Recipe: Curry-Lime Chicken with Seasoned Coconut Rice and Broccoli

Looking to redeem myself for that terrible minted pea pasta dish from the other week, I went in search of a flavorful, summery recipe that would make my parents forget that the not-so-delicious pasta dish had ever happened. I came across this recipe for lime and coconut chicken while browsing through recipe posts on Pinterest and I just knew it had to be good. Unlike the minted pea dish, I was more familiar with the flavors in this dish and how they would interact with each other. I whipped up a complimentary side dish of seasoned coconut rice and fresh broccoli and the result was absolutely delicious. My dad claimed he tasted "flavors from the Caribbean," my mom said something about South America or Thai food (not sure which one, or why she thought of them), and I was thinking of Indian food with that delicious curry flavor coming through. This dish is packed with intense flavor and freshness and it's perfect on a warm summer day (and it definitely helped erase the mint-and-pea combo from our memories).

Serves: 4
Prep. time: 15 minutes (plus at least 2 hours for the chicken to marinate)
Cooking time: Approx. 30 minutes
Difficulty: Easy
Special equipment: Grill, grill pan, or George Foreman (or similar) grill

Ingredients

• 2 chicken breasts
• Approx. 1/3 cup coconut milk, as needed for the marinade-turned-sauce
• 2-4 cups cups broccoli florets
• 1/4 cup fresh cilantro, chopped
• Lime wedges (approx. 2 per person)

For the marinade

• 3 tbsp. oil (I used olive oil, but peanut oil or veggie/canola oil would be good choices)
• 1/2 cup coconut milk
• 2 tbsp. soy sauce
• Zest of 1 lime
• 1&1/2 tsp. ground coriander
• 1 tsp. ground cumin
• 2 tsp. curry powder
• A pinch of ground cayenne pepper
• 1 tsp. salt
• 2 tbsp. sugar

For the rice

• 2 cups white rice
• 1/4 cup coconut milk
• Juice of 1 lime
• Zest of 2-3 limes
• 1 tsp. ground cumin, or to taste
• 1 tsp. ground coriander, or to taste
• 1 tsp. curry powder, or to taste
• 1 tsp. ground tumeric, or to taste
• 1/4 cup shredded, sweetened coconut, chopped

Directions

Prepare the marinade for the chicken in a liquid measuring cup. Put chicken breasts in a large Ziploc bag, pour in the marinade, and place the mixture in the fridge for at least two hours, to allow the chicken breasts to fully marinate. After the chicken breasts are finished, remove them from the bag and set aside on a plate in the fridge. Preheat the grill to medium-high heat. Pour the marinade into a small sauce pan and set aside. In a medium pot, prepare the rice according to package instructions. Substitute 1/4 of the water for the rice with the coconut milk. While the rice is cooking, fill a medium-sized pot with water and bring to a boil. Once boiling, add the broccoli florets and cook for 3-4 minutes, until tender, but still firm and green. Drain them and return them to the pot; cover and set aside to keep warm. When the rice reaches the last 12 minutes of cooking, throw the chicken on the grill and grill until tender and cooked through. Set it aside on a plate; cover with foil. In the meantime, bring the marinade to a boil—this will become a sauce for the dish, but you MUST boil it for AT LEAST 2 minutes to make it safe to consume (it's had raw chicken in it, so you have to cook that out over high heat). Once it's boiled for a few minutes, add a little coconut milk to tone it down (it's very flavor-packed)—you can also add a splash of water. Add cornstarch-and-water mixture to thicken if needed. Keep over low heat, stirring occasionally. When the rice is done, add all of the remaining ingredients (seasoning, zest, coconut) for it and mix. Plate the chicken, rice, and broccoli, and serve with cilantro, lime wedges, and the marinade-turned-sauce. 

