Lemon Honey Chicken

While you wait on the edge of your seat for my review of To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Willis (that you didn't even know you would be getting), here's a link to the Women in Science Fiction book club's discussion of Farthing (that you may remember from this post).  And also, this is what we had for dinner tonight:

Juice and zest of half a lemon

2 heaped t honey (or a good squeeze of liquid honey)

Pinch white pepper

1t dried thyme

1t rubbed rosemary

Pinch of turmeric

2 spring onions

1-2t unsalted butter

Put everything into a small pot on low heat to melt the honey and soften the spring onion.  Meanwhile, brown some chicken, then pour the warm sauce over the top, pop in the butter, and cover with a lid or a sheet of tin foil.

Serve on rice.

I've been told by my doctor that I have high blood pressure for my age, so I should cut out all salt until it's normal again.  This is bizarre to me as we don't add salt to our food or eat many obviously salty things.  We also steer away from processed food, instead making our own sauces (as you may notice from what I write about food on here).

However, apparently a good portion of your daily salt intake can come from bread, so I'm going to try making bread without salt tomorrow.  I've done a little research and it seems that the salt in bread is only for flavour, with one person saying that one would find that salt-free bread would taste like cardboard.  But apparently it is also a yeast inhibitor (unlike sugar, which is just as yummy to yeast as it is to us), meaning that a salt free bread may need less yeast.  Interesting right?

Other places one can find sneaky salt is in cereal (Mum looked in the supermarket today and couldn't find anything other than porridge that had no salt in it, but ew); dried fruit; tinned fruit, vegetables, and fish; and shop-bought baking.  As you can imagine, I've not had much other than fruit to eat today!  Wish me luck for the next week, I'm going to need it!

PS:  Sorry for the lack of photo, I'm only a wee while away from getting my camera.  I'd have it by now, but noone around here seems to know about the specials they publish in their mailers...  So be patient, I'll pop a photo in next time we make it!

Velvet Chicken

Rather than a recipe, this is a technique for preparing the most deliciously moist chicken for your next stir fry.  Have you ever wondered why the chicken in the stir fry you make at home is slightly dry in comparison to takeaways, even though it's not overcooked?  According the BBC Good Food magazine, and tested by yours truly, restaurants 'velvet' their chicken, before cooking it.

Simply combine 1T of corn flour, 1T of rice wine or dry sherry (we had neither, so used a little splash of water), and an egg white, and then toss chicken pieces in the gooey mess to coat.  It's just the same as battering.  Then leave the chicken to stand on the bench for 20-30 minutes while you chop up all of your veges (we had 7 different veges tonight and it was glorious!).  The magazine suggested poaching or deep frying the chicken, so we popped it on the stove in a pan full of almost boiling water (eww deep frying!).  Then I emptied the water and popped the chicken back in the pan with a little oil to brown up a little, before stirring it into the veges and sauce, and serving.

This was really simple, and turned out wonderfully!  I hope you'll try it, let me know what you think if you do!

Another Absence

Hi!  The weather has been so depressing here lately that I haven't been motivated to do much other than cook and sew and crochet.  This is why last week's Links of the Week have come out today (and have last week's date on them).

I have finished my friend's birthday present scarf, and have to finish edging it, then block it, then send it.  The copies of my thesis that I had bound weeks ago are still sitting on the floor behind the couch waiting to be sent.  My gnome picture that was the stitch along at Feeling Stitchy LAST month, is still going (I even finished a whole flower yesterday), but I have realised that the beads we got at Spotlight last week are too big to use for everywhere I wanted to put a bead, so when Mum goes to the hospital for x rays (her doctor thinks she might have arthritis!) on Monday, I will tag along and pop into Spotlight again for some smaller beads.

I made a recipe from World of Cake that, if I had followed the instructions properly would never have worked (please people, check your quantities before recipe books go to the printer!) because it listed 1c of flour for about 3 or more cups of liquid, and assumed a bread-like dough would result.  Three extra cups of flour were, luckily, in the cupboard.  I made another recipe from that book and it turned out fabulously, so I stand by my claim that the book rocks.  I made this (delicious!), and also these (best chocolate chip/chunk biscuits ever!).

And today I am listening to hours of podcasts, broken up by listening to Bjork.  I will try to be better about posting more regularly again.  I was doing so well, too!  What are you up to?  Is anyone reading this enjoying the freezing weather here in NZ?  I'm sure we could amuse ourselves by asking everyone we talk to how many layers they're wearing (thermal singlet, t shirt, two jumpers, two pairs of pants, socks, thermal socks,...  does a wheat bag count as a layer?)!

Chicken Burritos

A few weeks ago, I caught some of Rachael Ray (whose show I used to really enjoy, but she's become more yelly and less cooky) and she had some women on who were competing for the best slow cooker dish.  I don't remember who won, but two women used their crock pot to make burrito filling.  I thought this was a great idea, and went about replicating it (without actually using their recipes - I don't trust Rachael Ray recipes since the infamous lemon chicken disaster), and this is what I found.

Crock Pot Chicken Taco Filling (adapted from this recipe)

½ t minced chilli (from a jar)

1 t minced garlic (from a jar)

2 onions, chopped

1-2 t each of:  ground cumin seeds, paprika (hot or mild, not smoked), dried oragano

½ t sugar

¼ t salt

2 free-range chicken breasts, cut into bite sized chunks

1 tin chopped tomatoes (don't get flavoured ones just so you don't have to use the spices, that's just cheating!)

