Yakitori

I made chicken yakitori for dinner today, I picked it up from the homecookingrocks.com. I wasn't really skeptical but since the recipe didn't call for marinating the meat, I wasn't 100% sure about the results either.

And I got the ultimate compliment(s) from hubby:

- I cooked the usual amount of meat which, on a normal day, would give us enough for 4 servings so we'll both have our baon for tomorrow. Pag ginanahan, this gives us 3 servings. Tonight, ubos! We polished off the chicken and bitin pa.

- While eating, I heard him mutter under his breath (I don't think I was supposed to hear this) in a very sarcastic tone, "what a day to start dieting". Yun pala, he decided to start dieting na. heehee.

Chicken Katsu Don

This chicken has been sitting in the refrigerator, already defrosted, since yesterday and I didn't want to keep this till tomorrow. Not having had the chance to do anything beforehand - marinade, etc - I knew that I had to go for a dish that requires little in terms of ingredients and preparation.

I dug through our pantry and found a new bag of panko bread crumbs, so I decided on chicken katsudon.

Ingredients for Chicken Katsu:

boneless skinless chicken thighs

garlic salt

pepper

flour

egg (beaten)

panko bread crumbs

hot oil for deep frying

1. Prepare chicken by pounding or slicing into thin fillets. Season chicken with garlic salt and pepper.

2. Dredge chicken in flour, dip into the egg and then coat with panko bread crumbs

3. Fry chicken in hot oil, note that panko bread crumbs burn easily so do not use too high heat.

4. Slice the chicken pieces.

Sauce for 1 serving (1 bowl of rice) of Katsudon sauce taken from Angelica's food blog.:

1 tbsp soy sauce

1 tbsp cooking wine (I used rice wine)

1 tbsp mirin

2 tsp sugar

1/3 cup chicken/vegetable stock or water (I used water and added some chicken powder)

1 egg, slightly beaten

spring onions

1. Mix soy sauce, cooking wine, mirin, sugar, water and chicken powder together.

2. In a small pan, pour the sauce and let it boil. When boiling, put sliced chicken in the sauce, pour the slightly beaten egg on top of the chicken, sprinkle with spring onions and let it boil till the egg is cooked. It may help to cover the pan.

3. Pour on top of a bowl of rice - chicken, broth and all - and serve.

This turned out great. My chicken was crunchy on the outside and moist and juicy inside. And the sauce ? PERFECT!

Chicken fillets with hoisin sauce

I bought several packages of boneless skinless chicken thighs from Costco today and decided to make a chicken dish for dinner. As I usually do when I'm in the mood to try something new, I drop by my favorite food blog, HomeCookingRocks (formerly pinoycook.net), and chose a dish for which I have the ingredients on hand.

Tonight's choice was a slight variation from chicken fillets with hoisin sauce and Szechuan pepper.

I also had to make slight variations on the seasoning as I had more chicken than the recipe called for, this was what I prepared:

5 boneless chicken thighs

5 tbsp lite soy sauce

cornstarch

cooking oil (for deep frying)

hoisin sauce

toasted sesame seeds

1. Slice chicken thighs into small strips, season with lite soy sauce and let stand in the refrigerator.

2. Coat the chicken fillets with the cornstarch and deep fry. When cooked, let the oil drain on paper towels.

3. In the pan, heat a dollop of hoisin sauce, add toasted sesame seeds and toss the chicken fillets to coat them with the hoisin sauce-sesame seed mixture.

Note that I prepared a small batch for tasting first and purposely did not coat the chicken evenly and completely with the hoisin sauce. Both hubby and I prefer it that way to preserve the crunchiness of the chicken and we preferred not to have that strong of a hoisin sauce taste.

Stir Fried Chicken with Pineapple and Peppers

This is a quick and easy to prepare recipe that I found on AllRecipes.com. The only deviation that I made from the recipe is that I used regular vinegar instead of white wine vinegar and I did not put any almonds in.

