Tag: chicken

This recipe is a favorite of Mark’s and mine that I got from the Everyday Foods magazine.

Indian-spiced Braised Chicken

Ingredients

  • 1 1/2 lbs of boneless, skinless chicken thighs (I use white meat)
  • 1 medium onion, halved and thinly sliced
  • 1 can (14.5 oz) diced tomatoes drained
  • 2 Tablespoons of tomato paste
  • 1 Tablespoon grated ginger
  • 2 minced garlic cloves
  • 1/2 teaspoon ground coriander
  • 1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper
  • course salt and ground pepper
  • 1/2 cup plain yogurt (8 oz)
  • 1/4 cup chopped fresh cilantro
  • 1/2 teaspoon garam masala (optional)
  • cooked white rice for serving

Directions

  1. In a 5- to 6-quart slow cooker, stir together chicken, onion, tomatoes, tomato paste, ginger, garlic, coriander and cayenne; season with salt and pepper.
  2. Cook on high 4 hours (or on low 8 hours) until fork-tender.
  3. Stir in yogurt, cilantro, and if using, garam masala.
  4. Serve with rice.

Alternative Oven Method

  1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
  2. Follow step 1, using a 5-quart lidded heavy pot.
  3. Stir in 2 cups of water.
  4. Cover; bake until tender, about 2 hours.
  5. Stir in yogurt, cilantro, and if using garam masala.

Notes

  • Serves 4
  • Prep time 15 minutes
  • Total time is 4 hours and 15 minutes

This rated a 10 out of 10 with Mark. If you can’t take spiciness then lessen the cayene pepper. I will have more recipes appear at Ariesna at live journal. Since I plan on more experimenting with new recipes. 🙂

*blech* I hate being sick. Sure, it’s paid time off from work (121.5 hours of sick time remaining) but I’d rather be feeling good and taking vacation time. I am mostly over the bug I’d caught, but still feeling a bit congested. That being the case, I’m skipping coffee today in favor of hot tea1. This being Wednesday, my preference for tea caused a bit of confusion.

Let me ‘splain. No, there is too much. Let me sum up. Buttercup is marry’ Humperdinck in a little less than half an hour. And every Wednesday, myself and a few co-workers head over to the Terrapin to get a cup of real coffee2. Almost without fail, I order a “Grand Canyon” which is 2 shots of espresso, steamed milk, a shot of dark chocolate syrup and a shot of mango syrup. *yum* When I got there today, I picked up their tea menu and Rob (one of the owners) ordered me to put it down. I explained about the congestion and he accepted it, but I wouldn’t say he was happy about it. Then I ordered their Chinese Breakfast tea, as the description sounded similar to the yunnan jig tea I’ve mentioned before. Hot caffeinated beverages acquired, we headed back to the office and I headed back to the mountain of email that had arrived while I’d been out. After clearing out that mess (most of it went straight to the trash), I started/continued testing a problem I’d been working on Friday. I’m still processing the data for that test now, but I’m also starting to wonder if I should have stayed home again.

Today, like Sunday, I woke up feeling better than the day before. The problem is like Sunday, I didn’t stay home. Sunday, Ariesna & I were invited to go to Niabi Zoo over in Illinois with some of her family. It was a fun day and I took quite a few pictures3 but by the end of the day, I was totally wiped out and realized I should have stayed home. Now I’m not wiped out (so far) but I do feel more tired than I should from just sitting at a desk, staring at a computer screen. Ah well, not much I can do about that now.

BTW, last night I upgraded Cath‘s site to the current version of WordPress. I was kind of annoyed at how long it took but then most of that time was taken up my crappy ftp client having problems deleting the files for the old version from the webserver. Mind you I was booted into Windows at the time4 which undoubtably was part of the problem. But I did eventually get it done and wouldn’t you know it looks nearly identical to what it did before. I’d call that a good sign for a seamless upgrade, but I’m waiting to hear back from her before I call it a success. So why the upgrade? In part to patch some old security holes and in part because all the new/interesting stuff for WP is happening on the newer versions. This way if she feels like going out and picking a different theme5; it should be trivial to install it.

Anyway, one of the reasons I was annoyed with the amount of time it took was last night also happened to be the season premier for NCIS. I’ve been a fan of this show for a while now, but season 2’s finale was murder. Quite literally, as they killed off one of the NCIS agents. I was very much looking forward to seeing where they’d take the show next, but with upgrading the site and some other things I didn’t get to watch the show as thoroughly as I would have liked. From what I did see, I’m not sure how enjoyable season 3 will be. I don’t care for the new characters they introduced into the NCIS office (Director Jenny Shepard and Agent Ziva David). The romatic background between Gibbs & Shepard could be an interesting subplot but they seem to be pushing it too hard in an episode which should be dealing more directly with the remaining NCIS agents working to find Kate’s killer. And then to make the episode a 2-parter leaving us on another cliff-hanger is distinctly annoying. *sigh* I guess we’ll have to wait and see if they can pull this up with next week’s episode.

1 Next to chicken noodle soup, hot tea works best for clearing up congestion and helping me feel better.
2 The first part of this paragraph is a quote from The Princess Bride. And when I say coffee, I mean flavored espresso.
3 I’ll see about posting some of them later. Incidentally, there was a classic car show being held on the zoo’s premises so don’t be surprised if you see more car than animals photos.
4 I had some work to do that required M$ Word, as OpenOffice Writer couldn’t properly edit the fancy formating in the document (originally created in M$ Word).
5 By perhaps looking through the themes in Alex King’s Theme Browser….

Savage Chickens :: An Apple A Day

Savage Chickens is a webcomic that I ran across recently and it’s rather brilliant in its simplicity. One guy, one stack of Post-It notes, one pen and a whole lot of bringing the funny. This one is now permanently added to my Portal page so I won’t forget to hit it during my daily webcomic trawl.

