Cilantro Lime Chicken Chopped Salad

May 6, 2013 by · 2 Comments

Cilantro Lime Chicken Chopped Salad

One of my favorite weeknight time savers lately is to cook a chicken on the weekend and then divide the meat (and broth) between two easy meals through the week.  While chicken and dumplings or enchiladas are always family favorites, sometimes I like to lighten things up with a chicken salad.

This salad is originally from Your Homebased Mom and I knew I would like it when she said it was from the Nordstrom Cafe.  I have only eaten there once, but I remember my lunch being sooo good.  The real star of this salad is the dressing.  On another day we combined the dressing with some mayo and Greek yogurt and poured it over some chicken in a wrap.  I love the taste of chipotles especially when they are combined with lime, honey and cilantro.  This was super flavorful and just spot on.

Here is a yummy recipe for Herb Roasted Chicken.  Another easy way to cook a chicken is to place the cleaned chicken in a dutch oven.  Cover with water and simmer for about an hour and a half or until the chicken easily pulls apart.  Let the chicken cool slightly and then place in the refrigerator for a few hours.  When you are ready to use the chicken and broth you can skim the fat off the top and then shred the chicken.  I usually make dumplings or chicken and noodles with the chicken and the broth.  You can also cook the chicken like this with some veggies in the water for a little extra flavor.  This is just how I like to do it.  Doesn’t get much easier and it tastes delicious:-)

Some other  great recipes from BWL if you need to use up leftover chicken:

Chicken and Brown Rice Bowls with Chipotle Cream Sauce

Chicken and Refried Bean Enchiladas

Chicken and Dumpling Casserole

Mexican Chicken Tortilla Soup

Mexican Spicy Chicken Pizza

Source:  Adapted from Your Homebased Mom

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Cilantro Lime Chicken Chopped Salad
 
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Ingredients
  • 1 cup cilantro
  • 2 -3 tsp chipotle chilies in adobo sauce, chopped small (depending on how spicy you want the dressing)
  • ⅓ cup rice vinegar
  • ¼ cup fresh squeezed lime juice
  • 1 tsp minced garlic
  • 2 tsp honey
  • ½ tsp salt
  • ¾ cup canola oil
  • For Salad (Enough for the amount of salads you will be serving)
  • Chopped Romaine and Iceberg Lettuce
  • Pinto Beans – drained and rinsed
  • Roasted and shredded chicken
  • Shredded Monterrey Jack Cheese
  • Crushed Tortilla Chips (we used baked blue corn chips)
  • Chopped Tomato
  • Frozen corn – thawed

Instructions
  1. To prepare dressing roughly chop cilantro. Puree chilies in food processor and then add vinegar, lime juice, garlic, honey and salt. Blend and then slowly add the oil to to make an emulsion. Add cilantro and pulse until combined.
  2. Prepare salad and then toss with the dressing. Enjoy!

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Trinidadian Chicken Curry

March 24, 2013 by · 4 Comments

Trinidadian Chicken Curry

This is definitely one of my favorite meals I have ever made.  It is pretty, too.  Turmeric is a beautiful spice.

Ella, in all of her photo styling wisdom, told me that I should take more over-the-top shots of my food.  I kind of like this picture, but I need to figure out how to maneuver my tripod that way because I have a hard time staying still when I am looking straight down.

Jim wanted Indian food and I suggested that I would make it for dinner last night.  I sent Taylor on a Google search for a good Indian dish and she went straight to Pioneer Woman (of course?.)  Taylor loves PW so this wasn’t actually a big surprise.  I was surprised, however, that she found so many Indian inspired dishes on there.

This dish stood out to me because the pictures looked mouth-watering and I had almost everything to make it.  The marinade for this chicken is almost like pico de gallo and I just couldn’t pinpoint how that would taste when cooked with the curry slurry.  The girls happened to both be away at dinner time so we decided to use the HOT curry powder to give it some real heat.

Although Trinidad is nowhere near India, the cuisine is heavily inspired by Indian cooking.  Apparently, under the influence of the British, Indian immigrants came over to the Caribbean as indentured servants in the 1800′s.  Over time, they adapted their family recipes based on the food that they could find in the Caribbean.  That explains why this Trinidadian dish tastes very much like something you would get at your favorite Indian restaurant.

