20 Minute Orange-mirin Chicken

Up until today, the weather had been perking up to the point of me asking "why haven't I started planning for a garden this season?" (and the compost worm bin for that matter). The poor mint shrivelled up in the fall and is home to spiders now and basil is a lone bare twig after its leaves went yellow.

 I like the convenience of buying plants pre-grown but then I feel a little bad having no good re-use for the containers they come in. Any ideas?

WISH LIST -next time I am feeling like I have nothing to do, these little projects should fill my time. Right after that t-shirt yarn I want to make.

• tomatoes
• yellow beans (still have seeds from last year)
• things that can grow together in containers (not lettuce/leafy greens). I like the visually tasty ideas on Better Homes and Garden and Real Simple...combining veggies with edible flowers. Peppers sound lovely with "grasses" (chives and onions).  Smelling the sage on our weekly hikes has me craving that taste as well. Wondering if sweet potatoes can be grown in containers (apparently potatoes can). I found out from Valentine's dinner leftovers that I adore the fragrant combo of thyme and oregano. 

Speaking of my leftovers, that's what I'm sharing with you today. We spend a fair amount when buying herbs at the grocery store, so we better get our money's worth!

20 Minute Orange-Mirin Chicken

1/2 cup fresh squeezed OJ
1/3 cup mirin (Japanese cooking wine, pictured below)
1/4 cup fresh thyme and oregano mixed  (remove leaves from stocky stems, keep stems for soups stock..or compost, or may haps making organic looking toothpicks for your next appetizer party.)
1-1.5 lbs of chicken breast cut into 1 inch chunks

1. Squeeze the OJ and put it into a medium frying pan. Add the mirin. Bring to boil.

2. Add the uncooked chicken. Turn down the heat to medium-high. Let the chicken simmer for 5 minutes on each side.

3. While chicken is cooking, prep your herbs if you haven't already. Add the herbs after the chicken is done, mix in and keep on low heat for 1 minute more.

4. Serve the chicken with your choice of grain and veggie or go for an all veggie bowl.

 I did cauliflower leaf stems chopped and sauteed once and another with 1/2 cup cooked pearl barley + 1 cup of fennel bulb and 1 cup fronds cooked in leftover orange-mirin sauce. Sorry, again vegetarian friends, my next post will be sharing a leafy-green concoction from my very own sis-star! If you do soy, savory tempeh would probably taste great in today's sauce (based on a rosemary-orange maple syrup recipe favorite).


 In case you need help finding mirin, this is what it looks like. Usually near vinegars and oils at the Japanese markets or the ethnic section of regular grocery chains. Not sure if the alcohol content requires a driver's license check, I haven't bought it in awhile.

 A sigh of relief for a simple 4 ingredient sauce. Not the sauce for you if you are shy of carbs.

  Adding the herbs last minute seems to help                  I like the crunchy veggies to contrast
keep the flavor stronger.                                                 texturally.

Other thyme & oregano use for the week: adding these herbs to the 101 cookbooks lemon chutney. So yummy with salmon or just add to freshly steamed cauliflower. Our Valentine's dinner was a red-wine and onion stock with these herbs, simmering the flank steak in it.


Do you plan to plant anything this spring? (if so tell me about it as inspiration)

"Tannenbaum" (Rosemary-lime) Dressing/Sauce

Apparently we can't have a Christmas tree of any kind (even plastic), as Dave's feelings of pines is tainted from his roommate experience of a bug-infested tree a few years ago. They smell so nice though, see how happy it made us girls!

I don't know about you but I could use more time this month (still two more people to shop for and haven't gotten the cards written yet). So during the busy-holiday (and other crunch times) I think the most useful recipes are sauces, because you can just try them on anything after their original recipe.  Like this dressing recipe from Food.com I tried at my folk's place after I saw they had a giant bag of limes from Costco with the green beans as originally meant.

Side-tangent, but speaking of Costco, on trip last week, at the Mission Valley location, I noticed they started carrying Rudi's gluten free bread in the fridge/freezer section. I don't think it is dairy free, and like Udi's, they use sunflower/safflower oil which won't work when I start the detox. But gf bread that you can eat without toasting is like a Christmas miracle. Also in the fridge section I spied some gluten-free, dairy free pre-made cookie dough! (it did have soy).

 A week after coming back from my visit with mom and pop, my co-worker had filled the basket near her cube with limes.  Recipe re-cycle time! Instead of basil, I ended up using about 1/4 cup of the rinsed leaves from fresh Christmas-tree like rosemary (did you know you can take an unused sprig and stick it in a pot of dirt to grow your own herb? Thank you old roomie, Jeff.) I guess that is a close as I can get to having a tree this year.

 

2 tablespoons lime juice  (about 1-2 limes, roll them on counter before cutting for easier juicing)
2 tablespoons honey
1 1/2 teaspoons vegetable oil
3 garlic cloves, crushed 
1/4 cup (or to taste) of fresh rosemary leaves
1 dash salt and pepper

Put all ingredients in a blender. Spoon over anything that needs some zip! See my examples of use below.

• Try it as a taco sauce. Worked great on a white fish.
• Make a bean (I tested chickpea) and roasted celery salad.
• Tossed with chickpeas, quinoa and steamed escarole (looks like lettuce but bitter when raw, pictured above)
• Works fine as a salad dressing too! Complemented the smoked salmon, dried cranberries, beans and toasted squash seeds (yes, sometimes I save my winter squash seeds for consuming)

 Have you ever tried fruit cake and is it as bad as it seems to be?

