Healthy Eating: Cumin Chicken with Avocado Salsa

After my carb binge, I needed to go back to something healthy. It’s funny now that I’ve been eating so healthy, my body can really feel it when I eat rich and heavy foods. So I was craving some clean, fresh flavors. Since chicken breasts were on sale ($1.99/lb), I stocked up again. I butterflied them and froze all but one half for dinner.

Cumin Chicken with Avocado Salsa on Israeli mint couscous. This was a super fast, simple dish. And as you know from my earlier post, I am now in love with Israeli couscous!

• Sprinkle the chicken breast with (kosher) salt, black pepper and cumin (light dusting). Pan fry in a bit of olive oil on medium heat for a few minutes on each side, depending on thickness.
• Heat a bit of olive oil and toast about one cup of couscous for a couple minutes. Add just over a cup of chicken stock. Bring it to a boil and reduce to simmer for about 15 minutes. Let cool few minutes and add fresh lemon juice and zest and chopped mint.
• Finely chop red onion and cube a ripe avocado. Squeeze fresh lime juice and add salt and fresh black pepper. Then plate up!

For a bit of creaminess and just a little indulgence, I added some crumbled feta to top it off! Happy healthy eating.

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Healthy Eating: Yogurt Marinated Chicken With Chickpea Tagine & Israeli Couscous

In continuing my efforts for Chris and I to eat healthy rounded meals, I decided to go Mediterranean/Moroccan. I was inspired by a recipe I saw in the Sunday Yes! Essential Shopper mailer, distributed by the San Jose Mercury News. It was a recipe for a Chickpea and Date tagine. The recipe called for a mix of spices including ground cumin, coriander, ginger and cinnamon. These are very common Moroccan spices that can really warm up a dish. They can fill a dish with so much flavor that you won’t need much salt (making it healthier!). I wanted to make the dish a bit heartier which is why I added the chicken.

Yogurt marinated chicken makes for very juicy, moist meat. It’s a method used around the world including India and the Mediterranean. I originally wanted to use Harissa (check out this recipe). Sadly, it’s not that common in the States so can be hard to find. Instead I did a combination of other spices (paprika, cumin, cayenne, garlic salt). The yogurt creates a nice crust as well. Reserve some on the side for a nice cool topping. The fresh cilantro and lemon juice brightens the entire dish up as well.

I added in the couscous to lighten all the flavors and make the dish a bit heartier. I’ve recently gotten hooked on Israeli couscous. I find its texture is similar to orzo pasta but without being too heavy. The couscous is even better when it’s been toasted and made with chicken stock instead of water. Good quality extra virgin olive oil and fresh lemon zest and juice are key ingredients. This citrus couscous is so universal and could go with mixed greens or tossed with feta and olives.

This is a great dish for using up leftovers as well! You can add chicken stock to all the ingredients to make a really nice, filling soup for leftover lunch. You could add the chicken and tagine into a flatbread with some cucumber mint yogurt for a wrap. You could opt to make this dish slightly healthier and use chicken breast as well. Or go vegetarian and add some eggplant or zucchini to the tagine.

Here’s my recipe for Yogurt Marinated Chicken with Chickpea Tagine & Israeli Couscous. Hope you enjoy!

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Quick Dinner: Spicy Chicken with Cumin Couscous

For a quick and healthy dinner, couscous is always a perfect solution. Since it can be a bit bland, using stock is a great way to enhance. Also, While chicken breasts are healthier, thighs are definitely cheaper and have more flavor. This dinner is so fast and would be good for leftovers too! This recipe is for four.

Ingredients

Package of boneless chicken thighs (about 2-3 per person)
1 red onion
~2 cups chopped green beans (two large handfuls)
~couple tbsp hot sauce

~250g couscous
~300g hot water/stock
1 chicken stock cube
~2 tbsp cumin (add to taste)
1 can chickpeas strained
1 yellow onion
~large handful cilantro/coriander
~3-4 stalks spring/green onion
Optional : chorizo

Directions

Put the couscous into a large mixing bowl and add the cumin and stock cube. Stir to combine and add the hot water or chicken broth/stock. Cover and set aside. Roughly chop the yellow onion and chorizo if using. Heat a touch of oil in a large frying pan and add the chorizo. Fry for a couple minutes. Spoon out the sausage to a side bowl, leaving the oil. Add the onion to the oil and fry for a couple minutes. Add the can of strained chickpeas and chorizo. Add a couple tbsp of water and let simmer for a couple of minutes. Meanwhile fluff the couscous with a fork. Chop the spring onion and cilantro/coriander. Add to the pan of chorizo onion and stir through. Then pour over the couscous and combine gently. Cover again and set aside.

