Recipe e-mails flow into my mailbox every day, and I often find myself sorting the keepers into two categories: Fast, easy ones to try at home and “more interesting” ones to share with readers.
I always want to write about something new and challenging that I can gas on about for my column, but I also realize that many of you just want something they can make tonight, or tomorrow night, or sometime really soon, like around now.
I’m a working mother, and if we’re out of leftovers, I often spend my drive home figuring out what I can serve within the hour.
These separate piles find their ways onto opposite sides of my desk. Well, today I came across Rotisserie Cashew Chicken and figured I had plenty of time to pick up a roast chicken and throw together this sauce before my family members start in on the potato chips.
This is for everyone who’d like to do the same. It’s from Rich’s Recipe du Jour.

ROTISSERIE CASHEW CHICKEN
1/2 rotisserie chicken, meat removed from bones and diced
1 tablespoon sugar
4 teaspoon corn starch
1/4 cup soy sauce
1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
1 tablespoon oyster sauce
1 cup chicken stock
1 teaspoon sesame seeds (black and/or white)
1/2 teaspoon garlic flakes (I’ll use garlic powder)
1/2 teaspoon sea salt
Juice of 1 lemon
1 cup cashews Whole, unsalted if available
Serve with white rice and parsley
1. In a medium bowl, combine the sugar, corn starch, soy sauce, Worcestershire sauce, oyster sauce and whisk to form marinade.
2. Add the diced chicken, mix with marinade and allow to sit for 5 minutes.
3. During that time, in a wok or large saute pan, heat chicken stock to simmer. Add the marinated chicken, including all of the sauce in the bottom of the bowl. Stir to combine and mix with the stock.
4. Continue heating until the sauce begins to thicken (the corn starch will do that).
5. Add the lemon juice and cashews. Do not overcook the cashews as you want them hot but still retain a bit of their crunch. Add the sesame seeds, garlic flakes and salt.
Serve over prepared rice or noodles
– Rich’s Recipe du Jour

I made lemon squares the other day to fill a craving I’d never had before.
In the past, when I baked, it almost always involved chocolate. Lemon squares didn’t make it onto my radar.
For some reason, though, that’s all I wanted last weekend to go with a special rib-eye steak dinner.

I got the lemon squares recipe from “Good Housekeeping’s Great Baking 600 Recipes for Cakes, Cookies, Breads, Pies & Pastries,” and it’s going to make it into a column, story or blog entry sometime in May.
I made the squares because I thought the rich, hearty broiled red meat required a fruity, springy contrast. It worked beautifully.

This is all a round-about way of saying that I’m now on a lemon kick. The squares only whet my appetite for the springy sweet-tart citrus staple.
Lemony Chicken & Orzo from Parents.com promises to fit right into a weeknight evening, beating all to heck my normal boring rotation of baked chicken and pasta with Prego, frozen pizza and turkey sausage.

It’s a one-pot recipe that goes together in 30 minutes with eight ingredients.
And it gets better: It comes in under the wire at 400 calories per serving.
Of course, that assumes I can stop with one serving …

One caveat: I see no reason to sully such a promising dish with with green beans. I’m going to use asparagus or pea pods instead.

I was just eating creamy tomato soup from Panera and was fondly remembering it when I went looking in my saved recipes for this post. I didn’t have to look farther than Skillet Chicken With Tomato Cream Sauce, which promises simplicity and a crowd-pleasing, regular-rotation-worthy dinner.
I’d bet it’s a version of a classic dish from some cuisine or another, with a fancy French or Italian name, but I’m just going to call it “That Chicken With The Creamy Tomato Sauce.” At least I’ll know what I mean.