There are many different types of curry powders out there.  It’s a bit confusing really as to which kind you want to use when.  Curry is not a spice by itself, it is a mixture of spices such as red pepper, fenugreek, cumin, turmeric and coriander.  This mixture can vary from region to region (probably depending on availability and individual/regional preferences.)  The curry powder that we buy mass-produced in the US is very different from something you would get in India or Thailand.  Trinidad has its own blends that you can buy.  I bought my curry powder at my local Indian grocery store (great place to buy inexpensive spices.)  This blend was a HOT Madras curry powder.  It was flavorful and pretty spicy, but not overpowering.  With all of that being said, there really isn’t anything wrong with the curry powder we can buy at our grocery stores here in the US, but for a dish like this if you can get your hands on Indian or even Trinidadian curry powder your dish will taste that much more authentic.

Although I wouldn’t call this a weeknight meal it isn’t super-fussy or over-complicated.  I had almost everything in my pantry and I didn’t have a long list of ingredients to buy (which is very often a determining factor for whether I will make something or not.)  Yet, the flavor was unlike anything that has ever come out of my kitchen.  It tasted like it came from an Indian (or Trinidadian) restaurant!

Of course, I also have to point out that this dish is pretty darn healthy for you – especially if you eat it over brown basmati rice like we did.  I pressure cooked some green beans in a little beef broth and that went perfectly with the curry.  Since you remove the skin and fat from the chicken there is very little fat except for the vegetable oil you add at the beginning.  Between the tomatoes and spices you get lots of good vitamins and antioxidants.  One more reason to add this wonderful dish to your menu.  Just watch your portion size:-)

This is the type of food you want to sneak at 10:30 at night (I didn’t mainly because I was asleep by then) because dinner was just that good. Awesome find, Taylor:-)  If you are looking for a dish that you can make at home that is pretty easy to prepare and tastes as authentic as something you could get at a restaurant, you should try this one soon.  Enjoy!

For some other recipes that use curry blends on BWL you can try these recipes, too!

Crockpot Thai Chicken Curry

Thai Coconut Chicken Noodle Soup

Thai Inspired Curried Chicken Salad

Source : The Pioneer Woman Cooks (with some very slight adaptations of my own)

Trinidadian Chicken Curry
 
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Ingredients
  • 1 Whole Chicken cut-up – skin removed
  • 2 teaspoons salt
  • 1 teaspoon yellow mustard
  • 1 tomato – quartered
  • 1 onion – halved
  • 1 handful cilantro
  • 8 cloves garlic
  • 2 tablespoons curry powder
  • 2 teaspoons turmeric
  • 4 tablespoons vegetable oil
  • Optional – juice of half a lemon, coconut milk, extra cilantro

Instructions
  1. Sprinkle salt on chicken and add mustard. Toss to thoroughly coat the chicken.
  2. In the bowl of your food processor chop the tomatoes, half the onion, garlic and cilantro
  3. Pour the vegetable mixture over the chicken and let marinate for 2 hours
  4. When the chicken has finished marinating make the slurry by combining the curry powder, turmeric and ¾ cups of water.
  5. Heat the oil in a large skillet over medium heat. Pour the slurry into the skillet and let cook for about 5-6 minutes. The slurry will turn a dark brown color and thicken. Stir constantly so the mixture does not burn. If you need to add a little more water you can, but you want to end up with a nice brown slurry that is quite thick, but not completely dried out.
  6. Slice the other half of the onion and add to the slurry. Let it cook for several minutes over medium heat.
  7. When your slurry is finished and onions are slightly cooked, add the chicken and turn the pieces to coat in the sauce. Spread out in the skillet so none of the chicken pieces are touching. Cook, slightly covered, turning the chicken every 5 minutes or so, adding more water (alternating with some coconut milk if you like) as necessary. You do not want the sauce to dry out. Your chicken will cook for about 25 minutes and when finished you will have a nice thick sauce. If you feel like your chicken isn’t cooking quickly enough you can turn the heat up a little bit. Just make sure it doesn’t burn and your sauce doesn’t dry out. You of course want the chicken to be completely cooked at the end and times may vary.
  8. I added the lemon at the end and you will want to taste to see if you need to season with additional salt and pepper. Garnish with cilantro if desired.
  9. We served this over brown Basmati rice with pressure cooked green beans.
  10. Enjoy!

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Chicken and Brown Rice Bowls with Chipotle Cream Sauce

March 20, 2013 by · 2 Comments

Chicken and Rice Bowls with Chipotle Cream sauce

We have had a can of chipotle chilies in our pantry that we have been meaning to use for the last few weeks. I was a little hesitant to add it to anything because I thought it might be a little spicy for the girls. They are learning to appreciate some heat in food, but chipotles can be really spicy!

