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Crockpot Green Curry Chicken

greencurryThere is little I like better than coming home from work and having dinner waiting. And if it’s healthy, delicious food that the whole family likes? Purrrrfect. This meal really hits the sweet spot for us. I adapted theoriginal recipe comes from this post and it has quickly become a family favorite, especially for Miss Tabby, the impetus of this whole project.

Crockpot Green Curry Chicken

Ingredients

  • 2 lbs boneless skinless chicken breasts
  • 2 medium onions roughly chopped
  • one head of garlic, minced
  • 2 15 oz cans lite coconut milk
  • juice of 2 limes
  • 4 oz green curry paste (we use Thai kitchen)
  • 1/4 C brown sugar
  • 2 t salt
  • 1 t black pepper
  • 2 T cornstarch
  • 32 oz frozen stirfry vegetables
  • rice to serve if desired

Directions

This is a great spot to use the food processor if you’re so inclined. I take both onions, quarter them and toss them in the food processor with the cloves of garlic and pulse a few times. That makes prep pretty darn quick. Otherwise, chop, mince like normal.

Place the chicken in the bottom of the crockpot and throw the salt and pepper on it. Mix it up a bit. Then mix up the coconut milk, lime juice, curry paste, and brown sugar and pour it over the chicken. Cook on high for 4-5 hours.

About 30 minutes before you want to eat, stir in the frozen veggies. Also, this is a great time to start your rice!  Then mix the cornstarch with about 2 T water and then mix that into the curry. Continue to cook until the vegetables are warmed and the sauce thickens.

Serve yummy veggies and meat over a little rice. Mmmmmm

 

This has a little kick to it, kind of on the back side, but it’s not really spicy (i.e. both kids like it). You could definitely spice it up with some thai chiles if desired. In any case, it is

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Sizzling Asian Steak Salad

sizzlingsteakI haven’t been great about posting recipes lately. It’s because I’ve been busy, not because I haven’t been cooking. We cook all the time. I think we have some sort of bizarre street cred at Ben’s school because he is always bringing semi-“bizarre” lunches. But I have resolved to continue putting up the recipes that our family enjoys the most for one little reason. Tabby asked me to.

Well she didn’t ask my specifically, but she said something to me a couple of weeks ago about teaching her how to cook and her being about to make food for herself when she leaves our house (she sometimes has strangely long-range planning for an almost-six-year-old). So I resolved to make sure I post the recipes that have caught our fancy and someday, I will make them into a book for the kids.

This recipe has been on our radar for a few months now. It comes to us from one of my favorite food bloggers, Iowa Girl Eats. It is changed VERY little because it is basically perfect as conceived, but I will adjust quantities and some instructions to reflect how we make it.

Sizzling Asian Steak Salad

Serves 4

Ingredients:

For the steak marinade:
1/4 C extra virgin olive oil
1/4 C  low-sodium soy sauce
2 T mirin (sweet Japanese cooking wine)
1 heaping T brown sugar
4 cloves garlic
24 oz strip steak, cut into bite-sized pieces

For the salad dressing:
1/4 C extra virgin olive oil
1/4 C low-sodium soy sauce
3 T honey
2 T lime juice
4 cloves garlic
2 teaspoons fresh ginger

For the salad:
1 small red onion, quartered and thinly sliced
12-16 cups baby spinach (or other lettuce)
1 pint grape or cherry tomatoes, halved
2 green onions, chopped

Directions:

This is a recipe made for the immersion blender! We stick all the ingredients for the marinade (except the steak, obviously) in a bowl and blend until smooth. It makes things super simple. But if you don’t have an iBlender, you can just grate or mince the garlic. Then you place the steak in a bag or a shallow dish and pour the marinade over it. 30 minutes or up to 2 hrs to marinate, stir halfway through. To make the dressing, you can do the same routine as the marinade. Place all ingredients in a bowl and iBlend or you will need to grate or mince the garlic and ginger and then whisk together or shake in a jar.

Once the steak is done marinating, heat a fry pan to medium high and then add the marinaded steak and onions. Saute for about 3-4 min per side (flank gets tough if you over-cook, so don’t!). Remove from pan and set aside. Combine salad greens, tomatoes and dressing (you will probably need less than 1/2 – just save the rest for next time) and toss until coated. Divide evenly amongst 4 plates, top with steak and green onions and ENJOY!