SKILLET CHICKEN WITH TOMATO CREAM SAUCE
1/2 medium onion, finely chopped
1 tablespoon olive oil
2 cloves garlic, finely minced
1/2 cup chicken broth
1/4 cup dry white wine or more chicken broth
1 to 2 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley
3/4 cup heavy cream
1 cup fresh shredded Parmesan cheese, about 2 ounces
2 tablespoons tomato paste
4 boneless chicken breasts
Salt and pepper
3 tablespoons flour
2 tablespoons olive oil
1/2 cup chicken broth
8 ounces angel hair pasta or linguine or spaghetti, cooked and drained
1. For sauce, saute the chopped onion in olive oil until softened. Add garlic and cook for 1 minute longer. Stir in 1/2 cup chicken broth, wine, basil, and parsley. Bring to a simmer and simmer for 5 minutes. Add the cream, Parmesan cheese, and tomato sauce. Continue cooking until the sauce is hot and cheese has melted.
2. Wash chicken and pat dry. Place between sheets of plastic wrap and gently pound until uniform in thickness. 2. Sprinkle chicken with salt and pepper; coat with the flour. In a large skillet or sauté pan over medium heat, cook the chicken in 2 tablespoons of olive oil for about 3 minutes on each side, or until browned. Add 1/2 cup of chicken broth, cover, and continue cooking for 5 minutes. Add tomato cream sauce, cover, and cook for 4 to 6 minutes longer, until chicken is cooked through. Serve with hot cooked pasta. Serves 4.
– Rich’s Recipe du Jour

BY THE WAY:
Anyone who really wanted the “Time To Cook,” by James Farmer, that I gave away last week can catch up with Farmer on Paula Deen’s “Paula’s Best Dishes” this weekend on the Food Network. It’ll premier Saturday at 9:30 a.m., and repeat Monday at 5 p.m. and April 29 at noon.

For years, out of pure squeamishness, I bought chicken breast meat and dumped it from the package into the pan to cook. I had no desire to touch it, cut it, pound it or even trim it if that meant touching the meat with my bare hands.
Well, as you might imagine, this treatment of chicken breast meat created a few problems. It frequently came out overdone, or raw in the middle. Or raw in the middle first and overdone five minutes later.
I’m finally almost past this aversion. I’ve figured out that if you’re going to cook, you’re eventually going to have to touch raw chicken.
So I finally learned to pound it, trim it, cube it and slice it, all while running the hot water tank dry trying to keep my hands clean.
I’m still not a huge fan of BSCB, especially the way it’s sold, sometimes 3 inches thick on one side, and 6 to 8 ounces total — utterly impossible to cook as is.
Well, last week I finally got smart. It only took me 20 years to figure out that I can slice a chicken breast horizontally into a “cutlet” and my chicken troubles are over. It cooks more evenly, more quickly, and brings a single portion of meat into a manageable 3- to 4-ounce serving.
Yes, you can buy chicken cutlets at the store, which would require a lot less exposure to raw chicken, and now I know why.
Soon I’ll be using them to make Chicken Cutlets With Tomato Sauté.

Some people like Beyonce’s legs. Other people like the leg lamp in “The Christmas Story.” My infatuation with chicken legs grows deeper with every meal.
This recipe, for Chicken in Dill Mustard Sauce caught my eye, and dragged it.
I’m still learning where and how to find chicken pieces that aren’t boneless, skinless breasts, which I have banished from my kitchen indefinitely.
Supermarkets just have a smattering of cuts, and I think it might be time to try a local butcher who can give me just what I want.
Despite its value to anyone who calls themselves a cook, I’ve resisted this kind of shopping — specialist to specialist — because getting to more than one food purveyor in a given week seems simply impossible.
Butcher visits, however, are climbing up my list of priorities, especially when I find recipes like these.

It’s not every day that I find a recipe that looks both exciting and comforting and delicious. For some reason, those three don’t come together all that often.
Then I come to find out it has exactly 7 ingredients, and one of those is salt. The rest is easily obtained.
If you don’t believe me, check it out: Chicken with Chipotle.
You could use it with any cut of chicken, though I like the idea of leg quarters. I do think I’d remove the skin for health reasons, cover it with foil and bake it for a shorter time, maybe half an hour. If it doesn’t brown per se, don’t worry. It’ll be covered with sauce when you serve it anyway.
I don’t think it will hurt too much to use reduced-fat sour cream and/or 1 percent milk.
Chipotle peppers are smoked jalapenos, packed in a spicy deeply red adobo sauce. I find them in the Latin American foods section at Wegmans. They should be available at any supermarket. You won’t need them all, but you can freeze them for the next time you want to make this. Which might be pretty soon.