The chicken saga continues, and tonight we cracked open the P90X cookbook and scaled back a recipe for the two of us.  We have also started on a new portion control saga to only eat as much as our fist (chewed of course), with more vegetables and less meat.  We ended up with a relatively easy chicken recipe that was tasty.

Lemon-Garlic Chicken Breast with Coucous

Ingredients
2 chicken breasts
2 tbsp lemon juice
1 tbsp molasses
2 cloves of garlic chopped
1 tsp worcestershire sauce
salt and pepper

Instructions
Combine lemon juice, molasses, garlic and Worcestershire sauce in a bowl and mix well.  Spray a baking dish with non-stick cooking spray and put chicken in it.  Pour marinade over chicken, cover and refrigerate, turning occasionally for 1 hour.  Pre-heat oven to 425°F and bake for 45 minute or until done, basting occasionally.

It was pretty tasty, at least the skin was and it had enough flavor to permeate every bite of the chicken.  It was a little dry, but I slacked in my basting and will do that more frequently next time.

Tagged with: , , , ,

Not quite as tasty as the original curry dish that turned my onto chicken curry, but still tasty enough to fall into the I will make it again category.  Using the same recipe and modifying as necessary I threw together another tasty curry rendition, that was still pretty good.

Store top chicken curry

Ingredients
3 tsp curry powder
2 cubed chicken breasts
1 chopped onion
pinch of ginger
1/3 c honey
2 tbsp margarine or butter

Instructions
Melt butter in a frying pan and add curry, ginger and onion mixing together well.  Cook over low heat until onion are translucent, stirring frequently.   Add chicken, cover and cook until done throughout, add honey and cook for an additional 2-3 minutes stirring constantly until a sauce forms and is uniform.  Eat right away.

Not as good as the first chicken curry I made in the oven and have made weekly since then, but it was still very good and we will make it again when in a bind.

Tagged with: , , ,

In the spirit of the Digital Chef, “cookin’ with what you got”, I cooked up a cupboard cleaner meal.  Actually it was more of a fridge cleaner, but none-the-less we got rid of some almost empty stuff.  It was also a beautiful day so I cooked all this mess on the grill over cherry wood, no charcoal just straight cherry wood, had an awesome flavor in the chicken, the taters were sealed in foil.

Potatoes and BBQ Chicken Breast

All in all it tasted good, it hit the spot and cherry wood usually make any meat a little better and chicken breast on the grill is no exception.

The chicken was place in its foil boat atop a bed of onions, a mashed clove of garlic and sprinkled with BBQ 3000.  It was then smothered in BBQ sauce, we had a little bit of three different kinds in the fridge and I used all of them.  Three more bottles out of the way.

The potatoes were canned potatoes (which I had never even seen before, let alone ate) and they were placed in a foil boat with a couple tablespoons of margarine, some chopped onion, some mashed garlic, some parsley, some steak sauce and a little cheese.

Both dishes were pretty dang good and even better for not having planned at all, a last might grill meal for the win.

Tagged with: , , , , , ,

A ginger milkshake you ask?  That’s right, when I first saw it fly across Twitter, I thought the same thing and the more I thought about it the more my mouth watered.  Tonight I finally made one and it was good and I think next time it will be even better.

Ingredients
1 1/2 inch section ginger root
1 c milk
1 c vanilla ice cream

Instructions
Peel and shred ginger root.  Put ginger and milk in blender and liquefy it until it is smooth and well blended.  Strain milk and remove all fibers of ginger root, push on the fibers to get it all through.  Add milk and ice cream to blender, blend until smooth.

Well what came out of that was a soupy milkshake that was good, a typical vanilla milkshake flavor followed by a nice bite of ginger that kinda sticks with you for a minute.  It was pretty incredible.  Next time I think I will use less milk more ice cream and more ginger.

Update: Made another shake tonight, this time used about 2 – 2 1/2 inches of ginger root and 1/2 c of milk, much better, much thicker, much more ginger bite and all around just a better shake.

Tagged with: , ,

Those who know me, know that there are two things I enjoy that relax me and often yield outstanding results fishing and cooking (by cooking I mean grilling, baking, smoking, roasting, etc).  Because of this a lot of people ask me what is the best way to eat fish?  Without a doubt the best way regardless of how it is prepared to eat fish is fresh, I enjoy smoked fish, baked fish, fried fish and grilled fish, but compound any of those methods with a fresh catch and it is exponentially better.  As a result of last nights catch today’s smoked fish lunch went from the lake to the plate in less than 24 hours, now that is some pretty fresh fish.

Brined the fish this morning for a couple of hours in my famous fish brine, let it sit out and dry/skin for about an hour and into the smoker at 190°F with some alder and apple wood for about 2 hours.  Had a little trouble getting the smoke going early on the Brinkmann Electric (which if you remember I built a PID controller for it last year), but was trying something new.  The results in spite of the difficulties where phenomenal, there might not be a better fish to smoke.

The famous fish brine recipe is as follows:

Ingredients
2 qts water
1 c kosher salt
1/2 c brown sugar
1/2 tbsp lemon juice
1/2 tbsp onion powder
1/2 tsp garlic powder
1/2 tsp ground allspice
1/2 tbsp pickling spice
1/2 tsp cayenne pepper
1 tsp black pepper

Instructions
I stir the salt in the water until dissolved and then test to see if an uncooked egg floats.  If it does not remove the egg, add more salt, stir and test again until the egg floats; this is important to get an 80 brine.  Once the salinity is all set add the rest of the ingredients, mix in thoroughly and refrigerate until needed, I have left it in the fridge for weeks and used it with excellent results.

I follow the brining directions located here.

Tagged with: , , , , ,