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Balsamic Marinated Flank Steak

I’ve been pretty sluggish about May’s cookbook, which is Bobby Flay’s Boy Gets Grill. It has some tasty looking recipes in it, but it also leans more towards harder to find and more expensive ingredients, which I’m not against, of course, but it is harder to fit into my weekly cooking scheme. Flank steak, though, is always a good affordable treat and this recipe did NOT disappoint. The only hard part about it is that you will have to plan ahead since it takes 4-8 hours to marinate. It’s worth it though!

Balsamic Marinated Flank Steak with Spring Green Salad

adapted from Bobby Flay’s Boy Gets Grill

  • 1/2 C balsamic vinegar  + 2 T
  • 3/4 C olive oil + 3 T
  • 4 cloves garlic, chopped
  • 2 T rosemary leaves, chopped
  • 1 1/2  to 1 3/4 lb beef flank steak
  • Salt and pepper
  • 6 C spring greens
  • 1/2 lb cherry tomatoes, halved
  • 1/4 red onion very thinly sliced
  • parmesan cheese to top

Whisk together the half cup vinegar, the 3/4 C oil, the garlic and rosemary in a large dish. Add the steak and turn to coat. Cover and let marinate in the refrigerator for at least 4 hours and up to 8 hours, turning every 2 hours or whenever you happen to think about it.

Heat your grill to high. While it’s heating, prepare the salad. Whisk together the remaining 2 T vinegar and 3 T olive oil (I usually use much more balsamic than oil though – I like it better that way) and season with salt and pepper. Add the spring greens, tomatoes and onions and toss to coat. Top with shaved parmesan (vegetable peeler works great for shaving parmesan).

Remove the steak from the marinade and season with salt and pepper. Grill until lightly charred and kinda crusty, 4 to 5 minutes. Do not close the lid on your grill unless it is cold and/or windy. Turn steak over, reduce the heat to medium or move to a cooler part of the grill, and grill until medium-rare, 3 to 4 minutes more. If cooking a bigger steak, grill for an extra 1 to 2 minutes per side – take care  not to overcook!! Remove the steak to a cutting board and let rest for five minutes. Cut into half-inch thick slices against the grain of the meat. Serve meat alongside the salad.

 

The whole family loved this recipe, particularly our resident carnivore, Tabby. The salad was a nice light accompaniment.

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Chicken Stirfry Lettuce Wraps

Well April is almost done and so is my fourth cookbook, Great Food Fast. I have nothing but praise for this cookbook. I loved the full-color photos of EVERY recipe. I love the organization (by season!) and I loved the food. I actually tried EIGHT recipes from this (yay, made it!) book.

and for the finale … Chicken Stirfry Lettuce Wraps. Continue reading “Chicken Stirfry Lettuce Wraps”

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Shrimp Curry with Snow Peas

We are getting real close to the end of March! But happily, I’ve been quite good about working my way through Moosewood’s Simple Suppers and we’ve done 5/8 recipes from the book so far (though I haven’t posted one of them). This weekend and next week I’ll wrap up the rest and then it’s on to the Thai Street Food cookbook.

Tuesday night, we made the tasty little curry pictured above. Like everything from this book, it went together very fast. I didn’t think to time this one, but I would bet it was on the table in under 30 minutes. Our rice cooker actually took longer to cook the rice than I did to make the curry. These recipes have all been very doable on a weeknight, which I love. Love. LOVE.

Shrimp Curry with Snow Peas

adapted from Moosewood Simple Suppers

  • 1 lb shrimp, peeled and deveined
  • 5 oz snow peas, cut in half diagonally
  • 1 lg onion, sliced thin (I dice mine as I detest stringy things in my stirfrys)
  • 2 C chopped tomatoes
  • 2 red bell peppers chopped into bite sized pieces
  • 1 T oil
  • 2 T curry powder
  • 14 oz can coconut milk (look for lite – taste is good and way healthier)
  • juice of one lime
  • 1/4 C chopped thai basil, sweet basil or cilantro
  • 1/2 t salt

Heat oil over medium high heat in a large skillet. Add onion and peppers and cook about 5 minutes or until they start to soften and the onions turn translucent. Add the shrimp and curry powder and stir well to prevent sticking. Add the snow peas and tomatoes and cook for a few minutes until the shrimp have started to turn pink. Add the coconut milk, lime juice, salt and chopped basil and bring to a simmer. Turn shrimp to cook to even pinkness. Season with additional salt and pepper to taste.

