Thai One On Chicken

A few months ago I cut this recipe out of my Clean Eating magazine. I know I've mentioned this magazine on the blog before - it's a magazine that essentially devoted to raw, clean cooking. As in, nothing from a box. Green cooking. Good for you cooking. Cutting down on fat (I recently finished reading an article on common dishes they`d 'scaled' ... I laughed when I read their comparisons between LIGHT and RICH dishes). And yada yada yada. Needless to say, I've been meaning to try this recipe for some little while now. 

Once again, all I can say is YUM. The coconut milk (in the article it calls for 'light'... come on' now... LIGHT coconut milk??) is so incredibly rich and tasty. We did our grilling on our Griddler - one of our favourite cooking appliances - but you could do this right on your BBQ, George Forman etc. I have to admit that after making dinner tonight our whole apartment smelled like Thai food, but it was a small price to pay! As you can guess, I must give photo creds to Clean Eating ... sadly Jerms and I didn't actually have any skewers when we came to threading our meat and veggies. Ours looked something like the picture except our skewer bits were all over our rice :)
Bon appétit!


INGREDIENTS (for 4):
- 13.5 oz light coconut milk
- 1 1/2 tbsp red curry paste
- 2 large boneless, skinless chicken breasts (about 6 oz each), cubed into skewer-size pieces
- 1 cup dry basmati rice
- 1 orange bell pepper (or bell pepper of your choice)
- 2 green zucchini
- 10 to 12 small white button mushrooms

EQUIPMENT:
Metal, bamboo or wooden skewers (soak your bamboo or wooden skewers for at least 20 minutes prior to use)

INSTRUCTIONS:1. In a saucepot, bring coconut milk to a boil. Add curry paste, whisking it in, and cook for another 3 or 4 minutes, until it thickens a bit. Remove from heat and let mixture cool. Place chicken in a resealable container. Reserve some coconut-milk mixture to brush over your vegetables and chicken while they cook. Pour remaining coconut-milk mixture over top of chicken, cover and put in refrigerator to marinate.

2. Cook rice according to package directions. (NOTE: Amy uses this covered-pot method: Bring 1 3/4 cup water to a boil, add rice and simmer for 20 minutes or until water is absorbed. Then add 1 grind sea salt.)

3. Cut pepper and zucchini into chunks that are the same size as your chicken to ensure even grilling. Thread vegetables, including mushrooms, and chicken onto skewers – each skewer should be one-third chicken and two-thirds vegetables.

4. You can use a grill pan over the stovetop, indoor contact grill or outdoor grill. Keep heat moderate so chicken doesn’t burn before it cooks through. Grill your skewers over medium to medium-high heat until chicken is cooked through and vegetables are tender-crisp, turning halfway through and brushing reserved coconut-milk mixture over top of skewers as they cook.


5. Serve chicken-vegetable skewers over shallow bed of rice.