The curry and lime are the prominent flavors in this meal, but the coconut and mixture of cumin, coriander, and tumeric add depth to the dish. The sauce is powerful on its own, but perfect drizzled over the rice and chicken, and of course the broccoli, which soaks it right up. Definitely a dish with some new and unique flavors (at least for our family), and definitely a winner.

Recipe: Thai-Style Steak with Thai Fried Quinoa

During the pasta and grains unit in my Foods 1 class last fall, we discussed a popular alternative to rice and couscous called quinoa. Nutty, grain-like, and celebrated as a healthier alternative to other grain side dishes, quinoa has recently become pretty popular in the food world and I've been dying to try it out. I searched high and low for the perfect recipe and found this fantastic one from Iowa Girl Eats. I picked up strip steaks and created a Thai-inspired marinade, and that this unique, grain-like side dish. Eating the quinoa was a lot like eating fried rice—it's nutty, chewy-crunchy, and fluffy—and it turned out just as well as I'd hoped it would.

Serves: 4
Prep. time: 15 minutes (marinate the steaks for at least 2 hours, or up to 24 hours)
Cooking time: 15-20 minutes for the quinoa, 5-10 minutes for the complete quinoa mixture, 5-10 minutes for the steak. Approx. 30-40 minutes total.
Difficulty: Easy

Ingredients
For the marinade

• 4 tbsp. oyster sauce
• 1/2-1 tsp. chili garlic sauce (add more if you want it spicy)
• 1 tsp. lime juice
• 1 tsp. creamy peanut butter
• 1 tbsp. brown sugar
• 4 cloves garlic, minced
• 2 tsp. cilantro, chopped
• 4 strip steaks

For the quinoa

• 1 cup quinoa, rinsed and drained (the brand I used was pre-rinsed)
• 1 cup light/lite coconut milk
• 1 cup chicken broth
• 1/4 tsp. lime zest
• Peanut oil (enough to lightly coat the bottom of a large pan)
• 1 bunch green onions, chopped
• 1 tbsp ginger, minced or grated/"zested"
• 2-3 cloves garlic, minced
• 1 cup frozen peas
• 1, 8 oz. can pineapple tidbits, drained
• 2 eggs
• 1/4 cup cilantro, chopped
• 2 tbsp. sweetened, shredded coconut, finely chopped
• 1/4 cup peanuts, finely chopped
• 2 tbsp. soy sauce
• Juice of 1 lime (approx. 1-2 tbsp.)
• 2 tbsp. soy sauce

Directions

Combine all of the ingredients for the steak marinade, then pour the mixture into a gallon size Ziploc bag, add the steaks, and mush the marinade around to coat the steaks. Put the steaks in the fridge to marinate. The longer you let the steaks marinate, the better the flavor (I put my steaks in the marinade at 11:00am and we grilled them up around 7:45pm). 

In a medium pot (approx. 2 quarts), add the quinoa, lime zest, coconut milk, and chicken stock. Bring the mixture to a boil (without a lid), then reduce the heat to medium-low and cover with a lid. Cook for 15-20 minutes, or until the quinoa is tender (a little crispiness is okay) and has soaked up all of the fluid. Once the quinoa is cooked, turn off the heat and let it sit, covered, while you work on everything else. Preheat the grill to medium-high heat, then put the steaks on and cook until they reach your desired doneness (about 5-10 minutes for medium). In the meantime, heat the peanut oil over medium high heat in a large, deep skillet or wok. Add the green onion, ginger, and garlic and cook for about a minute, until fragrant, making sure to stir frequently to prevent the garlic from burning. Add the peas and pineapple and cook for another minute, stirring occasionally. Push the mixture out to the edges of the skillet, scramble the eggs in a small bowl, and add the eggs to the middle of the skillet. Whisk them around as they cook, and once cooked through, break up the eggs and mix them into the rest of the ingredients. Add the chopped peanuts, coconut, and cilantro and stir to combine. Pour in the cooked quinoa, soy sauce, and lime juice and stir to combine. Serve the finished quinoa alongside the steaks. Add additional cilantro and peanuts as desired.