1 tin red kidney beans, drained and thoroughly rinsed

1 carrot, cut into matchsticks

1 capsicum (I like green), cut into strips

When you put all of the ingredients into the crock pot, be sure to put the carrot on the bottom so that it cooks through and softens.  Whenever you put vegetables into a crock pot, this is what you should do. Also, I mixed the powders and pastes, and then mixed some of the tomatoes in with them so that they didn't just sit on top of everything.  Other than that, just put everything in, and set it to high for about 4-5 hours, or low for 8.  Give it a bit of a stir when you get home before leaving it until dinner time, to make sure the chicken is falling apart, and there's not too much liquid.  If there is a lot of liquid, try taking the lid off and putting the crock pot on high.  It doesn't really matter, if you don't mind getting juice all down your arm (which happened to us).

To serve, take the crock to the table, heat up tortillas in the frying pan, oven, or microwave, and let everyone make their own, with cheese, lettuce or your favourite green leaf mix, and a little sour cream.  Or a lot.  I like a lot.

I have no photo because we ate them far too quickly.  But I'm sure you will trust me when I say they were yummy.

Sweet and Sour Chicken - What To Do With Leftovers

I love dinners made from leftovers that totally change the original meal into something new.  Mum bought a cooked chicken on the weekend (on a related note, that will be the last time!) and we had it with veges and gravy.  But on Monday night we felt like something different, so we made the sweet and sour sauce from the Edmond's Cook Book, added a little ginger and chilli, stir fried some beans, capsicum, carrots, and the leftover chicken.  Lastly, some nice fat noodles went in.  Really simple, really delicious, and really good as leftovers for lunch the next day!

Edmond's Sweet and Sour Sauce

4T brown sugar

2T cornflour

4T white vinegar

1T soy sauce

1c water or liquid vegetables are cooked in

Combine all ingredients in a small saucepan and heat to boiling.  Reduce heat and an simmer until sauce is thick (2-3 mins).  Be careful as the sugar can make the sauce stick to the bottom of the pot.

Believe me, it looks so simple, but it's SO good.  I added a t of minced ginger, and a little minced chilli to warm it up a little.

Yummy warm noodle salad

As I will talk about soon, I've been watching two series of Nigella's tv shows on dvd.  Last night just as we were about to make dinner, Nigella was making a shrimp noodle salad (I think...) and we had just been saying we have noodles and left over chicken to eat.  I decided to make a noodle salad with whatever there was handy, and this is what we ended up with.

Chicken

Noodles (wide Asian-style)

Capsicum

Broccoli

Spinach

Cabbage (green)

Cashews

Sunflower Seeds

Cumin Seeds

Soy sauce

Honey

Turmeric

Little oil

Cook the noodles, drain, toss with some oil, set aside.  Boil half of the spinach for about 2 minutes and then douse with cold water.  Rip up the rest of the leaves into mixable pieces.  Cook the broccoli so that it's just softened.  Cook the cabbage in the usual way with butter and pepper.  Heat a frying pan, add cashews, sunflower and cumin seeds and dry roast them (or in my case almost burn them) then add a little soy sauce and a pinch of tumeric, then a squeeze of honey and mix all together and turn off the heat.  Lazily shred the chicken.  Toss all ingredients together.  By the time you do all of it, the hot stuff will be warm, the cold stuff will be at room temperature and you will end up with a slightly warm salad that is really yummy.

Chicken Pilaf

Cooked Fri 15 Oct, 2010, for Julie-Anne

From Healthy Food Guide Magazine, Oct 2010

2 Spring onions

2T grated fresh ginger (we used about 2t mashed from a jar)

1T soy sauce

2 cloves garlic (we used about 2t mashed from a jar)

750g chicken thighs (we used about 600g, and it seemed to be about the right ratio chicken:rice for our taste)

[we didn't use mushrooms, but it says 500g, thickly sliced]

1c long-grain rice

3c chicken stock (that's two of the small boxes - we only had one and topped it up with water, and it was fine)

2T sweet chilli sauce (we didn't have this, so I put in a squeeze of chilli and about a t of sugar)

1T fish sauce

1c frozen peas

Chop spring onions and cut chicken into chunks. Mix chicken, spring onions, soy sauce, garlic, ginger to coat, then brown in a pan (a big sauce pan is good, we used the electric frying pan and it was too big, especially as we didn't eat it the second it was ready - it would have started to dry out, but we added a little water and then piled it up on one side of the frying pan and turned the heat way down). Take the chicken out put the rice, stock (and/or water), fish and chilli sauces, bring to the boil, covered, then simmer for 10mins. Put the chicken back in and cook again for 8-10 mins (we didn't need this much time as the chicken and the rice cooked faster). Add the peas and let them warm up.

Chicken and broccoli

300g chicken

2t red curry paste

350g broccoli

1/4c water

1/2c coconut milk

4 spring onions

1t soy sauce

Heat oil in a sauce pan, add chicken and paste. If the paste sticks, don't worry, it will lift when the liquid is added. Add water and coconut milk once the paste has become fragrant, then simmer 2mins. Add broccoli, cook 3-4mins, til broccoli starts to soften. Add spring onion and soy sauce before cooking for another minute. Serve with rice, could possibly serve with noodles too.

We don't have this healthy food guide in hard copy, we got it from the website. Trying tonight with just veges, so adding cauliflower and carrots instead of chicken.

AMENDED:   Not including the chicken seems to make the sauce hotter, perhaps the chicken absorbs some of the spices?  So if looking to keep the same heat, add less curry paste.

From http://www.healthyfood.co.nz/recipes/2008/august/chicken-and-broccoli-stir-fry