Tag Archives: chicken

one pot thai chicken curry {turn up the heat!}

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{thai chicken curry}

{thai chicken curry}

Recipe via bonappetit.com (Although I found this in the actual handheld paper version of the magazine. I can’t be the ONLY one left who still subscribes to print magazines, right??)

Ingredients
2 teaspoons vegetable oil
1 4-ounce can or jar yellow curry paste
3/4 pound carrots, peeled, cut into 1/2-inch-thick rounds
1 medium onion, chopped
1 red bell pepper, cut into 1-inch pieces
1 pound Yukon Gold potatoes (about 3), peeled, cut into 1/2-inch pieces
1 pound skinless, boneless chicken thighs, cut into 1-inch pieces
1 13.5-ounce or 15-ounce can unsweetened coconut milk
Chopped fresh basil and cilantro

Preparation
Heat oil in a large heavy pot over medium heat. Add curry paste and cook, stirring, until fragrant, about 1 minute. Add carrots, onion, and pepper and cook, stirring occasionally, until onion is translucent, about 10 minutes.
Add potatoes, chicken, coconut milk, and 1 1/2 cups water and bring to a boil. Reduce heat to a simmer and cook, stirring occasionally, until chicken is cooked through and potatoes are tender, about 20 minutes. Divide curry among bowls and top with herbs.

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After searching a few different stores, I finally found actual curry paste at Whole Foods. Don’t use pre-made curry sauces! You’re making your own sauce in this recipe.  Unfortunately, they didn’t have yellow paste which the recipe calls for. With my smart phone in hand, I googled “yellow vs. green curry paste” and in short, the spice level of the green curry (which Whole Foods DID have) was higher.

I’m a huge chicken when it comes to heat so I only used 3/4 of the curry paste AND added a dollop half a cup of Greek yogurt in the dish to tone down the spice. What I ended up with was a not-spicy-at-all curry dish, which was fine for me, but did nothing to help build my tolerance.

I think next time I make this (and I WILL be making this again, since I found YELLOW curry at a restaurant supply store!), I won’t chicken out and I’ll use the entire 4 oz. of curry paste and I won’t add yogurt. I’ll just be sure to keep a glass of milk on the side when I eat it.

An Impromptu Version of a “Garbage Salad”

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Let’s face it. Life is busy, and some Thursday nights you’re going to get home at 9 with nothing to cook. Before you dig through your drawer of takeout menus (the typical 45 minute wait was literally the only thing that stopped me today), take a look in your fridge. There’s a chance you might have enough random vegetables and fruits to put together a halfway decent dinner. Enter the art of the Garbage Salad (or as I like to put it, dump anything you can find into a bowl and mix).  However, my version is a totally different than an actual garbage salad and is my own interpretation.  (Hey, when you’re scraping your fridge for food, options are limited).

Continue reading …

Chicken and Ricotta Stuffed Bell Peppers

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I had 2 gorgeous yellow bell peppers (add these to my list of impulse purchases at the farmer’s market) and decided to attempt stuffed bell peppers entirely sans-recipe.  I pulled together some ingredients I had around my kitchen and came up with this:

Ingredients
1/4 lb ground chicken
1/4 tsp dried basil
1 sprig oregano
1/2 cup ricotta
2 tbsp toasted pine nuts
2 tbsp chopped italian parsley
2 bell peppers
salt and pepper to taste

Directions
Preheat oven to 400°.  Brown chicken on stovetop and add dried basil.  Toast oregano in a tiny bit of olive oil in pan.

Mix chicken, oregano, ricotta, toasted pine nuts and chopped italian parsley in large bowl.

Slice off tops of bell peppers, remove seeds and ribs.  Stuff peppers with chicken mixture, place in glass baking dish and cover with aluminum foil.  Bake for 30-40 minutes.