This turned out so good and so easy to prepare that I have made this dish twice in the past two weeks already.

Ingredients:

1/4 cup reduced-salt soy sauce

2 tablespoons white wine vinegar

2 tablespoons mirin (sweetened Asian wine)

1 teaspoon grated ginger root

2 crushed garlic cloves

1 tablespoon cornstarch

2 tablespoons oil, preferably sesame oil

1 pound boneless, skinless chicken breast, cut in 1-inch pieces

6 large green onions, cut in 1-inch pieces

2 cups fresh or frozen pepper strips

1 (20 ounce) can chunk pineapple in juice

1/4 cup sliced almonds (optional)

Combine first six ingredients; stir well.

Heat oil in a large skillet and stir-fry chicken until brown and done, about 5 minutes. Remove. Add green onions, peppers and pineapple to the skillet; heat through. Pour in sauce and stir until thickened. Return chicken to skillet; heat through. Serve with brown rice; top with optional almonds.

Chicken in Peanut Sauce

It's been a while since I tried out new recipes and I claim the "new mommy" excuse for that. We recently had a new addition to the family, a baby boy, and our time has been taken up by our baby and we've decided to stick to the more familiar dishes in the meantime as they are easier and faster to make (because we have them often).

Today's meal was supposed to be chicken but I wanted something different as I was already getting tired of lemon chicken and fried chicken cutlets. I set out for a recipe and dropped by my favorite food blog - www.pinoycook.net - and found this recipe for chicken in spicy peanut butter sauce.

Now, I do believe that I may have strayed far away from the original recipe as I had to substitute white vinegar for rice wine vinegar and I eliminated the chili as hubby isn't really fond of spicy foods. I also don't have access to Lily's peanut butter described in the recipe and I had to substitute Skippy's Chunky Peanut butter (we still have 2 huge jars that we got from Costco). Lastly, I also have to confess that where it says "season to taste", I didn't really have an idea of what it was supposed to taste like so I just seasoned till it tasted okay to me.

With that, here is my version (I halved the amounts, except for the peanut butter):
5 skinless boneless chicken thighs
1 onion, roughly chopped
2 cloves of garlic, crushed and chopped
1 tbsp of grated ginger (couldn't slice my ginger as it was still frozen)
2 tbsps. of light soy sauce (I used Kikkoman)
2 tbsps. of white vinegar
about 1/4 c. of sweetened peanut butter (I went overboard with the peanut butter because I wanted to finish the jar)
patis (fish sauce), to taste
cracked black pepper
finely sliced onion leaves, to garnish

- Brown the chicken pieces in a pan.
- Add the garlic, onion, ginger, soy sauce, fish sauce and vinegar
- Boil and let simmer till chicken is cooked
- seasoned with fish sauce to taste, added pepper
- add the peanut butter and mix till sauce is thick
- garnish with green onions and serve

Verdict: Hubby says that this turned out not-bad - "pwede na" was his term - but it didn't have the wow factor. He also wasn't sure about wanting to bring this for his lunch tomorrow to the office.

As for me, I agree with the "not-bad" or "pwede na" verdict at first and was a bit iffy because I am used to having peanut butter with bread but not with rice. Later, I realized that it tastes better and better with every bite and I even had a second serving. Ayaw ni hubby, akin na lang to bukas.

Chicken Parmesan

We were supposed to have lemon chicken for dinner tonight but when I realized that it was deep-fried and that I needed to avoid fatty & heaty foods, I decided to look for something else that I could make with the boneless, skinless chicken thighs that we were having for dinner. After checking out what we had in the refrigerator, I decided on baked chicken parmesan.

