Sticky Honey Ginger Chicken

Fresh ginger is the cat's meow at Chez Giles. We love it and try to put it in as much of our food as we can. Plus it's super good for you (and your gas!). I like to frequent our neighbourhood Chinese grocery store "Green Fresh!" where I can buy insane quantities for next to nothing. When I came across this recipe in last month's edition of Chatelaine, I was pretty excited. This recipe calls for fresh ginger so don't you dare chicken out and go with the powdered kind. It just won't taste right and you'll have such a feeling of self-gingerless-loathing, that it's just not worth it.

I had a lot of fun grilling up the oranges for this meal as well. We're currently in a tiny apartment with no back porch so we made up this dish on our little panini press, but the bbq would be hands down much better if you have access to one. Bon appetit!

Ingredients
3/4 cup orange juice, about 2 oranges
1 tbsp orange zest
1/3 cup honey
4 tsp minced ginger
1/2 tsp salt
4 skinless, boneless chicken breasts
2 oranges, halved

Instructions
1. Preheat barbecue to medium.

2. Whisk juice with zest, honey, ginger and salt in a large shallow bowl. Pour half into a small bowl and reserve. Add chicken breasts to juice mixture in large bowl. Let stand at room temperature for 15 min, flipping halfway.

3. Oil grill, then barbecue chicken, with lid closed, basting often with marinating liquid, for 6 min. Flip and continue grilling, without basting, until springy when pressed, 6 to 8 more min. Add oranges to the grill, cut-side down, for the last 5 min. Drizzle reserved orange mixture on chicken and serve with grilled oranges.

Recipe & photo cred to Chatelaine Magazine

Sesame Beef Sandwiches

My apologies to my poor little half-abandoned blog. I haven't been taking care of you the past few weeks as I should have. I also haven't been very adventurous in the kitchen the past few weeks either - which, remarkably enough, is suggestive of the fact that the blog has been lacking!

On the weekend, my husband cooked an absolutely mammoth piece of beef. I'm talking huge. It's only the 2 of us and, while I'm sure Georgie would have loved his share, he has quite the delicate little disposition. Needless to say, we`ve been looking for ways to eat up our excess of beef. This recipe is quite different in that you use pan-fried pizza dough as your `bun`. Neato.
Bon appétit!

Ingredients:
1 pound pizza dough (fresh, not frozen)
3 tablespoons vegetable oil, plus more for greasing
2 tablespoons sesame seeds
2 cups shredded coleslaw mix
1 tablespoon rice wine vinegar
1/4 to 1/2 teaspoon chili oil
6 ounces roast beef (you could easily use deli sliced)
1 tablespoon toasted sesame oil
3 scallions, thinly sliced
1/2 teaspoon grated peeled ginger
1/2 cup fresh cilantro

Directions
1. If using pre-bought pizza dough, microwave dough on 50 percent power to soften, 1 to 2 minutes, then let rest 5 minutes. I`ve never tried pre-made dough so hopefully it works out okay. If you`re keen, you can make your own very easily with this recipe. Grease a large plate with vegetable oil; shape the dough into a 9-inch round and place on the plate. Sprinkle with 1 tablespoon sesame seeds and 1/4 teaspoon salt.

2. Toss the coleslaw mix, vinegar, chili oil, and salt to taste in a bowl. In another bowl, toss the roast beef, sesame oil, scallions and ginger.

3. Heat 3 tablespoons vegetable oil in a large nonstick skillet over medium-high heat. Add the dough seed-side down and sprinkle with the remaining 1 tablespoon sesame seeds. Cover and fry, shaking the pan occasionally, until the dough is golden, about 3 minutes per side, turning with tongs. Transfer to paper towels, season with salt and cool.

4. Wipe out the skillet and place over high heat. Add the roast beef mixture and stir-fry until crisp, 1 to 2 minutes. Slice the flatbread in half horizontally. Layer the beef, coleslaw mixture and cilantro on the bottom half. Cover with the top and cut into 4 wedges.