Jim said he wanted to put together some rice bowls one afternoon for lunch and I thought the best way to use the chipotles was to put them into a sauce so we could add them to our bowls only.

Wow, this sauce added so much flavor to this dish.  The bowls are yummy by themselves, but with the smoky, spicy creamy sauce they were out of this world!

I didn’t always love brown rice and it is sometimes kind of a pain to make because it takes forever to cook.  Definitely not your mom’s minute rice:-).  However, I was visiting Beaverton, Oregon a few years ago for work and I tried the rice bowls at a place called Cafe Yumm! (holy good food) and the rice was absolutely amazing.  I found out that it was brown Jasmine rice.

For a while I couldn’t find brown Jasmine rice near me, but now I think you can find it at many grocery stores.  I buy it in large bags at my beloved Asian supermarket in Cary for about 9 bucks.  It cooks quicker than normal brown rice and it honestly tastes very much like white rice.  The girls don’t usually like brown rice and they will eat Jasmine brown rice without noticing.  So there you have it:-)  I know Jasmine rice is an Asian rice, but it still works A-OK with any type of dish.

These bowls are so flavorful and you can pack them with lots of nutrition.  Be a little careful of putting too much rice in your bowl if you are watching calories.  Brown rice is a good carb, but it still packs a ton of calories – 1/4 cup has 190 calories so try to stick to that.  I wouldn’t worry too much about it, but just watch your portion sizes.   It’s easy to pile a huge amount of rice in the bottom of a bowl – I know:-).

Enjoy these bowls and definitely make this sauce.  If you have extra chipotles just throw them (along with the sauce) in a plastic bag and freeze for the next time a craving for this comes along….and it will come along, I promise!

Chicken and Brown Rice Bowls with Chipotle Cream Sauce
 
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Ingredients
  • ¼ Cup Greek Yogurt
  • ¼ Cup Light Mayonnaise
  • 1-2 chipotle chilies with 2 teaspoons sauce (depending on how spicy you like things)
  • juice of half a lime
  • Dash of salt, pepper and garlic powder
  • 2 Grilled Chicken Breasts
  • 1 Avocado
  • 2 Green Onions chopped
  • ½ cup black beans
  • Salsa
  • Sea Salt
  • Jasmine Brown Rice – enough for 4 servings
  • Optional: Cilantro and shredded cheese, Baked Crumbled Tortilla Chips, chopped tomato

Instructions
  1. In the bowl of a food processor mix the yogurt, mayo, chipotles with sauce, lime juice and salt and pepper. Mix until thoroughly combined. You can also throw a little of the cilantro in this sauce for some extra flavor.
  2. Between four bowls divide the rice, chicken avocado, onions and beans. Top with the salsa, chipotle cream sauce and any optional topping you may choose. I like to mash my avocado right in the bowl as I don’t like chunks and it coats the rice really well. Give each bowl a few cracks of sea salt.
  3. I personally don’t think you need any cheese in these bowls, but the kids like to have some and they can afford the calories:-).

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Ham and Bean Soup

February 28, 2013 by · 2 Comments

Ham and Bean Soup

One of the big surprises in my recent life is that my kids like beans.  I was soooo happy to find that they really liked this soup.  I even put it in their lunch boxes one or two days.

I don’t know what it is, but cooking with dried beans makes me feel super domestic.  Kind of like baking bread from scratch or making homemade chicken broth.  There is just something about making something on your own that we usually buy from the store.  It’s healthier and soooo much better tasting.   Canned beans are a great staple and there are plenty in my pantry, believe me.  However, I do think starting with dried beans makes a big difference in your final product.

I also made Cajun red beans and rice this week and looooooved it!

The little toasts in the picture have a combo of goat cheese, olive oil and fig preserves spread on them and then broiled.  Yes, you should do that if you are wondering.

We still have a few weeks left of soup season.  Try this recipe before it’s too late!

Note:  You can find the bean soup mix in with all the other dried beans at your store.   I think I actually used a 16 bean package which is just fine. It comes with a packet of seasoning.  You can use it in this recipe or leave out.  You may find that you won’t need it.

