chicken – Page 2 – AT-AT Everywhere

Slow Cooker Moroccan Chicken Tagine

I am a creature of habit. I’ve been posting recipes that were inspired by things I’ve eaten at Nook Bistro for years, and I find myself still going there and getting the same thing every time. I love their butternut squash stew, but don’t love that I can’t make a knock-off of it at home year-round with butternut squash really being a fall/winter squash. Then, I had chicken tagine for the first time at a work tasting with a catering company that was vying for new business a few years ago. It had a somewhat similar flavor profile to the butternut squash stew, but the ingredients would allow me to make it year-round I absolutely fell in love with it (and the caterer!), and have tried a number of different chicken tagine recipes trying to mimic what I had and FINALLY found one. I’m so happy to finally be sharing it!

Here is the recipe as adapted from A Hint of Honey:

INGREDIENTS:

2 T extra virgin olive oil
2 large onions, chopped
4 cloves garlic, minced
1 inch fresh ginger root, peeled and grated
1 T all-purpose flour
2 T tomato paste
2 T honey
4 t ras el hanout
1 t turmeric
1 t ground cumin
1 t ground cinnamon
1 t ground coriander
up to 1 t cayenne pepper (skip this altogether if you don’t like it spicy!)
1 C low-sodium chicken stock
2 cans diced tomatoes
2 cans chickpeas, drained and rinsed
6 oz. dried apricots, diced
3 lbs. boneless skinless chicken thighs
4 carrots, peeled and chopped
salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste
fresh cilantro or parsley, chopped for serving (frankly, this is more for aesthetics)
cous cous, for serving

DIRECTIONS

Heat olive oil in a large skillet over medium heat. Add the onions and saute until softened. Add the garlic and ginger and cook for 1 minute. Stir in the flour, tomato paste, honey, and spices and cook for another minute.
Waiting for the Liquids
Add the chicken stock and tomatoes and cook for several minutes, making sure to get out any lumps of flour. Season with salt and freshly ground black pepper.
Combine the tomato/spice mixture with the chickpeas, apricots, chicken thighs, and carrots in a large slower cooker, mixing well.
Cover and cook on high for 3-4 hours, or until the meat shreds easily with a fork. Serve over cous cous or rice, topped with fresh cilantro.

Ras el hanout can be purchased online, but I’m not sure where to find it in stores. You can make it from scratch using this recipe, and it’ll yield enough to make this tagine a few times. Make sure to store it in a glass container, because it’ll make your plastic tupperware smell like the mixture forEVER. I use an inexpensive spice jar one from Crate and Barrel (thanks Joyce!!), but a small Pyrex could work too!

Ras El Hanout - from scratch! — Ras El Hanout – from scratch!

This stew is great the day you make it, but Kevin and I both think it tastes better the next day. I’ve probably made this five or six times in the last year and it never lets us down.

It also freezes well, and makes a HUGE amount. Kevin and I use two crockpots to make this one recipe (he has an old school Rival Crock-Pot, and I have a 6-quart Crock-Pot). If you have anything under an 8.5-quart, you may want to finish step 3 and then divide your recipe in half, freezing the half you’re not cooking today.

“World’s Best and Easiest” Teriyaki Chicken Wings

When you come across a recipe titled that starts with “World’s Best and Easiest”, you pay attention. I found this recipe for Teriyaki Chicken Wings on Food.com and the title really intrigued me. Could these be the best AND the easiest to make? We tested them out for our housewarming party last February (yes – STILL backlogged!). And with the Super Bowl coming up, I wanted to share the recipe with you!

INGREDIENTS:

5 lbs chicken wings (skin on or off – it’s up to you!)
1 1/4 C soy sauce
1 lb dark brown sugar (you can buy a 1 pound box to make measuring a no brainer)

DIRECTIONS:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Line two roasting pans (or cookie sheets with a lip) with nonstick foil – this will make clean-up soooo much easier.
Mix sauce and sugar together. Brush on both sides of the wings. Pour remainder of sauce over wings.

Pour Sauce Over Brushed Wings
Cook face down so that the”pretty” side of the wing gets good and brown for about 40 minutes and then flip over. Cook for another 15 minutes.

Flip After 40 Minutes
Throw all the gooey sauce into the crock pot with the wings and simmer on low heat for as long as you want (at least 10 minutes). This is step is what makes the meat fall off the bone, but you don’t have to do it to cook them through.

“World’s Best and Easiest” Teriyaki Chicken Wings

These chicken wings really were DELICIOUS. The meat fell right off the bone as promised, and they were deliciously sticky. I’ll definitely be making these again – perhaps for this year’s Super Bowl!