For the chicken, chop the green beans and onion roughly. Chop the chicken into bite size pieces and into a small bowl. Mix in a pinch of salt, black pepper and the hot sauce. Heat the same large frying pan with oil and add the onion and beans. Cook a couple minutes and add the chicken into an even later. Cook a couple minutes on medium/high heat. Turn over and cook another 3 or so minutes. Cut open one of the larger pieces to check it’s cooked. Remove from the heat and stir in more hot sauce to taste. Serve the couscous onto large plates and top with the chicken. Garnish with more cilantro/coriander and serve!

If you want or need to make this dish simpler, skip the chorizo, onions and even the chickpeas. The spring onion and cilantro will add plenty of flavor. Be sure to taste it though and add salt to your taste!

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Exploring Surf and Turf

A couple of weeks ago I watched an episode of Nigel Slater’s Simple Cooking focused on the theme of surf and turf. He visited local fisherman who cooked fresh scallops with chorizo. It was a super fast and extremely basic cooking process – using the oil from the chorizo to cook the just-caught scallops. Despite its simplicity, it looked full of flavor and steaming with freshness. The show is still up on the site for another month or so. Take a look and it’ll make your mouth water!

It got me thinking about this very well known combination of surf and turf. Most people automatically think of steak as the turf and usually lobster or fish as the surf. I liked that the chorizo and scallop provided a somewhat surprising combination, yet so obvious upon closer inspection. If you think about where chorizo comes from, you’ll remember or learn that its origins lie in Spain. It’s often seen in traditional dishes such as Paella (a rice dish known for its yellow color from the saffron in it). Paella can be made with a variety of ingredients, but the most popular (internationally) is a mixed ‘surf and turf’ version. Very often it will have large prawns, squid, mussels, chicken and/or chorizo. The paprika and peppers add so much flavor to this sausage and allows it to complement the sweetness often found in seafood such as scallops or shrimp. I like the indulgence of surf and turf as well.. If you pair it with fish, you’re getting your omega’s and being ‘healthy’.. But you offset it with the deep flavor of the crispy chorizo.. Mmm..

Hence, I decided to make a Chorizo and Fish Surf and Turf. In thinking about paella, I initially wanted to put my surf and turf over rice. But I didn’t want the dish to be too heavy. So a light alternative is often couscous which is conveniently a whole lot easier to make. I also happened to have some homemade chicken stock in the freezer to add more flavor to the couscous. I had wanted to use a meaty fish like monkfish or cod that could be cut into chunks and still hold its shape. Sadly the fish monger didn’t have any, so I settled for Haddock which was still a good thick alternative. Really this dish is SO simple and very fast. You don’t have to have a salsa on the side, but I thought it was a good way to add some freshness and bring more vegetables to the dish. The citrus was a nice way to cut through the flavors as well. I hope you’ll try this!

Surf & Turf No.1 - Haddock and Chorizo over Courgette Couscous with Corn Salsa

For the next surf and turf idea, I caved and went back to the original paella/rice-dish idea. Except I had been craving risotto and had homemade chicken stock that needed using, so I thought why not replace the paella. Traditional risotto is pretty straight forward. Your main ingredients are onion, garlic, butter, risotto rice, white wine, chicken stock and cheese. The main techniques to get here are first to coat the rice in butter (with the onion and garlic) and second to go low and slow with adding one ladle of stock at at time. I didn’t really follow a recipe to make the risotto, but here’s a simple, classic one if you need one – Pea and Pecorino Risotto. To spice up this basic risotto dish, I added another surf and turf combo – click here for Chorizo and Roasted Prawn Risotto. I used a technique that I’ve seen on Ina Garten‘s show Barefoot Contessa. She swears by this method, and I am a firm supporter of it! Simply cover a baking tray with foil, toss some raw prawns with olive oil and salt and pepper, arrange on the tray and bake at 400F for 5-6 minutes. Just be sure to take it out just as it turns pink. It’s easy to overcook it, but if you don’t your shrimp will be super juicy! Because I wanted to minimize the work for this dish, I first tossed the raw prawns with a bit of chilli olive oil, salt and pepper. I arranged them on the tray and then scattered thinly sliced chorizo all around it. I turned the temperature down a bit – about 170C and made sure to keep an eye on them. Such a great midweek meal! Hope you enjoy.