This dish is such a flavor explosion! The marinade for the steak is meaty, savory, salty, and slightly spicy. Oyster sauce is amazing and it has this savory quality that makes it perfect for many Asian dishes, particularly when used with beef. The quinoa mixture, with its sweet pineapple and coconut, salty peanuts, fresh cilantro, and sweet-spicy ginger is delicious. It's like eating Thai fried rice, but it's fluffier, lighter, and nuttier. If you're looking for something out of the ordinary for dinner (well, it was out of the ordinary for an Italian food-loving girl like me), try this out! The unique flavor combinations and the texture and taste of the quinoa make this a winning dish.

Recipe: Pad Thai

If you read my last post, you'll recall that I'd planned to make four or five new dishes for dinners last week, but unfortunately, I was only able to try one recipe due to busy evenings and a trip out of town this past weekend. I guess the upside to this is that all of the ingredients for the dinners this week are ready and waiting for me in the fridge, though, as I learned (and feared), some ingredients go bad quickly, which can really throw a wrench in dinner plans. Anywho, I had a bag of half-bad bean sprouts and some slightly wilted cilantro that desperately needed to be dealt with, so I made sure that my cousin's pad thai recipe was the first on my list of things to make this week, and fortunately, it worked out well (after picking out the good sprouts and good cilantro leaves, haha). This dish has a really interesting (and some might think weird) combination of flavors and trextures—crunchy salty peanuts, crisp green onions, tender chicken and rice noodles, tart lime—which is what drew me to it. My cousin first made this dish for me during a visit to her college apartment when I was a senior in high school. I was wary of this new dish, having, at this point, gotten used to lots of pasta dinners and my mother's various "chicken and *insert starch and vegetable side dish here*" meals (all delicious, but very "normal" compared to this pad thai dish), but I was pleasantly surprised with the unique flavors. We had this dish again when I visited her this past Labor Day weekend and I made sure to have her write the recipe down for me so I could make it for my parents. It's a delicious dish that you can make up in a big batch (like I did) or make in individual portions to allow for more personalization by the people who will eat it. I'm kind of estimating ingredients because it really comes down to preference, so you can use more or less of each thing as you see fit—I apologize if this is confusing, but just go with your gut. Obviously, if you make and plan to use all of the noodles, you should plan to buy more of each of the other ingredients. Remember, you can always add more, and it reheats well, so don't worry if you end up with a lot.

Serves: 4-6
Prep. time: 20 minutes
Cooking time: 10-20 minutes
Difficulty: Easy

Ingredients

• 8-16 oz. rice noodles (I bought A Taste of Thai brand; you can use any width—my cousin uses wide, I used a thinner noodle; I made up a whole box of noodles and tossed them in as desired)
• Approx. 2-4 chicken breasts, cubed (small pieces work best because they cook faster)
• Approx. 2 bunches green onions, chopped
• Approx. 1-2 bags (1-3 cups?) bean sprouts
• Approx. 1 container (a few ounces) fresh cilantro
• Approx. 2-4 eggs, scrambled
• Approx. 1 cup peanuts, whole or coarsely chopped
• Approx. 3-6 limes, cut into wedges

For the sauce:

• 1/4 cup packed brown sugar
• 1/4 cup fish sauce (it smells kind of like cat food, which is obviously not appealing, but it tastes wonderful once it's cooked and added to the noodle mixture)
• 1/2 cup tamarind (this can be hard to find—I looked up substitutions for it and found that certain fruit juices, like orange and lime, can be used; I used the juice of 3 limes instead of tamarind and I think it tasted good)
• 1 tsp. chili garlic sauce (I didn't have this, so I just sprinkled in a dash of garlic powder and a dash of chili powder)

Directions
Follow the package instructions for cooking/soaking the noodles (the brand I used said to soak the noodles in very hot water—I boiled water, then poured it in the bowl—and soak for at least 30 minutes). You don't want them to be super soft and soggy, but you don't want them to be too firm either.

