Growing up, I can remember spring was a busy time. The snow was finally melting, and there was a ton of work to take care of cleaning up everything that had been hiding under that snow for months. It was also a time to be outside and enjoying weather that wasn’t snow for a change – spring bear hunting, spring turkey hunting, the start of fishing season. And it also meant looking for morels.
Black morels in British Columbia, Canada (photo from Wikipedia)
In case you were wondering what was on the rest of the plate with yesterday’s strawberry rhubarb salsa…this was it! This recipe is perfect for a potluck, because the sauce/marinade will make enough for at least 16 to 20 chicken thighs. Or you can simply use all of the parts of about two or three whole chickens (cut up) to give a little more variety. Either way, it’s a winner. And at the tail end, I added some halved (lengthwise) zucchini brushed with leftover sauce to the grill for the last ten minutes to take care of my side dish at the same time.
Posted in Main Dish, Poultry, Recipes, Side Dishes
Tagged balsamic vinegar, chicken, Cilantro, garlic, Ginger, grilled, Honey, sesame oil, tamari, Zucchini
Our recent CSA share included a bunch of radishes (which were nice and spicy) and I wanted to do more than just slice them up for a salad. I came across a recipe for sauteing them along with some chicken, and serving with tarragon and mustard that gave me some ideas to start playing a little. Here are the results, which let you savor the taste of the sautéed radishes both alone and accompanied by a thick reduction of mushrooms, mustard, tarragon, shallots, and sherry – all over top simple pan-browned chicken breasts.
Grilled skewers are a great way to serve nearly a whole meal on a single utensil. They have the added benefit of being easy to make, and they cook quickly too. By changing up the mixture of meat and veggies (or fruit), you can explore a huge variety of options. Add a marinade or rub, or even just a light dash of seasoning, and you’ve got endless possibilities.
For this recipe, I opted to keep things simple - a light brush of olive oil, and just a dash of lemon pepper. This gives each ingredient a chance to show off it’s own specific flavors, aided only by the roasting heat of the grill.
The weather is finally supposed to be really nice this weekend here in the PNW, which means that everyone will be outside trying to get lots of Vitamin D built up in the next few days. And while grilling is a favorite way to prepare a meal when the weather gets nice, it can sometimes be a little much to serve hot food when you’re working on getting acclimated to the first real warm days of the season. A nice alternative, especially for lunch on the porch on a hot afternoon, is a chilled salad with plenty of meat mixed in.
This recipe came to us from a friend, Amy, at the gym – whose husband Brad is also one of the trainers. She had adapted it from a recipe of a friend of hers, eliminating the original recipe’s brown sugar, fried won tons, and soy sauce in favor of some less problematic ingredients. Of course, we made a few adjustments of our own…but mostly based on what we had on hand at the time. Get this made up just after breakfast so it has a chance to sit and chill in the fridge until lunch – letting the flavors mix and mingle a bit before eating.
I will warn you now: this recipe uses a little bit of dairy – heavy cream to be exact. So, if you are avoiding dairy, you’ll want to substitute (coconut milk would certainly do nicely). Outside of that, this is a simple and easy recipe that can be cooked up in about 45 minutes and makes for a great meal and great leftovers.
This recipe grew out of a very specific set of circumstances one recent evening when my mom was in town for a visit. Namely, it was a Thursday night, I’d had a long day at work (they all seem to be that way lately), and had completely spaced out pulling something from the freezer to thaw the night before. Combined with the fact that there weren’t enough leftovers of anything in the fridge to feed the whole family, and it was already past 6pm, I needed to come up with something quick¹ that didn’t require something already thawed (have we mentioned that our microwave has been out of commission for over 2 months now?).
A quick hunting and gathering trip through the refrigerator and freezer yielded a butternut squash, some carrots, a piece of ginger root, an onion, two chicken breasts (frozen solid), and two slices of leftover bacon from breakfast. Hiding in the pantry was a can of coconut milk and a quart of vegetable broth. The garlic is ever-present in the kitchen windowsill, and of course we have a sizable spice cabinet. Time to get busy.
Posted in Main Dish, Recipes, Soups & Stews
Tagged Bacon, butternut squash, chicken, coconut milk, Curry, easy, Ginger
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License. If you see something you like on here and want to share it, do us a favor and share a link to us rather than stealing it and posting it yourself.