Classic Pea & Parmesan Risotto Topped with Chorizo and Roasted Prawns

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Oh How I Miss California Cuisine

Every chef book I’ve read and each of my chef instructors in school always talk about the food from their childhood. It’s funny how so many of us, even if you’re not a chef or foodie, have childhood memories that involve or center around food. Most of my childhood was spent in the San Francisco Bay Area – an absolutely beautiful and diverse place. As I’ve gotten older, I always feel so fortunate to have grown up in a place where cultures collide and people are genuinely interested in each other. There are, of course, conflicts but again I was fortunate to not be too exposed to any sort of intolerance. I grew up with friends from many races and religions. And from that exposure, I developed a great love for learning about others. Every culture, every community is so unique. This upbringing also inspired me to travel the world. Even as a young teenager I fulfilled my dream of seeing the Eiffel Tower and eating a “real” croissant. Of course it all comes back to the food!

So back to why I’ve decided to write – recently my lovely sister and her fiance moved back to the Bay Area where they both grew up. I went to visit them and wanted to share some photos from the trip. It was funny though being back in the Bay as an adult as my parents left California while I was in college. It was the same yet much more sophisticated than I remembered. All the food was delicious, rich, complex yet incredibly fresh. I have already posted some Yelp reviews for two of the places, so I’ve included the links for them. But hope you enjoy the pictures!

Moscow Mule

First up – Cafe Des Amis. (Click here for my Yelp review). This place was very charming. It was one of those French restaurants that is trying to be authentic which it did a pretty good job at without trying too hard. We had a cozy table in the back next to the fire – very romantic actually. Our whole group was really happy with our dishes (steaks, mussels, lamb, escargot, salmon) but we were even happier with the drinks! They make a great Moscow Mule!

Oysters for the group

Gorgeous buttery, garlicky escargot

Perfectly cooked medium rare salmon on a bed of lentils

For brunch the next morning, my sister and I managed to drag ourselves (and I’m so glad we did!) to Foreign Cinema. My sister’s friend had been to a wedding there and raved about their brunch. They were right.. I’m only sad that I can’t go back to try more dishes!

Slow-cooked, brown sugar smoked bacon

(No longer on the menu) Fried eggs with zucchini, fried prosciutto, harissa and chicken sausage on bed of creamy palenta

Classic Croque Madame with super crispy fries!

The last place we visited was Morocco’s Restaurant in downtown San Jose. (Click here for my Yelp Review) My review says it all, so here are a couple pictures!

Imperial chicken couscous with caramelized onions and raisins

Briwatt phyllo turnovers with mixed fillings such as chicken with cinnamon

I could dream about these turnovers all night long!  The chicken briwatt tasted just like the traditional Moroccan pastilla that I’ve written about. It’s such a surprising combination of flavors. I love it when food catches you off guard like that – just when you think something should be sweet, it’s even better savory!

Hope you’ve enjoyed the photos! What have you been eating lately??

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WHAT I’VE BEEN COOKING..

Hi All. As I don’t have class today, I’m finally taking the time to catch up with my backlog of recipes and dishes I need to share! Before school started a couple weeks ago, I was keeping myself busy with making new healthy dishes. I also had to work my way through our cupboards and all the various pastas, grains and seeds/nuts I’ve accumulated. So here are a couple dishes but many more to come! Links to recipes are below but you can also go direct to the recipe pages.

Chesham High Street Market

First up is Scallops with Sauce Vierge. So for a couple of weeks, I was passing by the fish monger in the Chesham high street market, looking but never buying anything. But I finally gave in and bought some of the beautiful, fresh, giant scallops which is really one of my favorite seafood dishes. I wanted to be a little different though as scallops are very often wrapped in bacon.  I also had seen sauce vierge come up in many cookbooks/sites recently. It’s such an easy thing to make and is so versatile. The key though is to have a really nice extra virgin olive oil. If extra virgin is too strong for you, then use a milder olive oil. I didn’t use red wine vinegar, but some recipes call for it instead of the coriander seeds. Since scallops aren’t exactly the most affordable seafood, I made this dish as a starter with three scallops each. We mopped up the rest of the sauce with some fresh bread. But you could easily turn this into a main dish by serving on a bed of angel hair pasta. The sweetness of the scallops and tomato together are so nice. If you want contrast, some red chili flakes would actually be quite nice. And if you can’t get scallops or don’t like them, you can always serve with some large grilled shrimp or chicken. Hope you like it!

Scallops with Sauce Vierge

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