It appears that we still have some work to do civilizing the boy child. At least he picked up the fork.

We have a new way of measuring the deliciousness of food in our house. It’s called the POB scale: Plate of Bacon. The deliciousness of a Plate of Bacon sets the benchmark at 10/10, and all food can be expressed as a number out of 10 that compares to a perfect plate of bacon. The scale was derived the night that I made this recipe, which got a 9.5/10 on the POB scale from Anders. Hence, I have named it Chicken ala Bacon, and it includes the world’s best version of bacon, pancetta. I made it last night to rave reviews so I did a quick encore tonight to make sure it was a winner. Also eaten with gusto tonight. Hurrah!

It looks pretty fancy, but it’s not so complicated. The best part is that it can be assembled in a baking pan and put in the oven to cook. No intermediate cooking steps. And it works for everyone in the family. The recipe itself is not high ratio (slightly less than 1:1) but it is very low-carb, so it can be worked into a ketogenic diet meal with added fat on the side.

1 serving Chicken ala Bacon, cut in half and pancetta removed on left half so you can see the flax and parmesan “breading.” Served with avocado and kalamata olives. Cream and fish oil also included in the meal not shown.

The recipe below is formulated for Nora, who gets a smaller portion of protein at each meal than a bigger kid or adult. Scale it up for bigger people. Anders had a portion on top of noodles for dinner tonight, with a little extra parmesan on the noodles. You can see that I made 6 portions here, but I don’t really expect Nora to eat this 6 days in a row so I gave Anders a portion too. It was just easier to make them all the same instead of keeping track of the Nora-weighed ones. In addition, I made a non-weighed pan of the recipe in a big batch using the same ingredients. The rest of us will have leftovers this week too!

The pancetta is optional; the recipe works wonderfully without it. I had to omit it from Nora’s portion on the first night I served it because it put her over her protein needs for the day. If you leave off the pancetta, the top of the chicken cooks up nicely in the oven kind of like oven-fried chicken, with just the flax and parmesan on top. However, I would estimate that without the pancetta the POB rating drops to about 8. Tradeoffs can be difficult. 

1 serving of Chicken ala Bacon. Nutritional analysis by www.caloriecount.com

Chicken ala Bacon
30 g Chicken thigh, raw and boneless
20 g zucchini, raw, cut into thin medallions
2 g Bel Gioioso Parmesan
2 g Bob’s Red Mill Golden Flaxmeal
5 g olive oil (estimated)
5.5 g Applegate Farms Pancetta (~1 slice)

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Coat the baking pan with a thin layer of oil.

Cut the zucchini into thin medallions and measure 20 g per serving. Make a small mound of zucchini in the pan; if you are making more than 1 serving you can make several separate small mounds in your pan to accomodate each serving.

Front row: Zucchini slices with flax and parmesan.
Middle row: Chicken on top
Back row, left: Flax and parmesan on top of chicken
Back row, right: Topped with a slice of pancetta

For each serving, measure 1 g flaxmeal and 1 g parmesan, then sprinkle it over the zucchini slices with a sprinkle of salt. Next, lay the chicken on top. Sprinkle the top of the chicken with another 1 g of flaxmeal and 1 g of parmesan. Finally, top with a slice of pancetta. You can see each step in the photo, eventually making 6 servings in this pan.

Cook for about 20 minutes. The pancetta will be crispy when done and everything will be cooked through.

Transfer to serving plate and let cool. Scrape up some of the oil to be served with the meal and drizzle it over the chicken. It is difficult to make sure that the correct amount of oil makes it on to the plate, so if you need more precision you should cook this whole meal in separate ramekins or other small ovenproof dishes so that you know all of the oil is incorporated into the meal.

I am storing the individual servings in the refrigerator for easy meals this week. To reheat, microwave for 30 seconds to 1 minute.