Checked the internet for recipes and looks like there are a lot of variations out there. I threw caution to the wind and picked & chose what I wanted to do. Hubby helped with this dish as well :D

Ingredients:

Boneless chicken thighs, sliced thinly (or use cutlets)

1 egg

1/4 cup breadcrumbs

1/4 cup parmesan cheese

2 tbsp chopped parsley

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees F.
2. Prepare the parmesan coating for the chicken by mixing equal parts of parmesan cheese & breadcrumbs (more parmesan cheese = better). Mix in the parsley.
3. Season chicken thighs with freshly ground sea salt.
4. Dip seasoned chicken thighs in egg.
5. Coat chicken with the parmesan - breadcrumb mixture.
6. Arrange chicken on a baking rack and bake until done - around 20 minutes.

We just used bottled marinara for the sauce and made some whole wheat pasta to go with the chicken.

Marinated Chicken Kebabs & Herbed Potato Slices

A good friend shared a recipe that she saw on TV (a Filipino channel), when she was describing the dish to me, I did a google search and found the exact same recipe posted on Epicurious.com.

Marinated Chicken Kebabs with Lemon-Pepper Yoghurt Sauce

Admittedly, this was my first time cooking with Rosemary and I was a bit too enthusiastic and generous with this herb. The chicken (thankfully) turned out well and hubby gives his seal of approval although he did request that I make it with bigger chicken chunks next time.

Marinade:
2 cups extra virgin olive oil
juice of 3 lemons
2 tbsp chopped garlic
3/4 tbsp chopped fresh rosemary leaves (I used dried rosemary leaves)
3/4 tbsp fresh thyme leaves (did not use these)
6 single boneless, skinless chicken breasts ( I used boneless, skinless thighs instead)
salt and pepper to taste

1. Slice the chicken in to smaller chunks (cubes).
2. Combine the ingredients and toss with the chicken chunks and leave this in the refrigerator overnight.
3. Instead of grilling, I popped this in a 400F oven for 30 minutes (until cooked).

The chicken turned out wonderful. I did try to make the Yoghurt sauce as described but it didn't go too well with us and we ended up throwing most of it away.


While thinking about what would best accompany the chicken as a side dish, I remembered a post from my favorite food blogger - PinoyCook's Grilled herbed liempo and potatoes. Inspired, I decided to slice up some potatoes, season them with rosemary, oregano, salt and pepper and arrange them underneath the chicken slices ala Pinoy cook.

When done, the potatoes absorbed the flavor from the chicken drippings and herbs and tasted wonderful!

Salted Fish Fried Rice

Did I ever tell you that I'm a friend rice fiend? I love rice, all kinds of rice. This salted-fish fried rice is one of my absolute favorites whenever we go out to a Chinese restaurant.

Ingredients:
- garlic
- rice
- egg
- salted fish (Salted Threadfin)
- sliced chicken
- spring onions

1. cut / shred the Salted Threadfin into little pieces - you could probably use other types of salted fish but this is the real deal. This fish comes in dried form but we just this because you're not supposed to use a lot anyway.

My hands and fingers hurt after making himay this fish because the flesh was so hard! I use 2 slices for the 2 serving fried rice that I usually make.


2. Saute the garlic and sliced chicken in oil (I use a little bit of the oil from the Salted Threadfin). When the chicken is cooked, add the shredded fish and saute a bit more.

3. Add the rice and egg.

4. Garnish with egg slices and spring onions.

Lemon Chicken

Hubby loves lemon chicken. This is actually our 2nd try of this dish, the first one didn't turn out too good.

I've mentioned a few posts ago that we've been making an effort to curb our meat-eating habits and are trying to switch to healthier meats instead (i.e. chicken). Hubby has been talking about his mom's lemon chicken for months and how this would be their default baon for field trips.

We were in Chinatown last week and decided to drop by the neighborhood asian store where we like to do our shopping. We found a packet of Lee Kum Kee Lemon Chicken Sauce and decided to give this a try.

Ingredients:
Boneless chicken thighs
cornstarch (we will season the cornstarch w/ a little salt / pepper in our next try)
egg

1 packet of Lemon Chicken Sauce
3 Lemon slices

Steps:
1. Season chicken thighs with seasoned salt, let this sit in the refrigerator for at least 2 hours.
2. Beat the egg in a bowl.
3. Dip the chicken in the egg and then coat it with cornstarch
4. Deep fry the chicken until cooked and drain on paper towels.