What to do with tomatillos?

Caring for an unfamiliar produce

The small green tomato-looking orbs wrapped in papery brown husks came in my CSA box last week. A friend of a friend had made salsa for tortilla chips once, but that was all I knew of tomatillos.

My first question about new produce, "how do I store them?" I had no idea until I started buying food at farmer's market that some produce deserves better than just being thrown into the fridge drawers. Tomatoes should never go in the fridge (they get mushy) and some leafy herbs do best if you keep them in a cup of water in the fridge or wrapped loosely with a damp paper towel.  After seeing mixed reviews with trusty Googling the answer about tomatillos, I decided to just go with the leaving them loosely on the counter. They fared fine in San Diego humidity (80-ish degrees when no one is home) for about 2 weeks.

Next was "what am I supposed to do with these guys?" I found out they have a refreshing tangy flavor-in the two recipes I tested (not dairy free but may be adaptable once I do some experimenting), they get cooked in some way before consumption.


Tomatillo Recipe #1 (untested possible adaptation for non-dairy, naturally no soy!): I Googled "tomatillo mac n' cheese" as I have bleu cheese I am desperately trying to mow through so I can start my detox. Last time I ever ask Shades to pick me up a bag of cheese at Smart & Final (or as my sis fondly calls Fart n' Smile). I've been working on this cheese since spring time -it's been residing in the freezer and I think it has been breeding. Hoping I can experiment and try to vegan-ize the recipe with nutritional yeast and perhaps some toasted nuts in place of dairy-stay tuned in! Here is the original recipe at What's Cookin'

The substitutes I made were 1) 1 cup of bleu cheese and 1 cup Mexican blend cheese shredded and 2) used olive oil for half the butter. 3) I left off the tortilla chips and green chiles and instead put in probably half a cup of chopped hot assorted peppers, seeds in (depends on how hot you like it). 4) I used cornstarch in place of flour to make it gluten free. 5) Also because it's summer, I didn't want the oven on so I didn't do the baking step.  I had one serving with chicken and one vegetarian. Either way delicious! It yielded about 4 servings.

Tomatillo Recipe #2 (untested possible adaptation for non-dairy, naturally no soy)

Adaptation of Sunset Magazine's Tomatillo Salsa for Halibut
Thanks for the recipe, my Lisa!

Modifications made for tomatillo salsa: 1) still used butter but imagine for dairy free I could just use an equivalent amount of oil.  2) used mint instead of cilantro-worked well for cucumber pancakes but a little fun-kay with chicken taquitos. 3) fresh  lemon juice instead of lime  4) used greek yogurt for the sour cream (to make this dairy free eventually, I am hoping to try making a nut-based "sour cream" that I have seen on some blogs, but I need a food processor)

Served the tomatillo salsa with Cucumber pancakes (dairy-free, soy-free) from One Hot Stove's blog. They are so quick and easy-ready within the half hour! They remind me of zucchini pancakes that my mom only used to make for dinner whenever my dad was on a business trip ("breakfast is eaten for breakfast" must have been how daddy-o felt). She'd have me and my sister help grate up the squash and then we mixed it with Bisquick while she fried up some sausage links.

Since the recipe called for 2 large cucumbers, I just estimated 1.5 cups of grated cucumber would be sufficient and did half white rice flour and half brown rice flour. I got the white rice flour from Fresh & Easy and brown rice flour likely came from Sprouts, Whole Foods or Jimbo's (go SD for healthy store options).

See, I think I made my batter too thick as I had to use the ladle to spread it and it only yielded 3 pancakes instead of the 5-6 it was supposed to make.

 So next time, I will add more water and perhaps grate more cucumber so it doesn't get too thick to turn and fall apart like my second cake did. That's right, I cook just for myself so many times I don't have beautiful presentation...what is the opposite of food porn?

What  kinds of foods do you enjoy eating outside of their traditional meal times ?

Recipe on a weekday: Pickled rice, salmon and summer veggies

 I had a craving for pickles after eating at Burger Up in Nashville, TN for this summer's vacation and decided to make Refrigerator Pickles-cuz I'm scared of the bacteria and not ready to get the equipment for boiling- after getting lots of cucumbers in the box. I hate throwing things away, so time to come up with something to do with pickle juice.

For one serving:
3/4 cup cooked rice
1-2 tbsp leftover pickle juice
1/2 cup lemon-juice steamed summer squash, half circles
1/4 cup chopped sashimi grade salmon and/or broiled salmon skin (I broiled about 10 minutes until the skin was crispy)
1/2 cup halved cherry tomatoes

1. Start the rice if you don't have any made already. I use a rice cooker but you can make it on the stove too.

2. Bring 1/2" of water to boil in a small pot and squeeze half a lemon in.  While waiting for the boiling (it won't take long), cut your summer squash in half lengthwise and then into 1/4" slices so you have half circles.

3. Cut up or broil your salmon. 

4. Slice your cherry tomatoes in half.

5.  For each serving of rice, spoon the leftover pickle juice over the hot rice and mix in.

6. Top with the summer squash, salmon/skin, and tomato. If you plan to take it as a leftover, leave the salmon and cherry tomato separate so those don't get over-cooked in the microwave.