If cooking one large batch: In a large hot pan or wok, heat about 1 tbsp. oil (a mix of peanut and canola is what my cousin recommended; don't use olive oil). Add the chicken and cook until just cooked through. Add the noodles (as much as you want) and mix them with the chicken. Add the green onion, sprouts, peanuts, and scrambled egg (make sure it's broken up into small pieces). Add the sauce and mix and let it cook for a few minutes, until the noodles and chicken soak up the sauce, the peanuts start to brown lightly, and the green onions and sprouts are crisp yet tender. Serve topped with fresh-squeezed lime juice and cilantro, if desired. Additional peanuts, fresh sprouts, and fresh green onion may be set out in small bowls so people can add more to their dish if desired, and cilantro and lime can also be set out in bowls.

If cooking in individual batches/per person: Basically, you'll do the same as above, but in smaller portions. Ask each person what they want and how much and add a smaller amount of noodles and sauce. Serve in the same way as above.

This dish combines interesting textures, tastes, and smells to create a delicious, tart, nutty, sweet dish. The bright, clean taste of the lime and cilantro add a burst of flavor to the sweet green onion, tender chicken, and salty peanuts. The sauce is a delicious mix of sweet, from the brown sugar, and salty, from the fish sauce, and the soft rice noodles easily soak it up, making them incredibly flavorful. Feel free to play around with the ingredients—subsitute shrimp for chicken, try cashews instead of peanuts, or experiment with other vegetables. This dish reheats really well, especially if you warm it back up in a pan with a little bit of oil rather than in the microwave (we actually had the leftovers for dinner tonight, along with fruit salad from my grandma and some leftover desserts from a party last week—an attempt to clean out our overloaded fridge, haha).

Recipe: Mexican-Style Stuffed Bell Peppers

My mom is out of town this weekend visiting her mother, so this means my dad and I get to eat all of the foods that we love and my mom hates (mostly, we're just going to eat a lot of spicy food and various kinds of peppers). We bought some beautiful red, yellow, and orange bell peppers in the Strip last weekend and I've been waiting until this weekend to use them, thinking I'd try to make some sort of stuffed pepper. When my dad was little, his mom used to make him stuffed peppers filled with ground beef and white rice, but I wanted to come up with my own recipe and I really wanted to use Mexican chorizo, a spicy pork sausage. I decided to do Mexican-style stuffed peppers, substituting chorizo for the ground beef and Mexican red rice for the white rice, adding hot salsa and seasoning to give them a little kick. The result: sweet, soft-yet-crispy peppers filled with spicy chorizo, red rice, tomatoes, and onions, topped with melted cheese and a sprinkling of finely chopped cilantro—delicious!

Serves: About 6
Prep. time: 15 minutes
Cooking time: About 25 minutes total for both the rice and the chorizo-and-veggie mix; 1 hour to cook the filled peppers
Difficulty: Easy

Ingredients

• Mexican or Spanish red rice (I used a 6.75 oz. box that cooked in 25 minutes)
• 6 bell peppers (I recommend red or green, but if you like sweeter peppers, yellow and orange are a better choice)
• 2-4 Mexican chorizo sausage links, casings removed and meat crumbled (pull the meat apart to make small, bite-size chunks)
• 1 onion, chopped
• 2 tomatoes, chopped
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• Dash of crushed red pepper flakes
• 1-2 tbsp. olive oil
• 1/2 cup salsa (I used hot for a bit of kick, but use whatever heat level you prefer)
• Salt and pepper, to taste
• Monterey Jack cheese or other Mexican cheese, shredded (I used a Mexican four cheese mix and Monterey Jack)
• Fresh cilantro, finely chopped