Serve over rice or maybe noodles.

I loved the way this looked and smelled while it was cooking. Such vibrant colors! When we first served it, it seemed a bit bland, but just a hint more salt really brought out all the flavors and Matt and I both enjoyed it a lot. The kids? Not quite as much … they chowed down on the shrimp and snow peas and liked the sauce, but they were a bit suspicious of the peppers and onions. Tabby is convinced that pepper=hot right now. OY.

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Chicken Minestrone

Well the month and our experiment with The Zone is almost up as is my whirlwind tour of Zone Meals in Seconds cookbook. It’s been … interesting. I’ve done well on The Zone, losing about 9 lbs, which for a month is pretty good (and technically, I still have ’til Friday for my four weeks to be up, and I’ll be Zoned until then). I can’t say it’s something I feel like I could live with permanently. I like a bit more wiggle room in my life … I like food, good food, way too much to be this restricted, but I think it put me back on track with what I know to be healthy and reinforced some good lessons. Lean meat, healthy vegetables, less starches, little sugar, good fats.

The cookbook itself was a meh. Let’s say a 4 out of 10. This book had two kinds of recipes … one was real recipes as we think of them, the other, just thrown together ingredients. They were both a mix of awesome and blech! with a few meh … thrown in there. My samplings:

  1. Tex Mex meatloaf – seriously tasty; I’ve recommended this to a few people and it was very well received
  2. Salmon Tagine – loved the spinach, but the Salmon was just so-so
  3. Apple Spice Oatmeal – protein powder completely screwed up the texture; edible, but not yummy
  4. Moroccan chicken stew – ICK. Way too much of the cream of soup.
  5. Zoned Apple Muffins – These were good, but not great. Not a ton of flavor/taste.
  6. Mexican chicken chili – not so much a recipe, just a list of things to throw together in a bowl; pretty tasty though
  7. Blueberry and banana creme freeze – pretty tasty, even liked the sour cream in here – may post this one later.
  8. Chicken Minestrone – quite good!

Anyhow, more about Chicken Minestrone. This is one of those recipe that I don’t even really consider to be a recipe because there’s just not much to it. Just a couple of raw ingredients, the rest from cans or the freezer section, but I know a lot of people struggle with even this and it could be a gateway recipe, so I will post it. It really is tasty and super healthy. This makes 4 4-block meals (a TON of soup)

Ingredients

  • 3 cups of cubed frozen chicken
  • 1 10 oz package cut green beans
  • 1 can of kidney beans, drained and rinsed
  • 1 qt low sodium chicken broth/stock
  • 1 jar marinara sauce
  • 2 cloves garlic, minced
  • 2-3 zucchini quartered and sliced
  • 3 T EVOO
  • dried oregano and basil

Directions

Heat the EVOO in a dutch oven. While the oil is heating, cook the green beans to about 75% done in the microwave. Add the chicken, garlic, zucchini, green beans and herbs to the dutch oven and cook until all are warmed through and fragrant. Add the kidney beans, broth and marinara. Stir to combine and bring to a boil and simmer for a few minutes. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

 

I really enjoyed experimenting with this cookbook this month. It’s not one that I expect to turn to often but it gave me a couple good new recipes. Next month will be The Biggest Loser Family Cookbook.

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Salmon Tagine


It would be an understatement to say that this was my best photographic work, or even good. Honestly, by the time I “plated” dinner last night, I was done. We spent ALL weekend sanding and polying the pieces of Ben’s bed. And we’re still not done. Probably not even that close. I was achey and grumpy and I didn’t even really want to cook. But we had to eat, so I did. This is why I buy ingredients. I won’t let them go bad and so I find myself in the kitchen even when I don’t want to making dinner.

