Welcome to the third edition of Evangeline’s Cajun Kitchen! I’m grateful for another week to cook what I love and share it with all of you. So thanks for coming back, and for those of you who are new, you are much appreciated as well and might wanna check out our previous recipes for Jambalaya Pasta and Corn Maque Choux with Shrimp and Sausage.
What Are We Making?
I don’t know about ya’ll, but with the pandemic, I have missed eating at some of our local staples. Getting our favorites to go isn’t always good, so I figured I would start recreating some of the popular and beloved recipes that our wonderful restaurant industry has to offer. This week I made Chicken Lazone.
Chicken Lazone is a Brennen’s recipe, actually named for the chef who created it, Chef Lazone Randolph. Although you’d be eating it at a white table cloth establishment, this recipe is very simple, using basic pantry spices most people have at home.
Ingredients
Before I start, I will let you know that I had defrosted some chicken the night before and didn’t use it. I went ahead and pulled it out an hour before cooking this dish, and added about 1/4 cup of mayonnaise with 4 good shakes of all the spices except the cayenne and let it sit on the counter marinating. This is not part of the recipe, but a trick I learned for moist and flavorful chicken. Feel free to omit this step.
- 4-5 chicken breasts
- 1/2 medium sized yellow onion
- 2 Tablespoons of butter
- 1 head of cauliflower
- 1/2 teaspoons of: garlic powder, smoked paprika, parsley flakes
- 1/4 teaspoons of cayenne pepper
- 1.5 cups of milk or cream
- salt to taste
Let’s Get Cooking!
Step one for this recipe is to pound out the chicken breasts so that they are pretty thin and uniform. This will allow for quicker cook time and an even cook throughout.
Preheat your oven to 375 degrees in preparation for the cauliflower rice, if you’re making it. If not, this is a good time to get another type of rice or grain cooking.
Next, melt 1 Tablespoon of your butter in a large skillet over medium-high heat. Once thoroughly heated, place the chicken in the pan, not overcrowding the pan. I had to do this in two batches. Cook each side for 4-5 minutes, or until the internal temp is 160.
Now that you look at the picture, you might realize why I said 4-5 chicken breast. Because I used frozen chicken, there are a lot of uneven, broken up pieces. I estimated that all together I had about 4 chicken breasts.
Once the chicken has cooked thoroughly, take it out of the pan and set it aside. Take your second Tablespoon of butter and add it to the pan, scraping up the yummy bits left over from the chicken. It’s important to keep those moving around so they don’t accidentally burn. Add your sliced onion to the pan.
Time Out
While the onion was cooking, I went ahead and started making the cauliflower rice. You literally take the head of cauliflower (cut in half if you find it easier) and grate it as if you were grating cheese. Grate it until you feel that it’s just slicking over the blades, not grating any more. Once it was all gated, I added a little olive oil, salt, garlic powder and oregano. I spread it thin on a non stick pan and roasted it in the oven for about 25 minutes, stopping once to stir and re-flatten out on the sheet pan.
The peas were an afterthought for me, because I was too lazy to make green beans as I planned. I thawed out some peas and sprinkled them in when the rice was finished cooking. All of this is happening while you are also attending to your chicken.
Back to the Pan
Add a sprinkle of salt over your onions, and let them cook until they turn a little translucent. Once they are translucent, add in your milk and spices. Again, scrape the bottom of the pan to get the flavorful remnants in the pan mixed in to the sauce. After scraping the bottom, and stirring all the ingredients together, add your chicken back in.
Cook over low-medium heat for 5 minutes, allowing the chicken to warm up and mingle with the other ingredients. After that, turn off the heat and start serving!
Final Thoughts
This turned out so good, especially for how simple it was. The sauce was creamy, nicely spiced and a little buttery. The chicken remained tender, and had a nice lean flavor that accompanied the sauce nicely. It felt rich without leaving me in a coma afterwards.
The rice turned out pretty great. It was much more crunchy and rice-like than I expected. This was the first time I grated it like that and it made a big difference. The trick is to cook in on high heat to get a crunch. You can turn up the heat for a faster cook, just don’t forget about it!
See the recipe card below for the full list of ingredients and instructions. Happy cooking!