Coconut Crusted Chicken

Remember those coconuts we cracked open a few days ago?  Well, I have a lot of coconut now that needs to be used.  First I made coconut milk.  I've read that homemade coconut milk is much better than store bought.  I've never bought coconut milk, so I wouldn't really know.  It was really easy to make though.  Next, I marinaded chicken in the coconut milk.  Then used some of the shredded coconut as a coating for chicken.  The coconut milk made the chicken very moist and delicious.  I also made some roasted potatoes and broccoli to serve alongside.

For the coconut milk:

1 Cup Shredded Unsweetened Coconut (either fresh or the bagged kind)

1 Cup Coconut Water or Plain Water

Bring the coconut water/plain water to a boil.  Once boiling, remove from heat and add the shredded coconut.  Cover and let it sit for 1 hour.  

Pour into a blender and blend for 1 minute.  Strain through a tea towel into a bowl.  This can be kept in the refrigerator for 2-3 days.

Ingredients:

6 Chicken Tenders

1/2 Cup Flour

Salt & Pepper

1 Egg

1 Cup Coconut Milk

1/2 Cup Plain Bread Crumbs

1/2 Cup Shredded Unsweetened Coconut

2 Tsp Dried Basil, divided

4 Medium Red Potatoes

1-2 Heads Broccoli

EVOO

The Night Before:
Place the chicken, coconut milk and 1 teaspoon dried Basil in a zip top bag and place in a dish in case it leaks.  Turn the bag over in the morning.

The Day Of:
Preheat the oven to 375.  Cut up the potatoes and broccoli into bite sized pieces.  Put the potatoes on a foil lined baking sheet, drizzle with EVOO and season with salt and pepper.  Put it to one side to leave room for the broccoli.

Set up three plates for breading the chicken.  On the first plate, combine the flour with salt & pepper.  On the second plate, beat the egg with a splash of water.  On the third plate, combine the shredded coconut, bread crumbs and the remaining 1 teaspoon of dried basil.  Spray a glass baking dish with non-stick spray to put the coated chicken in.

Add the broccoli to the baking sheet with the potatoes now.  Drizzle with EVOO and season with Salt and Pepper.  

Now, back to the chicken.  Dredge the chicken in the flour, dip in the egg and coat with the coconut/bread crumb mixture.  Place in the baking dish.  Put them in the oven and bake for about 15 minutes or until they reach 155 degrees.  I always use a thermometer for meat.  It is so much easier than cutting it open to see it it's done.

The broccoli and potatoes are done when they are golden, brown and delicious.

Chicken Pesto Pasta

This is sort of a variation of another pesto pasta dish that I make.  Both are awesome in their own ways.  Pesto is one of those things that seem a lot fancier than it really is.  I had some homemade pesto in the freezer, so I won't be showing you how to make it today.  It was a Swiss Chard pesto sauce.

Ingredients:

2 Chicken Breasts

Green Beans (about 1/2lb)

1 lb Penne Rigate
1 Cup Pesto Sauce

EVOO

Salt & Freshly Ground Pepper

Goat's Milk Cheese (Optional)

Preheat the oven to 400 and bring a large pot of water to a boil.  Rinse your green beans...You know, they do grow outside in the dirt.

Chop of the ends and cut them into 2-3inch long pieces.  Scatter them on a foil lined cookie sheet and drizzle some olive oil and sprinkle with salt and pepper.  Stick them in the oven while you prepare everything else. 

Preheat a skillet to med-high heat with about 1 Tbsp olive oil in it.  Cut up the chicken into bite sized pieces.  Once the pan is hot, add the chicken and season with salt and pepper.  Now is the hard part...leave it alone, don't touch it!  Let it brown up for a few minutes.

The water should be boiling by now, so add a good amount of salt and the pasta.  Before the pasta is finished cooking add 1/4 cup of the starchy pasta water to the pesto sauce to thin it out a bit.  Cook pasta until al dente, drain and return to the pot.