Chicken and Mushrooms in a Garlic White Wine Sauce

Kevin and I seem to go on long streaks of cooking followed by streaks of eating out depending on how husky we’re feeling at a given time. On one of our healthy cooking streaks back in June, I found a recipe for Chicken and Mushrooms in a Garlic White Wine Sauce from Skinny Taste.

I had a bottle of Cade sauvignon blanc (delish!) leftover from an event I worked on in May, so I used a bit of this for the sauce and split the rest with Kevin.

Here is the recipe!

Ingredients:

8 chicken tenderloins, 16 oz total
2 tsp butter
2 tsp olive oil
1/4 cup all purpose flour
3-4 cloves garlic, minced
12 oz sliced mushrooms
1/4 cup white wine
1/3 cup fat free chicken broth
salt and fresh pepper to taste
1/4 cup chopped fresh parsley

Directions:

Preheat oven to 200°. Season chicken with salt and pepper. Lightly dredge in flour.
Heat a large skillet on medium heat; when hot add 1 tsp butter and 1 tsp olive oil. Add chicken to the skillet and cook on medium heat for about 5 minutes on each side, or until chicken is no longer pink. Set aside in a warm oven.
Floured Chicken, Parsley Mixture, and Chicken
Add additional oil and butter to the skillet, then garlic and cook a few seconds; add mushrooms, salt and pepper stirring occasionally until golden, about 5 minutes.
Add wine, chicken broth, parsley; stir the pan with a wooden spoon breaking up any brown bits from the bottom of the pan. Cook a few more minutes or until the liquid reduces by half. Top the chicken with the mushroom sauce and serve.
Chicken and Mushrooms in a Garlic White Wine Sauce

Our meal was starting to look a little to beige, so we sauteed up some green beans and garlic and made a quick baby kale salad. Just some rabbit food to make us feel better about ourselves!

For dessert, we had a homemade cherry crumble in a mug with some ice cream – perfection!

Floured Chicken, Parsley Mixture, and Chicken

Chicken and Mushrooms in a Garlic White Wine Sauce

BBQ Chicken Salad

In virtually “thumbing” through my photos from the beginning of the year to date, I came across the pictures of the BBQ Chicken Salad I made back in February. I just marinated some chicken thighs in Trader Joe’s BBQ sauce, and then threw it in the oven. There is something wonderful about BBQ sauce that really breaks down proteins and makes meat really tender in the oven.

I threw the chicken on top of some baby greens, along with cherry tomatoes, persian cucumbers, black beans, corn, chopped red bell pepper, and of course some toasted pepitas! The salad ingredients were so flavorful flavorful together that I didn’t even need dressing.

BBQ Chicken Salad - Close-Up! — BBQ Chicken Salad – Close-Up!

Definitely need to make this again some time – so easy and healthy!

Slanted Door’s Grapefruit and Jicama Salad

Let’s be real – the holidays are a time to “be merry”. Translation: skip the gym and go to happy hour, or reward yourself for going to the gym by gorging on extra cookies or extra carbs or extra beer…or all of those combined in one sitting. Thanksgiving in particular is the biggest day of the year to throw any diet rules out the door.

I did a dessert for last year’s Annual IMAX Thanksgiving potluck amidst the peak of my obsession with pumpkin. and really wanted to mix it up for 2012. I decided to be “that person” and contribute something healthy via a colorful salad for an otherwise really beige spread of Thanksgiving foods between the carbs, the turkey, the pies, etc. Bernie and I had eaten at Slanted Door during a work trip in San Francisco a couple of months ago and had their grapefruit and jicama salad. I fell in love immediately – each bite presented something different with all of the different flavor combinations.

This is what I wanted to re-create:

I also must say that I am really excited that I now know how to make candied pecans, thanks to this recipe. Who knew all it took was sugar and a little bit of oil? Oh, the simple things.

It took about 3 hours to chop, slice, and mince the various veggies into small pieces, and then to peel everything away to get to the grapefruit segments, but it was soooo worth it. I tossed the jicama and carrots in a wee bit of oil, and didn’t put any oil in the dressing. As a result of this, hardly any dressing was needed since it’s so strongly flavored sans oil.

The recipe I found on Little Eater made a HUGE batch of the salad… larger than any big container in my house could fit, so I had enough for a couple of lunches the next couple of days. I wanted some extra protein beyond the candied pecans to go with my lunch/dinners, so I eyeballed/taste-tested a chicken marinade made out of lime juice, a little brown sugar, soy sauce, minced garlic, and freshly grated ginger. The chicken stayed really moist throughout the baking process, even though I didn’t use any oil.

Note, too, that the recipe on Little Eater calls for chopped mint leaves. Cilantro actually goes better with this salad. I really love this salad. Here’s the end product!