- photo and recipe cred to the Food Network

Moroccan Eggplant

First off - I highly recommend you get past the downright awful looking little side picture.  The end result of actually making this neat little side dish will surely wow you. I will start this post by admitting that I am not a huge eggplant fan myself. I think that it's the texture mainly. The sponginess of the whole thing kind of weirds me out. I decided that I needed to broaden the Giles' vegetable palate this week though and thought that I'd check out a few of the cookbooks. This came up and I thought I'd give it a whirl. I was looking for something fun to serve up beside this Moroccan Chicken dish. The eggplant looks really greasy and gross but it's actually really sweet and tangy and syrupy like. Yummmmmmm. Nice to try something a little different every now and then!  Bon appétit!

(Serves 4 to 6 as a side)

Ingredients:
2 small eggplants (about 1 1/2 lbs.)
2 to 3 tablespoons olive oil
2 tablespoons olive oil
4 garlic cloves, pressed or very finely chopped
4 tablespoons honey
4 tablespoons lemon juice
1 small spoonful harissa, or 1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper
1 teaspoon cumin
1/2 teaspoon ginger
salt

Directions:
1. Peel the eggplants, and cut into 1/4 inch thick slices. Brush both sides of the slices with olive oil.

2. Heat a large non-stick frying pan over medium to medium high-heat. Fry the eggplant, turning once, until golden brown. Set aside.

3. Remove the pan from the heat, and allow the pan to cool for a minute or two. Add the olive oil and the garlic, and leave the garlic to soften. When the aroma of the garlic has been released, add the honey, lemon juice, harissa, spices and salt to taste. Stir to blend.

4. Return the eggplant to the pan, and bring the sauce to a simmer over medium heat. Cook the eggplant for about 10 minutes, or until the egpplant is tender and the sauce has a syrup-like consistency. Add a little water during the cooking if you feel it's necessary, but not so much that the eggplant will overcook while the liquids reduce.

Serve at room temperature.

Moroccan Spiced Chicken

I love, love, love playing around with spice mixtures. I also love it when I can find a recipe that uses cardamom. Who doesn`t love getting out the mortar and pestle?  This recipe uses an absolute plethora of moroccanish spices and the end result is so yummy. I am home recovering from another round of back surgery and have my mum looking after me. It was a lot of fun to make this dish together. We paired it with some super tangy Moroccan eggplant (recipe to follow!). Yum. We altered this recipe a tad so that you have some left-over marinade to serve with the chicken as ours ended up being a little dry. Enjoy! Bon appétit!

Ingredients:
1 cup plain nonfat Greek yogurt
Juice of 1 lime
3 tablespoons honey
1 teaspoon ground turmeric
1 teaspoon ground ginger
1 teaspoon ground cumin
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground cayenne pepper
1/4 teaspoon ground cardamom
1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon salt
4 boneless skinless chicken breasts

Directions:
1. Place Greek yogurt, lime juice, honey, turmeric, ginger, cumin, cinnamon, cayenne pepper, cardamom, nutmeg, and salt in a medium bowl and mix until well combined. Reserve about a 1/4 cup of marinade to serve with your chicken later on. Spread remainder of marinade evenly over chicken breasts in a shallow dish and refrigerate for an hour.

2. Heat oven to 350˚F. Heat a nonstick grill pan over medium high heat. Spray with nonstick cooking spray and sear chicken for 2 minutes per side or until browned. Place chicken in a large rectangular dish and bake with your leftover marinade at 350˚F for 8 to 10 minutes or until cooked through and no longer pink in the center. Makes 4 servings.