Once it has browned a bit, give the pan a shake to flip them over.  Yep, we are going pro with shaking the pan and everything!  Cook a few more minutes until the chicken is cooked thoroughly.

The green beans should be done by now and they will look like this.

Add the chicken, green beans and pesto sauce to the pot with the cooked pasta.  Stir to combine.

Serve with some goat's milk cheese on top.  Yum.  This made enough for 4 good size servings.


Here is the Swiss Chard Pesto Recipe as requested:

1 Bunch Swiss Chard (I used the Bright Lights variety, but any will do), stems removed
1/4 Cup Walnuts, toasted in a pan over low heat
1/2 Cup Parmesan Cheese
Zest of 1 Lemon
1 Clove Garlic
Salt & Pepper, to taste
1/3 Cup EVOO (more or less)

In the bowl of a food processor, combine the Swiss Chard, Walnuts, Parmesan Cheese, Lemon zest, Garlic, and Salt & Pepper.  Turn on the food processor and stream in the EVOO until a thick sauce is formed.  Add more salt and pepper if needed.

Once you make your own pesto sauce, you can't go back to store bought!

Crumbly Crackers

On Tuesdays we always go to a friend's house for dinner and bible study.  We rotate between bringing the main dish, salad and desert.  This week was my turn for salad...hence the picture of a salad.  Those tomatoes came from my garden.  Yum Yum!  Today I also made some crackers, which was more exciting to write about than a salad.  I originally made these crackers for Chloe because she wouldn't eat the rice I made her.  Well, she really won't eat anything from a spoon for some reason...stubborn I'm guessing.  They ended up being really good and we eat them too.  A couple of my mommy friends have made them for their little ones too.

Ingredients:

1 Cup Brown Rice

1/2 Cup Barley

1/2 Cup Millet

1/2 Cup Oats

1/3 Cup Extra Virgin Olive Oil

1/2 Cup Water (more or less)

Optional seasons: Basil, Garlic Powder, Cinnamon, Salt

Combine the brown rice, barley, millet, and oats in a blender and grind to a fine powder.  Chloe was napping while I was making these, so I did the grinding in the garage since it is really loud.

Reserve about 1/8 Cup of the powder for rolling out the dough.  Mix in the oil then slowly add the water until a dough forms.  Add more water as needed until it isn't too crumbly.  It can be a little crumbly, but should be able to stay together when formed into a ball.  Add any seasonings you want now.  This time I split the dough in half and added 1 tsp cinnamon to one half and 1 tsp garlic powder to the other half.  Last time I added fresh basil and some garlic powder.  The first time I left them plain.

Roll out the dough and cut into squares, or rectangles, or whatever shape makes you happy.  A pizza cutter works well for this.

Bake them on a greased cookie sheet at 375 for 20 minutes.  Flip them over and bake an additional 5 minutes.

Golden. Brown. Delicious.

Corn Chowder

Oh, how I love Rachael Ray!  Here is my first (of many) blog posts with Rachael Ray recipes.  Bacon Corn Chowder.  Yum!  Robbie has been asking me to make this again for a long time now.  It just so happened that I had a ton of corn that needed to be used soon, and I couldn't think of a better dish to make with it.

Ingredients:

8 ears of corn, kernels removed (reserve 4 of the cobs)

1/2 cup celery leaves, chopped

2 cups water

1 cup chicken stock

1 tablespoon EVOO - Extra Virgin Olive Oil

1/2 pound (about 8 slices) bacon, coarsely chopped

3 medium Yukon gold or red potatoes, peeled and cut into 1 1/2-inch cubes

1 medium onion, chopped

2 cloves garlic, grated

3 stalks celery, chopped

1 small red bell pepper, seeded and finely chopped (about 1/4 cup)

2 small bay leaves

4 sprigs fresh thyme (or a good sprinkle of dried)

1 quart milk

1 teaspoon (or more) hot sauce (Frank's Red Hot is best)

3 scallions, sliced on the bias 

First, you will need to remove the corn kernels from the cobs.  Peel off the husks and silks.  Get a big bowl and a small cereal sized bowl.  Place the small bowl upside down in the big bowl.  Use a knife to cut the kernels off.  The big bowl will catch all the kernels so they don't make a mess all over the counter.  Brilliant!  (That's a tip I have learned from Rachael Ray)

Simmer the 4 naked cobs, celery leaves, water and stock in a large pot.  Keep it simmering until it's time to use it.

