Chicken Parm Salad Subs

I love to try out new recipes no matter if they are ones I created in my head, ones I found on-line or in a cookbook. Over the years, I have tried recipes from a lot of chefs, one who seems to match my cooking style is Rachael Ray. As a mother, you've got to appreciate the concept of a 30 Minute Meal! Rachael Ray often says that her recipes are just methods. She encourages her viewers to take her recipes and make them their own. I "Lori-ize" almost everything I cook, tayloring the recipe to my families taste. I decided to combine these two ideas and what you see here is the result. Each week I'll create a meal based on a recipe and let you know what we thought. I will give you the original recipe and let you know how I "Lori-ized" it. Hope you enjoy Tasty Tuesday!



This week we choose Chicken Parm Salad Subs. Yes, it was another Rachael Ray recipe, but that is because we wanted a simple recipe that could be made on the day we go to the grocery store. Plus I make a lot of Rachael Ray recipes, so just be forewarned that you'll see her name pop up a few times. (o:



After reviewing the recipe, I decided to pretty much follow the recipe with very few alterations. I grated the garlic (I used 2 not one) on my microplane right into the food processor instead of making it into a paste and adding it after. I did add some salt to the mix too (not enough, but we will get to that). I only used 1/2 a small red onion and 2.5 tomatoes (I took the middle out of the tomato to avoid adding extra moisture).



(thanks Richard for the awesome picture!)


We really liked the concept of this meal, but it wasn't quite there yet. First off... it is so NOT a meal I would call chicken parm. Richard felt that there was little flavor beyond the chicken and onion. I felt there was some herb-ish flavor, but it wasn't not strong enough. I think that if I added the whole bunch of parsley and the whole bunch of mint it may have helped. I definetly think there is a need for more garlic too. We both felt that only putting the 1/2 onion was more than enough, if you'd put more then there would have been an over powering onion taste. But, the crunch of the onion was a nice touch. I took most of the tomato out of Richard's sub since he doesn't like tomatoes.

We really liked the fact that I could get all the items at the store and I didn't have to do any cooking myself. It probably took 10 mintues to put the whole thing together. You could cook the chicken yourself if you wanted to save the price of the whole rotissary chicken.



Next time, I would add more garlic, more parsley or other herbs, and more salt. Also adding more pepper after it is mixed would be good too. A course pepper would add more of a bite to it.