Sauce: The instructions on the packet only calls for heating the sauce and adding the chicken in. Hubby added some lemon slices and water to adjust the taste.

1. Pour the sauce into a small saucepan to heat it.
2. Add 3 lemon slices and 2 tbsp water.
3. Stir.

To serve, slice the chicken pieces, garnish with a lemon slice and pour some sauce.

Note that we served the chicken and sauce separately because we wanted the chicken to retain its crispyness.

<-- Lemon chicken sauce, costs $1 in Chinatown (NY) Ansarap! We couldn't stop eating and making papak the leftovers.

Btw, we found this packet to be just enough for 4 pcs of chicken.

Chicken Barbeque - Aristocrat style

I find myself craving for Aristocrat's chicken-barbeque every now and then. I've been looking for and trying out different recipes for a few years now and this is the ultimate!

This is the 2nd time we've tried this recipe. The first time was a big of a flop because
(1) I was too impatient and didn't want to wait to 2 days before grilling the chicken. It turned out too bland.
(2) We didn't have peanut butter at home and wasn't able to make the Java sauce.

Today's try was perfect! special thanks to _TS who posted her Yaya's Philippine-style Chicken BBQ recipe on [Eating Club] Vancouver.

_TS's Yaya's Barbequed Pork

Marinade:
1 big head garlic, crushed
2 tsp. salt
1 tsp. black pepper
4 tbsp. soy sauce
4 tbsp. sugar
1 7-up or Sprite
10 pcs. calamansi (substituted lime juice)
3 to 4 pcs chicken leg quarters. or 1 kg. pork, sliced thin into 1-1/2" pcs. (shoulder butt)

Procedure:
Mix all ingredients together including the pork/chicken. Marinate pork overnight in the refrigerator, if using chicken, marinate for 2 days.

Basting Sauce:
To make the basting sauce, use some of the marinade, add catsup, worcestershire sauce, a touch of oil and adjust the sugar and soy sauce levels. Heat the sauce in a pan and cook until it is thickened. Baste the bbq on the grill.









Peanut sauce
Use some of the marinade and add the same things above (not so much ketchup, though) plus some peanut butter*. Heat this to cook the marinade and make the mixture smooth. Serve peanut sauce with your chicken barbeque.

* this was why I made my own peanut butter

Stir-Fried Chicken

We keep hearing that it's easy to prepare stir-fry dishes. You just keeping stirring the ingredients until they're cooked,... supposedly.

The thing is, what do we use to flavor the dishes ?

My mom sent me a Chinese cookbook - it's more of a pamphlet, really - and this gave us a starting point in terms of the sauce.

For this chicken-stir fry dish, we used the following:

Skinless & boneless chicken thighs, cut into strips
1 head of broccoli florets (did not know that the stem is edible so I threw it away, argh!)
1 carrot, sliced
quail eggs
2 cloves garlic
1 tsp grated ginger

sauce:
2 tbsp oyster sauce
1 tbsp lite soy sauce
1 tsp cornstarch, dissolved in 2 tbsp water
1 tsp sugar

1. Blanch the vegetables - broccoli and carrots.
2. In a wok, saute the garlic and the ginger in hot oil.
3. Add the chicken and stir around until chicken in cooked.
4. Pour in the sauce and then add the vegetables and the quail eggs.
5. Let the sauce boil and thicken.
6. Serve

Sweet and Sour Chicken

Hubby and I, avid meat-eaters, have been making an effort to try to eat healthier. We are now trying to incorporate more chicken into our meals to replace beef and pork. We're still a long way off from being totally healthy and I won't even dare suggest that we become vegetarians, but this is a start.