General Tso`s Chicken

This dish might be what you'd call a DIY, healthified makeover of the General Tso' Chicken that you are used to seeing in your Chinese takeout box. Normally the chicken is coated in the egg white/cornstarch mixture and deep fried till golden brown. This version however is pan fried in a drizzle of oil olive oil until crisp and tender, making it not only quick enough to eat on a weeknight, but healthy enough to eat as often as you like. The fact that it requires no special ingredients, pastes or sauces makes it a great last minute dinner too. You could swap out the snow peas for whatever veggies you have on hand in your fridge or freezer. Just make sure you don`t skip out on the fresh ginger either. It gives the dish a real ZIP. If you`ve never cooked with fresh ginger before, give it a try - you`ll never go back to making stir frys with out it. Really, really yummy. Bon appétit!

Ingredients (serves 4):
1 1/4 cups long-grain brown rice
1/4 cup cornstarch
1 pound snow peas, trimmed and halved crosswise
4 garlic cloves, sliced
2 teaspoons fresh ginger, grated and peeled
3 tablespoons light-brown sugar
2 tablespoons soy sauce
1/2 teaspoon red-pepper flakes
2 large egg whites
Coarse salt and ground pepper
1 pound boneless, skinless chicken breasts, cut into 1-inch pieces
2 tablespoons vegetable oil, such as safflower

Directions
1. Cook rice according to package instructions. Meanwhile, in a large bowl, stir together 1 tablespoon cornstarch and 1/2 cup cold water until smooth. Add snow peas, garlic, ginger, sugar, soy sauce, and red-pepper flakes; toss to combine, and set aside.

2. In another bowl, whisk together egg whites, remaining 3 tablespoons cornstarch, 1/2 teaspoon salt, and 1/4 teaspoon pepper. Add chicken, and toss to coat.

3. In a large nonstick skillet, heat 1 tablespoon oil over medium-high. Lift half the chicken from egg-white mixture (shaking off excess), and add to skillet. Cook, turning occasionally, until golden, 6 to 8 minutes. Transfer to a plate; repeat with remaining oil and chicken, and set aside (reserve skillet).

4. Add snow-pea mixture to skillet. Cover; cook until snow peas are tender and sauce has thickened, 3 to 5 minutes. Return chicken to skillet (with any juices); toss to coat. Serve with rice.

Tandoori Chicken

This dish was tonight's dinner and oh boy was it ever good. And when I mean good, I mean G O O D.  I don't think that I've had such a good dinner in a long time (that's quite a claim, I know!). Jeremy and I really enjoy Indian food but have never made our own tandoori chicken. This dish is a little scary because you`re cooking your chicken at an insanely high temperature but that is to replicate working in a `tandoor` (a giant, unglazed clay oven). Sadly I didn't have one of those, so my oven had to do the trick. The nice thing about this particular dish is that, for those of us who are trying to keep our food clean and healthy, you use skinless chicken, your yogurt can be low-fat and everything is baked. The nice thing as well about this recipe is that it doesn`t call for any crazy ingredients. Turmeric may be the only spice missing from your cupboard but you shouldn`t have any trouble finding it at the grocery store - it's a beautiful golden yellow colour (ie. almost electric!). As a warning from experience though: be very careful not to get it on your clothing!   This is definitely a recipe that we will be making again. I highly recommend that you give it a try! Bon appétit!

Instructions:
1/2 cup plain low-fat yogurt
2 garlic cloves, minced
1 teaspoon ground turmeric
1 teaspoon ground ginger
Coarse salt and ground pepper
4 bone-in, skinless chicken breast halves (10 to 12 ounces each)


Directions:
1. Preheat oven to 475 degrees. In a large bowl, mix together 1/2 cup yogurt, garlic, turmeric, ginger, 1/4 teaspoons salt, and 1/4 teaspoon pepper. Add chicken; turn to coat.

2. Transfer chicken to a rimmed baking sheet. Roast until an instant-read thermometer inserted in thickest part of breast (avoiding bone) registers 160 degrees, 25 to 30 minutes.

If you`re interested, here`s a picture of a tandoor:

Ooooo. Doesn`t that naan look good?