Ta-da!  The finished stuffed pepper:

Fresh oregano is a very potent herb.  A tidbit of info I wish I had considered before getting a little overzealous with the parsley and dried basil.  Over-seasoning aside, the ground chicken and ricotta mixed together is superb, not to mention, yellow bell peppers are nice and sweet.  Next time, I’m going with just one herb and not three so I don’t have to pick out the excessive parsley and oregano pieces:)

Rosemary and Garlic Chicken with Heirloom Potatoes

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I can’t say it enough.  I’m obsessed with the farmer’s market, and every Sunday, I usually end up picking up things that looked pretty, but I had no idea what I was going to do with them.

Enter my latest find: heirloom potatoes.  Schlepping my big canvas bag packed full of goodies around the market, a few colorful potatoes caught the corner of my eye.  I grabbed some purple and yellow potatoes simply because they looked cool.  But I really had no meal in mind.

Then something clicked.  I also had a handful of sprigs of rosemary.  Bingo.  Rosemary potatoes.  But hey, let’s make it a meal and throw in some chicken too.

I started out by adding a few sprigs of rosemary, a few cloves of chopped garlic, salt, pepper, chopped onions and the beautiful heirloom potatoes to a large mixing bowl, drizzled with a generous amount of olive oil:

I learned this time saving, non-crying-inducing method of chopping onions, which is absolutely brilliant.  Start out by cutting the onion in half from top to bottom (i.e. not horizontally):

Lay the flat end on the cutting board and slice off the top.  Next is where the tricks begin.  Make thin slices through the onion, but leaving about an inch or so uncut towards the bottom part of the onion:

Once you’ve made enough slices through the onion from one side to the other, carefully make similar sized slices horizontally through the onion, again stopping about an inch from the bottom:

And finally, just start chopping straight down into the onion, and voila, perfectly chopped onions with very little effort and zero tears:

I added the chicken drumsticks into the mixing bowl, added even more olive oil, and tossed well.  Next, I dumped everything into a baking dish, covered with foil, and baked at 400° (I have absolutely no idea how long I cooked it for, since I forgot to set a timer.  I just kept an eye on the chicken until it was thoroughly cooked).

It wasn’t particularly flavorful right out of the oven.  But I still had a ton of leftovers, so I saved it and put it in the fridge.  After a day of sitting in all of the rosemary, garlic and olive oil, the chicken was significantly more tasty the second day.  Next time, I’m throwing everything into a large freezer bag and letting it sit overnight before cooking.  Hopefully that will make it taste just as good the day I cook it:)

BBQ Chicken Pizza

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It was love at first sight.  Ever since I stumbled upon the pre-made pizza doughs at both Trader Joe’s and Fresh&Easy, I haven’t been able to stop trying new pizzas…pesto pizza and goat cheese and roasted tomato pizza…

Making the pizza is insanely easy.  All you need is: a bag of pre-made pizza dough of your choice (I went with TJ’s whole wheat dough), shredded cheese (a quattro formaggio blend for this one), some chopped red onion, barbecue sauce, chicken and cilantro.

I started out with kneading the dough while the slices of chicken breast soaked in barbecue sauce cooked in the oven.  Of the entire process, this was the most time consuming (and it didn’t take much time at all).

Once the pizza stone was heated, the dough was stretched out and the chicken was cooked, I took the stone out of the oven and threw the dough onto it.  I slathered on some barbecue sauce, followed by a few pieces of chopped red onion, then a generous helping of cheese, finishing off with the cooked chicken:

I let it bake in the oven at 450° for about 8-10 minutes (watch it carefully, it cooks quickly!):

Finally, I topped it off with fresh chopped cilantro:

Of all of my experiments with pizza, this is by far my favorite.  Absolutely delish.  I have to give some serious kudos to the barbecue sauce itself.  I picked up a bottle of D’s Original BBQ Sauce at Whole Foods a while back.  The sauce is just the right amount of sweet and tang, bottled up together to create barbecue sauce perfection.

Easy.  Yummy.  Filling.  Fantastic.  I kind of want to whip this up again already and I just made it a day ago…