Directions
Preheat the oven to 350*F. Cook the rice (following the directions on the box) in a medium pot. Cut the tops off of the peppers, and discard the tops as well as the seeds and membranes. Arrange the peppers, hollowed side up, in a baking dish. In the meantime, heat the olive oil over medium heat in a large saucepan. Put the onion, garlic, and chorizo in the pan, cooking until the chorizo is about half-cooked. Add the tomato, crushed red pepper, salt, and pepper and continue to cook until the chorizo is completely cooked through. Add the salsa and stir to combine. Reduce the heat to low and add the rice, stirring to combine. Once combined, spoon the mixture into the peppers, filling them to the rim. Bake the peppers in the oven for 1 hour, removing them when there is about 10 minutes left so you can add the shredded cheese on top. Remove from the oven, top with cilantro, and serve. Add more salsa if desired.

This dish is sweet and spicy and incredibly filling (I barely made it through one pepper!). The spicy chorizo, red pepper flakes, and salsa add a kick to the dish while the red rice and bubbling, melted cheese help balance that heat. By stuffing uncooked peppers, rather than boiling or steaming them before stuffing, the peppers soften but still retain a light crispness. I also love this meal because you can wash the dishes, wipe down the counters, and do whatever other cleaning needs to be done while the peppers are cooking in the oven—no dreaded clean-up after dinner!

Recipe: "Cowboy Caviar" (Veggie Salsa)

I got this recipe from my best friend, Emmie, and her family, and it quickly became my go-to dish for picnics, parties, and summer snacking. I can't, for the life of me, remember where its name came from, but it's essentially a chunky vegetable salsa served best with tortilla chips. When I first encountered this dish, Emmie and I were preparing it for a Stanley Cup party at her place back in 2009 (the Pittsburgh Penguins were the champs that year! So awesome!). I wasn't that enthusiastic about the ingredients at the time (I'd never had avocado, I wasn't a fan of tomatoes, and I was pretty sure I'd hate the black beans), but Emmie insisted it would all come together perfectly and I'd love it—and she was right. It's chunky, packed with flavor, and a great way to get your vegetable serving for the day.
 

Served in Tostitos Scoops chips

Serves: Many
Prep. time: 10-20 minutes
Cooking time: No cooking necessary
Difficulty: Easy

Ingredients:

• 1 lime, juiced (or approx. 2 tbsp. bottled lime juice)
• 1 medium red onion, chopped
• 4 avocados, chopped
• 1 (14.5 or 15 oz.) can petite diced tomatoes (I like to drain some of the liquid from the can, but it's not necessary)
• 1 (14.5 or 15 oz.) can black beans, drained
• 1 (14.5 or 15 oz.) can yellow corn, drained
• Salt and pepper, to taste
• Fresh cilantro, chopped (optional)

Directions
Add the black beans, corn, red onion, tomatoes, and avocado to a large bowl. Be sure the red onion pieces are small, because the flavor is very strong and getting a huge chunk of red onion in your mouth is not very tasty. Gently stir the ingredients together to mix, being careful not to crush the avocado. Add the lime juice and salt and pepper, to taste, and stir a little more to mix. Add cilantro if desired (my mom hates cilantro, so I only add it if she's not around to eat it). Serve with tortilla chips or pita/flat bread.
It keeps for 3-5 days in the fridge (though my dad will keep eating it for a week or more)—the avocado will start to brown fairly quickly, but while the mixture may not look as appealing after the first day, it's just as tasty! If you use fresh limes, I highly recommend keeping the zest and using it in another dish. It's such a shame to waste such a delicious ingredient. I'm planning on using the lime zest from today to make mini lime cheesecakes tomorrow—recipe to follow, of course!

Close up of those delicious veggies

This salsa is delicious, and pretty healthy (if you don't eat too many tortilla chips with it). It's great for parties (I made it for a Super Bowl party during my junior year of college and it was a big hit), but it also works great as an easy summer snack.