Crisp up the bacon (I used Turkey bacon) in a large pot over medium heat.  Set aside on paper towels on a plate.

Keep a couple tablespoons of the bacon drippings in the pot.  The turkey bacon didn't leave me with much, so I ended up adding a tablespoon of EVOO.  Turn the heat up to med-high and add the potatoes, onion, garlic, celery, bell pepper, bay leaves, and thyme.  Saute about 5 minutes to soften the veggies a bit.

Pour in the milk, corn broth (minus the cobs), and hot sauce.  We had to add more hot sauce while we were eating because it wasn't spicy enough for us.  Bring to a bubble, reduce heat and simmer for about 15 minutes until the potatoes are tender.

Garnish with the bacon and scallions.  I served it with a green salad as well.

The original recipe calls for crab meat, but I didn't add that in.  See the original recipe for how to add crab meat if you want it.

This was very good and Robbie was pleasantly surprised with it.  Chloe even liked it...she ate a potato chunk and a few of the onion pieces. 

Butternut Squash Risotto

We love butternut squash here!  It is delicious, easy to cook with, and can be used in a variety of ways.  Today I made risotto with it.  Risotto is awesome and actually quite easy to make.  If you haven't made risotto before, you are missing out.  We normally use short grain brown rice instead of the usual arborio rice.  Brown rice is healthier than white rice and has so much more flavor.  This time I used arborio just to mix things up a bit.  We decided that we like the brown rice better than the white.  Just be aware that using brown rice takes a lot longer to cook than the arborio.

Ingredients:
6 cups Chicken Broth (possibly another cup if using brown rice)
1/2 cup Unsalted Butter
1 Onion, chopped
Crushed Red Pepper, about an 1/8 tsp depending on how spicy you like it
1 Butternut Squash, about 1lb
2 Cups Arborio or Short Grain Brown Rice
1 Tsp Dried Sage (or 1 Tbsp Chopped Fresh Sage)
3/4 Cup Parmesan Cheese (Mozzarella works as well)

Simmer the chicken broth in a sauce pot.

Melt half of the butter in a large saute pan over medium-high heat and cook the onion until tender.  While the onion is cooking, prepare the butternut squash.  Peel the squash, cut it in half, scoop out the seeds (a grapefruit spoon works well for this), and chop it up.

 


To the onions, add crushed red pepper and the butternut squash.  Cook for 2-3 minutes and add the rice.  Toast the grains slightly.  This will take only a few minutes.

Once the grains are toasted, it's time to start adding the broth.  Turn down the heat to medium.  Add a ladle full of the simmering broth at a time, waiting until almost all the liquid is absorbed to add more.  Stir every time more liquid is added (you don't need to constantly stir though).  Make sure the pan doesn't get completely dry because the rice will burn quickly if there is no liquid.  Don't worry about using every drop of the broth, just use as mush as you need.  It will be done when the rice is tender and creamy.  It takes about 15 minutes for the arborio rice and 30-45 minutes for brown rice.  Turn off the heat and stir in the remaining butter, sage and cheese.  


Now you have no excuse to not make risotto.  So easy and so delicious! 

 Chloe had to have a spoon too while she was watching mommy stir.

Coconut Macaroons and Intro to Coconuts

Coconuts...the most dangerous fruit I've encountered.  I had three coconuts and no idea what to do with them or even how to get in them.  Off to search the internet to learn how to open them up.  I found a website that claims be the easy way to open a coconut.  Here is a link to that website so you can see the video:  How To Open A Coconut.  Seems simple, right??  Right, so beat it with a meat cleaver and there you have it!  We didn't have a meat cleaver and we didn't feel safe using any sharp object to whack it with, so Robbie found some thick piece of aluminum in the garage that worked well...he calls it the "Coconut Katana" now. 