So we've been buying chicken during our weekly grocery trips and we are fast running out of options for preparing chicken. So I turned to the net and my favorite cooking site, Pinoycook.net, and
I found a recipe for Sweet and Sour Chicken Fillets.

We tried the recipe and the dish turned out good on our first try except that it was too sweet for our taste. We have since revised the recipe to suit our tastes and to make use of the ingredients that we have in our kitchen and this is the result.

1.5 lbs Boneless & skinless chicken thighs, cut into strips
seasoned salt
flour (for dredging the chicken)
cooking oil (for deep frying the chicken)
1 tsp minced garlic
1 tsp minced ginger (we grated this instead)
1 small bell pepper, sliced
1 small onion, sliced
1 small carrot, sliced
1 cup water
1/8 cup vinegar
1/4 cup - 2 tbsp sugar (subtracted 2 tbsp sugar from the original recipe)
salt & pepper to taste
2 tbsp tmato paste
1 tsp cornstarch
1/2 tsp sesame oil
pineapple chunks (new addition)
toasted sesame seeds (new addition)

1. Season chicken strips with seasoned salt and then dredge in flour.
2. Deep fry the chicken till golden brown, drain on paper towels and set aside.
3. Saute garlic & ginger. Add the vegetables and stir fry over high heat for around 45 seconds.
4. Stir together water, tomato paste, vinegar, salt, pepper, sugar and cornstarch.
5. Return chicken to the skillet or wok and pour in the sauce. Stir till sauce thickens and clears.
6. Add the pineapple chunks and stir around to coat the pineapple with sauce. (Note that by adding the pineapple chunks at this stage, it probably didn't lend a lot of flavor to the dish. We like it this way).
7. Turn off the heat and drizzle with sesame oil just before serving.
8. Top with toasted sesame seeds.

This is good for 4 to 5 servings.

Chicken Ala Croissant

We bought a huge batch of croissants from Costco while the in-laws were visiting and when they left, a lot were still left over.

In an effort to try and finish up the leftover croissants, we wanted to prepare a dish that would go well with bread - Chicken ala King topped the list. This recipe is a variation from Diana's Kitchen.

1.5 tbsp butter
1 cup fresh mushrooms, sliced
1/4 cup chopped green bell pepper
1/8 cup flour
1/2 tsp salt
1 cup half and half
3/4 cup chicken broth
2 pcs boneless skinless chicken thighs, cooked and diced

1. Melt butter in a saucepan.
2. Add mushrooms and bell pepper, cook for 5 minutes.
3. Blend in flour, salt and pepper. Continue stirring and cooking until smooth and bubbly.
4. Gradually add milk and chicken broth. Stir constantly.
5. Cook for 10 minutes. If you'd like a thicker sauce, blend 2 tablespoons of cornstarch with 1/4 cup of cold water and add to sauce a little at a time, untile desired consistency is reached.
6. Cook for a few more minutes, then add chicken.
7. Heat through.
8. Serve.

Verdict: yummy! although the lack of color did bother me a little, we think that there should be reds or oranges ?

Chicken Pepper Stir Fry

I've been making an extra effort to prepare more chicken dishes, rather than the usual pork & beef, in an effort to live a little bit healthier.

Hubby and I have taken to buying a few packs of boneless chicken thighs whenever we stop by the grocery store.

I've tried a few dishes and this was the best of the lot so far. Worth blogging :) This is a very very slight variation from this recipe from Recipe Trove.

Ingredients:
6 pcs boneless chicken thighs, sliced thinly. (around 1 lb)
1 medium red bell pepper, sliced thinly
1 medium green bell pepper, sliced thinly
6 stalks green onions, cut into 1 inch pieces

Marinade:
2 tbsp soy sauce
2 tbsp catsup
1 tsp grated ginger
2 cloves garlic, minced

1. Mix the soy sauce, catsup, ginger and garlic. Add chicken and let stand for 15 minutes or more.
2. Stir fry the peppers and green onions in 1 tbsp of hot oil, cook until crisp-tender. Set aside.
3. Stir fry the chicken in 2 tsbp of hot oil for 4 to 5 minutes, until no longer pink in the center.
4. Stir in the bell pepper and green onion mixture.
5. Serve.

