Saturday, April 14, 2018

Chicken Cino

Tonight's casserole was designed to honor a gay visionary who started the “off-off Broadway” theater movement in the 60's. This hearty – healthy meal features the wonderful colors of Italy: White, green and red.


Learn about Joe Cino, his passion for theater, his work ethic, and tragic downward spiral in a short article following the recipe. 
 

Ingredients:
  • 3 chicken breasts (boneless-skinless)
  • ½ box “super greens” rotini pasta (any pasta made with greens)
  • 2 (10-ounce) packages frozen chopped spinach, thawed and well drained
  • ½ cup (1 stick) butter, melted
  • 1½ cups milk
  • 3 eggs, beaten
  • 1 package onion soup mix
  • ½ cup whipped cream cheese
  • ½ cup grated Parmesan cheese
  • 1 cup cherry tomatoes.
Directions:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Coat a 9- x 13-inch baking dish with cooking spray.
In a large pot of boiling water, cook noodles for earliest amount of time ( if 7-9 minutes use 7!), drain.


While that cooks, brown both sides of the chicken breasts just enough to give it color. 4-5 minutes per side


In a large bowl, mix the drained spinach, butter, beaten eggs, soup mix, and the cream cheese. Blend well. 
 

Place mixture in baking dish and arrange chicken breasts on top. Sprinkle the cherry tomatoes around the chicken. Top with the Parmesan and cover dish tightly with foil. 

 
 
Bake 45 to 50 minutes or until slightly golden around edges.
Serve with a hot bread, maybe some wine.



So happy to be serving my Master Indy.
socialslave

To satisfy and restore.
To nourish, support and maintain.
To gratify, spoil, comfort and please,
to nurture, assist, and sustain
..I cook!

Please buy slave's cookbook:

The Little Black Book of Indiscreet Recipes by 
Dan White
 
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00F315Y4I/ref=cm_sw_r_tw_dp_vAT4sb0934RTM via @amazon



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Joe Cino, an Italian-American theatrical producer and café-owner, created the “Off-Off Broadway” theater movement. He was born in a working-class family in Buffalo.

Joe grew up in a generation that was taught:
You can get anything if you just work hard enough for it: Fame, money, love, anything. But nobody wants a fat boy!

Joe wanted to be a dancer. Joe wanted to be successful. Joe wanted love. This was no different from anyone growing up in the most successful nation in the world.

No matter how hard he worked at it, his goals seemed just beyond his reach. Perhaps he never knew what a great legacy his life had. For when grief proved to be too much, Joe gave up and quit! In a final burst of pain he ended his own life. Never to know what a wonderful gift he had given, nor to understand the hurt his loss caused to so many.

At sixteen, Joe Cino moved to New York City to study performing arts in hopes of becoming a dancer. Though he made a living dancing throughout the 1950s, his continual struggles with weight curtailed his dance career.


In 1958, Cino managed to rent a storefront in Greenwich Village and opened a coffeehouse where his friends could socialize.

Cafe Cino would become a theatrical venue; Cino wanted to host folk music concerts, poetry readings, and art exhibits. Then plays were added to the performance mix.
Cino became so excited by the audience’s and his own response to the plays that he quickly established a weekly schedule for theatrical performances. He would introduce the acts with the phrase, "It's magic time!" All of Joe's life he was reaching for magic to happen.


The Cafe Cino, made its meager living from selling food and drink, where no one was paid except the police who were paid off, where reviewers seldom came and reviews were usually published after a show had closed. He crated a new type of theater. Later dozens of theaters would appear, based on the Cino model, in places which made their living other ways—cafes, bars, art galleries, and churches. To distinguish it from Broadway (large Equity theaters) and Off-Broadway (smaller Equity theaters), this new outside/underground theater world came to be known as "Off-Off Broadway."
Off-Off Broadway does not belong to fat cat “angels” with huge bank accounts; non-show people who may or may not like how you are doing it.

It is not a living it is a way of being. You are given the opportunity to do what you were born to do. Writers can write. Directors can direct. Actors can act.

The Cino was a friendly social center for gays at a time when openly gay life was restricted to bars and bathhouses.

A number of early Cino productions had dealt with gay identity, including Doric Wilson's Now She Dances! (1961). Director Andy Milligan staged a number of homoerotic productions, including Jean Genet's "The Maids" and "Deathwatch," as well as a dramatization of Tennessee Williams' short story "One Arm". It was after The Madness of Lady Bright, the Cino came to be recognized as a significant venue for plays dealing with homosexual themes. This was a time when it was still illegal to depict homosexuality on stage. 
 

Throughout Cafe Cino’s existence, Cino was plagued by police harassment as he continually took heat for licensing violations. (there was no applicable license available.) Window posters were designed so that they looked like abstract art to passersby, yet could be read by “those in the know”. Police knew. Cino paid a great deal of money in payoffs during the 1960s. He was working hard and acted as café host while simultaneously serving as its maintenance man, a server, and a barista. Through it all, he generally kept other jobs in order to support himself and the café.

He lived by his motto, “Do what you have to do,” and encouraged his writers to live by it as well. At the Cafe Cino’s peak, plays were performed twice nightly, with three shows per night on weekends. Even if audiences failed to turn up, Cino insisted on a show. “Do it for the room,” he would tell the performers, and they did.


Cafe Cino relied heavily on electricity stolen from the city grid by Joe’s lover, electrician Jon Torrey. The cafe had no stage which made for intimacy between the performers and audience.

In 1967 Jon Torrey was electrocuted and died. His death was ruled accidental. The event sent Cino into a depressive spiral. He started to do drugs. Cafe Cino itself was suffering. Joe refused to charge an admission or even a minimum.

Within weeks, Joe Cino savagely attacked his own arms and stomach with a kitchen knife. He was rushed to the hospital, where doctors announced he would live. However, on April 2, (what would have been his lovers birthday), Joe Cino passed. 

Though friends tried to keep Cafe Cino open, it closed in 1968, finally falling victim to cabaret laws now being strictly enforced.
Police issued summonses so often that when a policeman appeared down the block, actors had to be ready at a signal from the doorman to leap offstage and sit, often in fantastic costumes, at tables with patrons.

Perhaps Joe never knew the gift he gave to life! It would be easy for some to condemn him for being weak. But his struggles and work proved his true strength. Maybe it was the world that proved too weak to support his bright spirit and infectious smile. This gay steward deserves to be remembered!


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