This is a picture of me contemplating how I am possibly going to hit this hard enough to open it.  I wasn't quite strong enough to get it open, so Robbie had to open all three for me.  The third coconut opened beautifully.  Remember to catch your coconut water in a bowl!  

That actually was the easy part.  Then you have to break it into smaller pieces and somehow get the meat out.  It was hard work and very messy.  I will never open three coconuts at the same time ever again.

So finally we have (after an hour) opened three coconuts, collected the water, and separated the meat from the shell.  There were chunks of shell flying all over the kitchen.  Thankfully Chloe was napping and didn't get hit with any.  I felt like I should have been wearing protective goggles!  ...note to self:  get goggles for next time we crack open coconuts...

The next step is to shred the coconut and strain the water.  After I strained the water, I just stuck it in the fridge for later use.  For shredding the meat: the website that I referenced above says to use a cheese grater or a coconut scraper...whatever that is.  By this point we were a little tired of looking at coconut, so I stuck it in the food processor as per this website's instructions.  I had to process it in about 4 batches because of the mass quantity of coconut I had, but here is the final product.

Now to actually make something with all this coconut.  By the way, three good sized coconuts makes 10 cups of shredded meat and 3 cups of coconut water.  I made Coconut Macaroons with 3 cups of the meat and froze the rest for another day.  Here is the recipe for the Coconut Macaroons by the wonderful, the beautiful, the only Paula Deen.

Ingredients:

3 cups shredded coconut

1 teaspoon almond extract

1/8 teaspoon salt

2/3 cup sweetened condensed milk

2 egg whites, stiffly beaten

1 teaspoon cream of tartar

(Reference recipe link for directions)

No butter in this one...come on Paula!  I didn't have almond extract, so I put some vanilla in.  These were very simple to make, although mine looked nothing like they should have.  I wouldn't even call mine macaroons...maybe just cookies.  I think I did something wrong with the egg whites.  Maybe beat them too much or not enough?  The mixture was way to runny to stay in a nice ball, so they really flattened out in the oven.  They are still pretty and they still taste good, so I guess that counts for something.

There you have it!

Roast Chicken and Veg

Today I went for the simple, just throw it in the oven and forget about it type of dinner.  It wasn't anything fancy, but I did serve it on a China plate.  That seems to make anything just a little bit fancy.  This made enough for the 2 of us and Chloe had a tiny bit too.  The carrots and green beans were from our garden.  There were maybe 10 really tiny green beans that I pulled off the dying plants.  We had tons of really delicious greens beans which makes me want to plant a lot more green beans next time around. 

Ingredients:
2 Chicken breasts
1 potato (about 1/2lb)
1/2 lb of Carrots
Green Beans (I would have used about a 1/4 lb if I had more)
1 Red Bell Pepper
1/2 Onion, chopped
2 Corn on the Cob
Butter
Extra Virgin Olive Oil
Salt & Pepper
McCormick Roasted Garlic & Herb Seasoning

Preheat oven to 400.  Chop up the veggies into bite sized pieces and scatter on a cookie sheet.  Drizzle with olive oil and season with salt & pepper.  Peel the husks and silks off the corn.  Lay each corn cob on a square of foil and spread on some butter and salt & pepper.  Wrap up the corn in the foil and place on the cookie sheet with the other veggies.

Stick that in the oven while you get the chicken ready.  Rub down the chicken breasts with olive oil and season with the McCormick seasoning (or just salt & pepper).  Put the chicken breasts in a baking dish and place in the oven.  I never set a timer for roasting, I just check on it after about 20 minutes.  You will know it's done when the veggies are tender and the chicken reaches 155 degrees.

There it all is in the oven...just hanging out while I go play with Chloe.  And here is the final product plated on China.  Nothing fancy, but it was very tasty and filling.  So easy too!