After we finally left town for our honey-night1, Ariesna nodded off and went to sleep for most of the drive. Once we got to Davenport, I got a bit too caught up in looking for street names and went past the place we were staying… a couple of times. *sigh* I’m convinced I’ve got less direction sense than a rock. I can learn an area so I know where I’m going but it takes me a fairly long time and even after years of living in this area; I tend to turn down a street only to be surprised when it joins up with a different street I’m already familiar with. All this is building up to say that I ended up having to tell Ariesna where we were staying before we found the place2. I did so want it to be a complete surprise. *sigh*

Any hoo, the place we stayed at is called Fulton’s Landing. It’s a late 19th century house that has been beautifully maintained and is decorated with many a wonderful antique. When we finally arrived, Ariesna & I walked inside but found ourselves faced with a small problem. There was no sign of the proprietor! After a bit of shouting hello and ringing the doorbell, I went back outside and started walking around the grounds to see if I could find somebody. Later Ariesna confided in me that just after I’d gone searching that she found a small note saying that our hostess could be found painting the front porch.

After locating Pat, our gracious and charming host, we headed back to where Ariesna was waiting and then up to our room. Ariesna was thrilled and while I did find it to be a lovely room; it was a bit pink for me. We freshened ourselves up a bit and then went to a nearby Japanese restaurant that we are familiar with from previous visits to the area. Their yummy rolls weren’t as good as the ones we’d had back in Kansas City once upon a time, but the Hawaiian rolls were fantastic3! Then she had the Shrimp Tempura and I had the Chicken Katsu. Both dishes were delicious and much larger than I remembered from previous visits. After eaching our fill, we headed back to Fulton’s Landing.

Just a brief side note for the single folks who read this blog: when you get married some day; make sure to eat a good breakfast and/or hide some sort of energy bar in your pocket/purse for later. That way you don’t starve as your wedding guests are likely to keep you so busy that the serving staff will remove your food before you get a chance to eat any of it!

We did get back to Fulton’s Landing without any troubles and had a very pleasant evening relaxing… and doing those things that newlyweds do. The next morning, we had a marvelous breakfast with the other guests: a couple from Nebraska with their daughter from Brazil and a writer from England. Apparently, he writes a column called “The Best…” for The European; this has him gaunting around the world finding the best places to stay, best foods to eat and writing all about it for his clientelle. After listening to him talk for a few minutes, I’m became convinced that I’m in the wrong profession. 🙂 After breakfast, we checked out but Pat allowed us to leave our car parked there so we could go for a walk around the area. There are many gorgeous houses over there, a few of them for sale –and quite undoubtably out of my price range–. It ended up being a longer walk than we had really thought we were in for, with a good chunk leading us up-hill but it also very enjoyable. Particularly once we left the housing area and got back down by the river with the cool breeze coming in off the water. Hmm, that was soo nice.

Then it was time to retrieve the car and head for home, which we spent just quietly enjoying the day & each other’s company. Later in the evening, Ariesna’s parents came up and we unwrapped all the wedding loot. It was a good haul. Heck, there were even gifts in there that were aimed more towards me than they were towards the bride. Don’t misunderstand me, there were plenty of gifts that were definitely picked with the bride in mind! And of course, there was also a nice selection of checks and cold, hard cash as well. All in all, I think Ariesna & I should get married more often if it’s going to bring in this kind of loot.

1 Due to time & financial constraints, we didn’t get to do a full honeymoon right now but we hope to do one later. Since it was just a night away from home, I’m calling it our honey-night. 🙂
2 For the record, she’d already noticed the sign for the place a couple of times before I broke down and told her.
3 For those unfamiliar with Japanese cuisine, these rolls are actually types of sushi.

Here is a very tasty recipe from my Cooking Light Annual Recipes 2001 (page 74). It doesn’t create a big mess.

Chicken and Broccoli Teriyaki with Noodles

    Ingredients (serves 4)

  • 1 regular size foil oven bag
  • Cooking spray
  • 1/3 cup low-sodium teriyaki sauce
  • 2 Tablespoons minced peeled fresh ginger (powder works too)
  • 1 Tablespoon sugar
  • 1 pound skinned and boneless chicken breast cut into 1/2-inch bite size pieces.
  • 1 cup fat-free less-sodium chicken broth
  • 2 teaspoon cornstarch
  • 1/2 teaspoon dark sesame oil
  • 2 (3 ounce) packages chicken-flavored ramen noodles
  • 4 cups of broccoli florets (about 11 ounces)
  • 1 (8 ounce) package of mushrooms sliced
  • 1 (8 ounce) can of sliced water chestnuts, drained
  • 1/3 cup chopped green onions
    Directions

  1. Coat inside of oven bag with cooking spray. Place bag on a large shallow baking pan.
  2. Combine teriyaki sauce, ginger, and sugar in a zip-top bag. Add chicken to bag; seal. Marinate in the refrigerator 2 hours, turning occasionally. Remove chicken from the bag, reserving the marinade: add chicken broth and cornstarch; stir with a whisk. Stir in oil and 1 flavor packet from the noodles (discard remaining flavor packet). Set aside.
  3. Preheat oven to 475 degrees.
  4. Break each noodle package into 4 pieces. Place noodles in prepared foil bag. Pour broth mixture over noodles. Add broccoli, mushrooms, and water chestnuts. Top with the chicken. Fold the edge of the bag over to seal. Bake at 475 degrees for 30 minutes or until chicken is done. Place bag on a platter. Cut open with sharp knife (be careful of steam) and peel back foil using oven mitts. Sprinkle with onions.