If you like this recipe you may also want to try these other recipes from Becki’s Whole Life…

 

BBQ Baked Beans – another recipe using dried beans

Mexican Chicken Tortilla Soup – another healthy and super tasty soup

Thai Coconut Chicken Noodle Soup – one of my favorite soups with so much flavor

 

Source:  Slightly adapted from Cooking Light

Ham and Bean Soup
 
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Ingredients
  • 1 (12-ounce) package variety dried seven-bean mix
  • 2 tablespoons olive oil
  • 1 cup chopped onion (1 medium)
  • 4 cups fat-free, less-sodium chicken broth
  • 3 garlic cloves, minced
  • 1 cup chopped carrot (about 2)
  • 1 cup chopped celery (3 ribs)
  • 1 cup chopped green bell pepper
  • 1 cup chopped red bell pepper
  • ¼ cup chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley
  • 2 teaspoons dried basil or 2 tablespoons fresh
  • 1 teaspoon dried oregano or 1 tablespoon fresh
  • 1 teaspoon dried thyme or 1 tablespoon fresh
  • ¾ teaspoon kosher salt
  • ½ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
  • 1 ham hock – I used about 2 cups of chopped leftover ham
  • 1 (14-ounce) can crushed tomatoes, undrained
  • 1 bay leaf
  • 1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice

Instructions
  1. Sort and wash beans; place in a large Dutch oven. Cover with water to 2 inches above beans; cover and let stand 8 hours. Drain beans. You can also do a quick soak by bringing the water to boil and then taking the beans off the heat to soak for 2 hours.
  2. Heat a large Dutch oven over medium-high heat. Coat pan with olive oil. Add onion and garlic to pan; sauté 3 minutes. Add beans, broth, and remaining ingredients except lemon juice; bring to a boil. Cover, reduce heat, and simmer 2½ hours.
  3. Remove ham hock from pan (if using); cool slightly. Remove ham from bones; finely chop and return meat to pan. Discard bones, skin, and fat.
  4. Discard bay leaf. Stir in juice.

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Asian Steak and Noodle Salad

January 26, 2013 by · 7 Comments

I am trying to give you all some flavorful and healthy recipes this month – because I know everyone is trying to be good right now:-). This is a salad that I could eat once a week. It is an adapted recipe from Pioneer Woman and Iowa Girl Eats and possibly Epicurious.

I made a very similar recipe last year and I could have sworn that it was from Epicurious. However when I went to dig up the recipe I could not for the life of me find it! I knew it had flank steak, noodles and spinach. It was also Asian flavored. But for whatever reason I couldn’t find the darn recipe. So, I searched through some of my favorite blogs and found two recipes – one here and the other here.

I think what I love most about this recipe is that it is a noodle and green leaf salad. I get my pasta and my salad all in one meal! The sweet/salty soy dressing and marinated flank steak is just perfect and somewhat addicting – especially when you kick up the heat a few notches with the sriracha – YUM!

You can serve this with all of the ingredients cold or you can serve it while the steak and noodles are still slightly warm. This wilts the veggies a bit which I love.

As I am writing I am thinking about the different combinations you could do with this. You could swap out the flank steak for chicken or even tofu. You could swap out the green onions for some fried onions or even some thinly sliced red onions. I might also like this with some cashews or water chestnuts. Wow, I am getting hungry and I need to stop thinking about this salad.

Seriously, you need to try this one – sooo good!

Asian Steak and Noodle Salad
 
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Ingredients
  • 1 Asian Flank Steak Recipe – Prepared
  • Dressing:
  • 2 tablespoons olive oil
  • 2 tablespoons soy sauce
  • 1 tablespoon teaspoon honey
  • 1 Tablespoon lime juice
  • 2 cloves garlic, minced
  • 2 teaspoons fresh ginger, minced
  • Salad
  • ½ bag of baby spinach – washed
  • 12 oz angel hair pasta
  • red or yellow pepper – sliced into thin 2 inch strips
  • 3 green onions sliced thin (white and green parts)
  • Chopped Cilantro
  • handful of sunflower seeds
  • Sriracha

Instructions
  1. Cook flank steak according to directions here. Slice into thin strips.
  2. Combine dressing ingredients and set aside.
  3. Cook pasta according to directions on box.
  4. Slice peppers and green onion. Chop cilantro.
  5. To put salad together place spinach in the bottom of your salad bowl and then add pepper and green onions. Place pasta and steak on top of your vegetables. sprinkle with cilantro, sunflower seeds a sriracha if desired. Add dressing and toss to coat evenly.
  6. Enjoy!

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