifthere was any merit to the recipe. It probably won't work since I made the chicken for them and the girls did not make it for their boyfriends, but still...a nice experiment. Above, you see that I am brining the chicken in a salt water and herb solution, not a step called out in the original recipe but always helps with the moisture of the meat.

Engagement chicken recipe here

 Chicken all carved and plated next to KT's super delicious homemade spinach dip in a large Hawaiian bread roll. Can you believe King's Hawaiian makes rolls this big?! Fantastic.

I made candied yams for the first time. It was super easy and tasty. Here is the recipe I used; substituted canned yams for real yams and used the fancy European Plugra brand butter you can find at Safeway. The yams are very sweet so next time I would put less brown sugar and bake the marshmallows a bit more for crispy goodness. Yams are pretty healthy so I needn't make these more sugary or buttery next time. I was just splurging on all things decadent this dinner.

 Spinach dip...mmmm

Sherry made cold honey jalapeno soba noodles. These were really good. You can't even taste the jalapeno but you sense it there somewhere.

 Sherry also made delicious browned brussel sprouts with shallots and pancetta.

My other dish was this platter of cold garlic, seasame, and soy green beans using this recipe. Cut back on the seasame oil, like by half the amount even. Otherwise, twas very delicious.

VS brought over this burnt caramel sea salt topped bittersweet chocolate. Very interesting. Listen to all those conflicting tastes. You mostly taste the bittersweet chocolate and caramel.

Good luck on the engagement chicken, ladies! Happy Holidays!