I made this paella recipe about 4 times and I have not failed it once. It is super easy, with super simple and easy to get ingredients. I love making this dish for my family or for a party because it just looks and tastes amazing.

Cook time: approx. 45mins.

Ingredients: (see book for exact measurements)

• Coriander seeds
• ginger
• chicken thighs
• onion
• bay leaf
• basmati rice
• lemon zest
• chicken broth
• coconut milk
• mint

Steps:

1. coat chicken with salt & pepper, and grounded coriander seeds
2. add olive oil in paella pan, sear chicken down first until skin is crispy (approx 3-4 min each side)
3. Remove chicken from pan, and add in diced onion, bay leaf and minced ginger until onion is soft
4. Add the rice, coat rice with the oil, and stir in lemon zest
5. Add chicken broth and coconut milk, bring it to a simmer
6. Tuck chicken back in, and put the whole thing in the oven, set it and forget it for about 3o minutes.

After the chicken is cooked, I like to put frozen peas on top of the pan, and cover the whole thing with aluminium paper for about 5 – 10 minutes. This way the peas will get heated by the steam, and the rice can ‘rest’ until the right temperature to be served.

Top with some lemon wedges and mint, serve it family style out of the pan, and you got an awesome meal.

This recipe is really forgiving, you can really add anything you like. This time in addition to chicken thighs, I also used chicken drumsticks and tiger prawns.

Where to get the cook book:

[Show as slideshow]

[View with PicLens]

Keeping on with the simple theme, we tried one of Jamie Oliver’s Parmesan Chicken from his Ministry of Food series. Update: I just noticed it’s also in Jamie’s Food Revolution cookbook that I recently bought.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EZfXa8vO8N8

Ingredients:

• Chicken Breasts
• Parmesan Cheese
• Prosciutto de parma (parma ham)
• Lemon Zest
• Olive oil
• Thyme or rose mary
• Pepper

Pretty simple to make. For me, I had bone in chicken thighs lying around, so I just decided to de-bone them and flatten them. I had a bit of a problem because I’m not very good with the knife, but I’m sure this had more flavour. After de-boning the thighs, I pounded it out a bit. From there it’s easy. Season the chicken with pepper, add some thyme, and grate some parmesan cheese directly on top, and some lemon zest. Then put the strips of prosciutto on top. It’s OK if the ham is longer because it will shrink when fried. I had to fry it for about 6 minutes and it was ready. One problem that I had was that when I flipped it sometimes the ham didn’t stick well to the chicken, and it fell apart – maybe I should’ve used a bit more cheese.

It tasted pretty good, and the prep/cooking time was really quick. The ham turned really crispy, and a bit salty when combined with the parmesan.

I think it would be best to use chicken breasts and flatten it out thin so that the cooking time is quick. I made it a couple of other times. I’d suggest staying away from using lemon pepper because when I used it, it gave it a really weird tangy flavour. Maybe I put too much, but it wasn’t as good as using lemon zest. I also noticed I forgot to use the balsamic vinegar on top, so I guess it could have tasted better.

[Show as slideshow]

[View with PicLens]

…with cous cous de blah blah? No. Just fried chicken! This past weekend we had our comfort food weekend which we’ve been planning for a while. For our protein we made fried chicken using Tyler Florence’s (Beipas’ master chef) recipe which can be found on the Food Network’s website. I don’t know if this recipe was the one he used in his Tyler’s Ultimates show, because I swear he used honey somewhere. But nonetheless we tried it anyway.

Ingredients: (check Tyler’s recipe for exact amounts)

We got a bunch of chicken – 12 drumsticks, 15 thighs, a whole breast, and a pound of whole chicken wings. His recipe said to cut a chicken up our selves, but we weren’t too confident with our knife skills.

First we brined the chicken to keep it juicy! Unfortunately, I was supposed to do it over night, but I only was able to keep the chicken in the brine for 3 hours because I was busy until late the night before. When you are ready to start cooking, rinse the chicken, and then put the chicken in a deep bowl(s), and cover the chicken with water until the water is about an inch over it. For each litre of water, put a tablespoon of sea salt.

When you are ready to start cooking it, dry the pieces of chicken with a paper towel. You don’t want the chicken soaking wet before you batter them, or it might not stick properly.

