Tandoori Chicken Sandwiches

I cooked meat this week for the first time in months.  Since I'm training for a half marathon, I need all the carbs and protein I can get.  Brandon and I made tandoori style chicken burgers with a recipe from Martha Stewart.  Do you think Martha actually writes her own recipes anymore?  

To start off, we marinated chopped chicken breast in lemon juice with a combination of aromatic spices: scallions, ginger, paprika, cumin, cardamom, cayenne, salt, and pepper for about half an hour. 

Next, we made the patties.  Have you ever wondered how chicken nuggets get their texture?  Here's the process.  We put the marinated chicken in my magic bullet (the recipe recommended a food processor) until the chicken was aproximately the texture of ground beef.  With this texture, the cooked chicken patties had a burger-like texture.  If you continue pureeing the mixture until smooth, you will end up with a chicken nugget-like texture. 

Then form the chicken into patties.  I made small patties, about 2 inches across, so that I could fit multiple into a pita.  You could also make larger patties for a burger-style sandwich. In this picture you can see the different textures of the patties, some more burger-like and some more chicken nugget-like.

We cooked the patties in a hot skillet with a little oil, flipping them after a few minutes.

Brandon was skeptical of the patties, so he reserved some chicken chunks before they went into the bullet. He cooked them in the oven, under a hot broiler. Here are the pieces.

I ate the patties with cucumbers and a cumin yogurt sauce inside whole wheat pitas. The patties were nice and flavorful, reminiscent of chicken tikka. In the sandwich, the yogurt sauce was a cooling partner to the spicy chicken and the cucumber added a nice crunch.  It was a great combination. 

Indian Feast

Last weekend my boyfriend Brandon and I cooked ourselves a feast of Indian food. We were both really hungry while we cooked, so there are no pictures of the process, just two pictures of the final product. In the one below you can see the four dishes that we made:

• Naan (we didn't really make this, but heated it up in the oven)
• Chicken Tikka (marinated overnight in a variety of spices and yogurt and then broiled)
• Curried Chickpeas (the spice mixture was from a kit and was way too salty)
• Daal (from the Skinny Bitch cookbook)

 

Overall, this meal was very fun to make.  The daal and naan turned out the best in my opinion.  Brandon liked the chicken tikka and naan the best.  I thought that the chicken tikka was a little mild.  We'll have to up the spices next time--and find out how to make it red!

Valentine's Day

Everyone loves to go out to eat on holidays, which is great.  But restaurants jack up the prices and rush you through dinner to get in as many customers as possible.  Real romantic.  My boyfriend Brandon and I started a tradition of cooking Valentine's Day dinner for each other.  Last year we made tenderloin medallions in a Cabernet reduction with mashed potatoes and asparagus.  It was so good that we decided to make it again this year.

Step one: Smother the meat with olive oil and then coat with a simple spice combination of garlic, salt, and pepper.

 

Step two: Sear the steaks on the stove in a hot skillet.  Only cook for a minute per side. Searing seals in the moisture so that the meat does not dry out in the next phase of cooking.

Step three: Add a little beef broth and a sprig of rosemary to the pan. Place the entire skillet (make sure it is oven-proof and will fit first) into a nice hot oven, preheated to 500 degrees.  Cook the steaks until they are one step below your preferred level of doneness.  For example, if you like your steak medium-rare like I do, cook it in the oven until it is rare.

Step four: Take the skillet out of the oven.  Remove the steaks and cover them in foil while you make the reduction.  The trick is to make the reduction in the same pan as the steak cooked in.  This allows all of the flavor from the "bits" and grease in the pan to come through in the sauce.  To create the reduction, add chopped shallot and more beef broth to the pan.  Once the shallot is tender, add Cabernet, or your choice of red wine, to the pan and bring it to a boil.  Boil the sauce until the liquid is reduced by half. 

Step five: Once you have acquired your desired reduction consistency, add some butter to it.  Then, add the steak back in very briefly to finish cooking. 

 

Step six: Plate your steak and pour the sauce over top.  Enjoy....I promise you will.