Fruity Chicken Salad

I don’t make chicken salad often – actually, I can’t say that. I’ve never made chicken salad before. Recently my darling husband mentioned that I should try to since he found out that he very much likes it. In the last two days I have made two different types of Chicken salad. The first one, which I will detail in this post, was a fruity type salad complete with almonds and grapes. It was surprisingly easy to make and very yummy. While my husband put the chicken salad on toasted Hoagie rolls, I made lettuce wraps with some butter lettuce leaves.    It feeds upwards of 6 people in my opinion so if you want to make less just cut the ingredients in half.

Fruity Chicken Salad

Chicken In Butter Sauce

This past week I attempted and succeeded in making my first Indian dish. It went over really well at my weekly Wednesday night dinner with friends.  The dish is a chicken dish that is accentuated with a creamy butter sauce. I even got to use my blender!

A word of warning when you coat the chicken – your fingers will turn yellow from the turmeric.

I let the chicken marinate for about 4 hours before putting it in the oven and it took on the flavors wonderfully. The dish has a kick of spice due to the red pepper-if you don’t want the heat substitute the red pepper with chili powder.

I served it over basmati rice.

Parmesan-Broccoli Timbales & Chicken Fingers with Honey Mustard

Look at this! Some new recipes! It’s not that I haven’t been cooking, on the contrary, I have been cooking quite a bit. A lot of the same ol’ same ol’ actually. I tried something different last night. Noticing a lack of vegetables with out meals recently (somehow I tend to forget them when I cook…) I made a conscious effort to make certain veggies were included in last nights meal.

It was requested that I make Chicken Fingers (Anyone know why-other than the fact that they are like strips-that we call them ‘fingers’? ) They turned out really well for being as simple as they were. The Timbales were more work than the chicken…

The Parmesan-Broccoli Timbales were easy to make, I was actually quite surprised by this. I wasn’t what I was actually making until they were done. I’d made Parmesan-Broccoli Quiches…just without the crust. It’s the closet thing I know of to compare it to.

I admit that the idea of eating chicken fingers and ‘quiche’ was a little odd at first, but the combination was pretty good.

Parmesan-Broccoli Timbales and Chicken Fingers with Honey Mustard Sauce

Chicken Adobo

I am so glad that I am not afraid of trying dishes from other cultures. If I were then I would have never come across this wonderful Filipino dish.

It is a very simple dish made with chicken or pork, slow cooked in a mixture of soy sauce, vinegar, garlic, bay leaf, and pepper.

The chicken came out moist and had a wonderful color to it. Matt took it to work the next day for lunch and came back telling me that it was even better the next day for having been able to soak in more of the sauce.

Glass Noodles with Chicken and Young Thailand Hot Sauce

So tonight we decided to make some Thai food. I don’t use the wok often so this was going to be a bit of an adventure for me.

Unfortunately when I went shopping for the ingredients this weekend I picked up rice noodles instead of glass noodles. It was a simple mistake on my part as I didn’t recall that glass noodles are actually made of bean threads and not rice. Even with the incorrect noodles I figured I should still give the recipe a go.

I made the Young Thailand Hot Sauce this morning to give it some time to rest. All I have to say is that if you aren’t used to heat, use this sparingly.

Overall I think the recipe was very easy to follow, even for a novice with the wok such as me. The key to it was definitely timing and being able to control the heat properly. Even with the change in noodles I think that the dish worked really well. I didn’t bother with the black fungus as I didn’t have the time to go to the local Asian market. I forgot to garnish with the red pepper at the end so it looked a little bland even with the green onion. It still tasted wonderful, and the the Young Thailand Hot Sauce gave it just enough kick.

Turkey and Roasted Red Pepper Meat Loaf

On Sunday evening I extended an invitation to some friends to come over for dinner. I had two options for the meal. After a quick discussion it was decided that I would make Turkey and Roasted Red Pepper Meat Loaf. This was a new recipe for me. I’ve tried several meatloaf recipes in the past and most of them didn’t turn out well.

I find it rather interesting that a dish a simple as meatloaf can go horribly wrong. Thankfully this was not the case with this recipe. I was afraid that it would turn out dry but it turned out really moist.

There were a few suggestions from my…test subjects. It was suggested that I chop the onions smaller as it seemed to be a bit much. I pointed out that I was short about a 1/4 pound of meat. So even though I did use a small onion it made a difference. The flavors worked well together though.

The dressing for the side salad was a little strong on the mustard, but it was passable.