For the dry part of the batter combine all the dry ingredients listed above and mix. For the wet part of the batter, combine the wet parts (the buttermilk and hot sauce). When battering the chicken, put it in the dry mixture first, then the buttermilk mixture and then back in the dry. In each step, try to get rid of any excess batter or flour.

Get the oil ready by filling your pot about 3 inches high. I used vegetable oil, because I’m allergic to peanuts! Put the fresh herbs and garlic in the pot while the oil is cold, and start heating it up to 350-365 degrees Farenheit. Sadly, since I didn’t use an electric deep fryer, or have an oil thermometer I was too hot. I should’ve checked to see if it was done after the first batch. Stupid me.

Anyways, cook the chicken until golden brown. Get ready for the herbs in the oil to make your kitchen smell awesome and get you hungry. It definitely did for us and our friends and family. It should take about 12-15 minutes per batch to get golden brown and crispy – you should probably flip it once in the middle of the cooking time. After it’s done, take off the excess oil. After the first batch is done, you can take out the herbs too because they are done flavouring the oil. You can garnish the chicken with the crispy herbs and also squeeze some lemon on top (which we forgot to do).

Sadly, the bigger thigh pieces didn’t cook all the way through. So we had to finish cooking it in the toaster oven. The wings and some of the drum sticks were cooked though. It’s my fault for not setting the proper temperature and not checking after the first batch. The batter was good though. It had a bit of a kick to it with the hotsauce in the buttermilk, and the cayenne pepper in the flour mixture. It was good, and the herbs added a really good hit to it. Even after cooking them for a bit longer in the toaster oven, the chicken meat was still juicy. My friends loved the flavour.

[Show as slideshow]

[View with PicLens]

The ingredients for the stir-fry were chosen on the fly at the local Asian super market (Uwajimaya in our case because it was the most likely place to carry the Black Bean sauce). So if you feel like it, you may choose the vegetables to your liking, but we found these went well together. The sauce itself is vague for a reason haha, Jeff made the sauce up on the spot and is the result of his last few years of cooking for himself. I’m glad I was able to reap the benefits. Very tasty.

Freestyle Stir-fry Chicken
Recipe by Jeff L.

Ingredients:
2 chicken breasts (suggest organic and whore-moan free breasts! hahaha)
3 garlic cloves
1 onion
a bag of bean sprouts
1 red bell pepper
1 green bell pepper
2 handfuls of broccoli
6 white button mushrooms
salt
pepper
olive oil/canola oil
1C of water
2 tablespoons of cornstarch
~2 tablespoons of soy sauce
Lee Kum Kee Black Bean Garlic sauce
Huy Fong Foods Chili Garlic Sauce
steamed white rice

Cooking Time: 15 mins

Directions:
Slice up the onion, red bell pepper and green bell pepper into medium sized pieces and chop the 3 cloves of garlic. Cut off the stems of the broccoli and break up the remainder into small chunks. Slice mushrooms into medium sized pieces. Cut chicken breasts into medium sized strips or cubes.

In a small bowl, add 1 C of water and the cornstarch and mix well with a spoon. Add about 2 tablespoons of soy sauce (more or less is up to you) to the mixture.

Place the olive oil in a wok on high until oil is hot. Add the chopped garlic and onion slices and saute until onions begin to soften. Add the sliced chicken breasts and cook until chicken is nearly cooked all the way through sprinkling some salt and pepper on a few times to taste. Once the chicken is almost cooked through, add in the broccoli, mushrooms and the sliced red and green bell peppers. Add the cornstarch mixture to the wok, after cooking for a moment, add a spoonful of the Black Bean Sauce and a spoonful of the Chili Garlic Sauce. Sautee everything together until vegetables are thoroughly cooked and add some salt to taste (or more black bean/chili sauce depending on how you’re feeling). If you notice that the sauce for the stir-fry is too thick, add some water to dilute it a little. On a large plate or bowl, cover the bottom with a few handfuls of bean sprouts and serve the chicken stir-fry on top.

Service with steamed white rice.

[Show as slideshow]

[View with PicLens]

Level: Easy

For the team lunch, I made the Californian Pesto Chicken Panini.