This Salmon Tagine was the second recipe we tried from Zone Meals in Minutes. I can’t say it was a pretty meal. I probably could have done more with styling, but it was somewhat in the slop category as far as looks go. Luckily the taste was good. My favorite part was the cooked spinach with walnut sauce. YUM. I would have that anytime and it wasn’t too hard to make (though I always blanch a bit at the thought of cleaning the food processor). The salmon was yummy, despite the fact that I overcooked it – things got hectic. But I’m not sure it was so yummy I’d feel compelled to make it again. I really LOVE our Chicken Tagine recipe. This one was a bit more meh. I was tempted to post just the spinach, but I will post the whole since it make a complete Zoned meal (4 4-block meals) with my suggestions for improvement.

The kids and Matt all liked the salmon well enough which is a pretty good endorsement since it was over-cooked. But personally, I thought the spinach was the star.

Ingredients

  • 30 walnut halves, lightly toasted (i.e. rattle them around in a dry frying pan on med-high heat for a few minutes – watch like a hawk so they don’t burn)
  • ¼ cup apple cider vinegar
  • 2 teaspoons dried dill
  • 2 cloves garlic, minced or pressed
  • ½ to 1 teaspoon hot sauce
  • 2 teaspoons extra-virgin olive oil
  • 1 ½ cups minced onion
  • 2/3 cup water or chicken stock or broth
  • ¼ cup raisins
  • 12 whole, dried apricots, quartered
  • 1 garlic clove, minced
  • ½ teaspoon ground cumin
  • ¼ teaspoon ground white pepper
  • 1 cinnamon stick (or 1/2 tsp cinnamon)
  • 1 teaspoon peeled, minced fresh ginger root
  • salt
  • two 1-pound bags washed, stemmed, trimmed spinach leaves
  • 4 cups thinly sliced mushrooms

Directions

Place walnuts, vinegar, dill, garlic and hot sauce in food processor and process until smoothish. In a large fry pan, saute onions in olive oil until tender, about 5-7 minutes. Add apricots, raisins, minced garlic, ginger and spices with broth or water and then top with salmon. Bring to a low boil and simmer until salmon is done, approx 8 minutes.

Meanwhile, heat a half cup of water (or leftover broth!) in a dutch oven or stock pan. Add spinach and mushrooms and steam until tender, about 5 minutes. Drain if necessary and toss with walnut sauce.

Serve salmon fillets topped with tagine sauce, and spinach on the side.

 

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Tex Mex Meatloaf

Last night we tried the first recipe from Zone Meals in Seconds. I always love it when the first recipe I try from a new cookbook is a winner and this one was a MAJOR winner. Though this is Zone specific, Matt and I both agreed that we would eat it anytime. It’s your basic meatloaf, with a few interesting additions and served with a side of guacamole. Best of all, both kids loved it! Really, what’s not to like?

The full zone recipe has a side salad with romaine (we used baby greens), 1/4 C low fat cheddar per person, thinly sliced celery, shredded carrots and a 1/4 cucumber. Adding the salad makes it a full 4-block Zone meal if you’re interested. I added just a little salsa for dressing. I love me some salsa.

Ingredients

  • 2 eggs
  • ¾ cup  black beans
  • 1 tablespoon chili powder blend
  • 1 teaspoon ground cumin
  • ¼ teaspoon ground red pepper (optional)
  • 1 tablespoon tamari soy sauce (optional)
  • 1/3 cup non-instant rolled oats, uncooked
  • 15 ounces lean ground beef  (ground turkey works too)
  • 2 tablespoons dried onion flakes
  • ½ cup fresh or frozen corn
  • 1 cup minced yellow or red bell pepper
  • 1 cup no-salt diced tomato with jalapeño
  • avocado

Directions

Mix and mash as you would any meatloaf. Place yummy mash in a 9×5 loaf pan. Bake at 350 for 60 to 75 minutes or until thermometer regisiters 160 for beef or 180 for poultry. Mash/chop avocado and season as desired for guacamole (we use chili powder and garlic salt). Serve slices of meatloaf with guacamole. Groan and say “oooh” a lot while eating.

We actually made this the night before and baked it about 15 minutes extra to compensate for the chillier meat temps.