Verdict: Sarap! I cooked enough for 2 meals (4 servings), at least I thought so. Ginanahan si hubby and we had to cook extra rice because kinain nya yung rice that we set aside for his baon the next day.

So this was really just 3 servings for us.

Chicken wrapped in bacon

This is one of the staple dishes in my kitchen. I like to prepare these beforehand and keep them frozen and when I need to cook them, I just pop them straight from the freezer to the turbo broiler

Ingredients:
Boneless chicken breasts / thighs, sliced thinly
Bacon slices
Egg
Bread crumbs

Filling: Butter, parmesan cheese, parsley, salt & pepper (or garlic salt, for more flavor).

I usually just mix the ingredients for the filling and make "tantya". Spread the filling over the chicken slices, place a slice of bacon, and roll it up and stick a toothpick to allow the roll to retain its shape.

[edit: These days, I don't roll in breadcrumbs anymore but instead, we wrap the outside of the chicken roll with yet another slice of bacon and sort of tuck the end in to hold the roll in shape. This is way better than breadcrumbs].

Dip the roll in egg and roll in breadcrumbs and then, I just wrap them up in foil and freeze.

To cook, bake in 375 degree oven (turbo broiler) . Cooking time varies.

Lemon Chicken ala Popcorn

We got some boneless chicken breast halves during our last shopping trip and we decided to try our hand at preparing one of the hubby's favorite chicken dishes - Lemon Chicken.

Did some searching and found a recipe on Cooks.com which listed ingredients that we already have at home. It turned out quite well, even with our revisions, and yeah, the picture that I took could do with some improvement (and better presentation) so this doesn't do the dish any justice.

The original recipe calls for 2 egg yolks for the chicken batter. I didn't want to waste the egg whites so I opted to just prepare the chicken cutlets Japanese style as we did last time - dredged in flour, dipped in egg and then coated with panko bread crumbs.

Lemon sauce:
2 tbsp cornstarch
3 tbsp brown sugar
1 tbsp minced fresh ginger (instead of minced, I grated)
1/3 cup fresh lemon juice

In medium saucepan, place 2 tablespoons cornstarch, brown sugar and ginger. Stir in 1/2 cup water and broth. Cook over medium heat, stirring frequently until thickens and comes to a boil, boil for 1 minute. Remove from heat, stir in lemon juice.

Pour sauce over the chicken cutlets and serve.

* Note, we found the sauce to have a strong ginger taste, will lessen the ginger next time.

Chicken cutlets and Mashed Potatoes

We wanted to get some chicken breast fillets the other day and bought some breast tenderloins by mistake. Not knowing what to do with them, we just decided to make chicken breast cutlets and serve them with Ikea gravy.

Chicken cutlets:

1. Cover the chicken meat with plastic wrap and with a flat mallet (tenderizer), pound the chicken to tenderize and flatten it out.
2. Coat the chicken fillets with flour.
3. Dip in beaten egg and coat with panko flakes (Japanese bread crumbs).
4. Fry in hot oil, approximately 2 minutes on each side or until cooked.

Mashed Potatoes:

1. Boil potatoes in hot water for 15-20 minutes or until soft.
2. In a bowl, peel off the skin (this should come off easily) - some people actually prefer to have bits of skin in the mashed potatoes.
3. Mash the potatoes using a potato masher or a fork
4. Add a dollop of butter.
5. Add a little milk but not too much that the consistency becomes runny.
6. Season with salt & pepper.
7. If desired, top with bacon bits and melted cheese (top mashed potatoes with grated cheese and melt in the microwave).

Note that the unseasoned and unmarinated chicken cutlets are bland when eaten as is. Make sure to serve with gravy or some tonkatsu sauce to give it flavor.