Preparation Time: 1 hour
Cooking time: 30 mins

Serving: 2 paninis

Ingredients:
2 boneless, skinless chicken breasts
1 roasted red pepper sliced
roasted garlic cloves
1 avocado sliced
1 vine ripened tomato
4 pitted medium black olives
1 loaf of focaccia bread
smoked gouda cheese
balsamic vinegar
extra virgin olive oil
premade pesto (or you can make your own)
salt and pepper

Preparation:
1. Clean your chicken breasts and separate the chicken tenders from the breast. Slice the chicken breasts thinner if you can.
2. Spoon a couple table spoons of your pesto sauce onto the chicken and massage it in. Let it marinate for about an hour in the fridge. Longer would be preferable.
3. Peel some garlic cloves.
4. Cut some red peppers into strips.
5. Put the garlic and red peppers into a baking pan and coat with extra virgin olive oil, salt and pepper.
6. Bake at 350 degrees F for 30 minutes.
7. Fry the chicken breasts in a little bit of olive oil.
8. Cut up the tomatoes into slices
9. Peel and slice the avocado into 1/4 inch thick pieces. Do this just before you prepare your paninis so that they don’t turn brown.
10. Cut the gouda into thin slices.
11. Cut up some black olives.
12. Combine a tablespoon each of balsamic vinegar and extra virgin olive oil and mix.
13. Preheat the Panini press

Panini-Making:
1. Put some of the oil and vinegar mixture on the inside of the bread. Apply a thin layer of pesto sauce also.
2. On the bottom part of your bread, layer your chicken, red pepper, garlic, avocado, tomato and cheese. Top with the black olives.
3. Top it with the other piece of bread and put it in the panini press until crispy and flattened. On the Hamilton Beach Panini Press it took about 4 minutes.

Paninis from meplusfood on Vimeo.

[Show as slideshow]

[View with PicLens]

Difficulty: Easy

This weekend I made Tyler Florence’s Chicken breasts with orange, olives and potatoes for the MePlusFood team at our visit here in Washington. I decided to make this dish because I love Tyler and the picture of the recipe looked good on Tyler Florence’s website and in his book Stirring the Pot.

Since I decided on the recipe based on the picture, I didn’t really read the cooking instructions of this recipe. But, lucky me, it turned out this recipe is super easy. Awesome!

The only preparation was slicing the potatoes, and oranges. I coated the chicken breasts with a fair amount of kosher salt and freshly ground pepper, which I think helped sear up the chicken nicely. As I started putting the potatoes in the pan, I realized I got too much sliced potatoes to fit the pan. I should have sliced 3 potatoes instead of 4, but if you have a bigger pan, or like potatoes, you can use 4 or more. If you have made it to this point, your work is almost done, because you basically just throw the rest of the ingredients in, cook for few more minutes with more olive oil, salt and pepper, and send it to the oven for 15 more minutes. This step took me a while to do because I got too many potatoes in the small pan to brown all my potatoes.

When we’re finally about to eat it, I was praying that the chicken would be fully cooked, because they were quite thick. A few pokes at it with the cooking thermometer didn’t really help, so my fingers were crossed. It turned out they are still slightly under cooked, but 2 minutes of magic cooking in the microwave saved everything.

Honestly, I didn’t really expect what this would taste like, but OMG this was sooo tasty. The chicken breasts were so juicy(fantastic) even after 2 minutes in the microwave. The potatoes soaked up all the chicken juice and olive oil really nicely. So, good.

I highly recommend this recipe.

Note: For the quantity of parsley, I wasn’t quite too sure what 1/4 bunch meant. But since it was only for garnish, I end up only using a couple sprigs of it.

Video Note: The cooking video also includes the cooking of Minestrone soup (recipe coming soon).

Tyler Florence
Chicken breasts with orange, olives and new potatoes
Recipe as written by Tyler Florence on his website:

Cooking time: 45 minutes

2 large chicken breasts, split in half down the middle – skin on
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
Extra-virgin olive oil
1 cup medium black olives, pitted
1/2 orange, sliced into round circles
4 large new potatoes, skin-on, ¼-inch thick-sliced
1/4 bunch flat leaf parsley, for garnish

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

Heat pan over medium heat, add olive oil and cook the chicken breast skin side down for 7 minutes. When the skin is golden, turn the breasts over, and add potatoes, olives and oranges over and around the pan. Add more olive oil if need to. Make sure all potatoes are coated with the chicken juice inside the pan. Cook for about 5-7 minutes more until the potatoes have colors on them. Add salt and fresh ground pepper. Bake in the oven for 15 minutes.

Garnish with parsley, and voilà! Juicy fantastic.

[Show as slideshow]

[View with PicLens]