Easy Fast Chicken Lettuce Wraps

This post has been a long time coming. Months ago, Cooking Light did a great issue on different ways of cooking chicken. One of them intrigued me; They talked about grinding skinless, boneless chicken breasts with strong spices or sauces in the food processor to make your own flavored ground chicken. To be honest, I was a little grossed out when I thought about grinding raw chicken, but I can tell you that it was totally worth it.  After it was cooked and I had my first sample, this turned into a 'Best Decision Ever' moment. It's my new favorite way of making lettuce wraps.

Red Curry Chicken Lettuce Wraps

3 Chicken Breasts

3-4 Tbsp of Red Curry Paste

1 tsp of salt

3 Small Cucumbers (English or Gourmet Minis), chopped

3 Green Onions, chopped

1-2 Tbsp Cilantro chopped

Butter or Boston Lettuce leaves

Sirracha Sauce

1. Put chicken breasts, red curry paste and salt in food processor. Pulse until ground. It probably looks gross now. Trust me, it will look much better after the next step.
2. Spray some olive oil in a frying pan on medium high heat. Add chicken to pan and fry until it is cooked through.
3. Add cucumbers and onions. Cook 2-3 minutes. Add cilantro. 
4. Spoon chicken mixture into lettuce leave. Top with Sirracha (if you dare). Note: It's also good with greek yogurt if the spice is too much for you. 

The Obsession Continues

Bread- 2.
Badger Girl- 1.

The Bread took this round.

So I was supposed to shape the dough into a tight ball (see above) but the dough was not cooperating (see below). 

This just about drove me nuts. The cookbook told me I needed to have iron hands with kid gloves. Really. How about a sledge hammer? Would that help? 

I don't have problems getting the dough to rise as seen above. It darn near rose off the pan. Again. 

Also, in the picture in the cookbook, there is this neat, art-y cross in the breads. You can almost imagine a portly baker dressed all in white when you see the crosses on the bread. Mine looked like I took a machete to it. 

My guest ate some of the bread toasted this morning and said it was good. I am still too mad. I had some after it came out of the oven and pronounced it a disaster. Manatee disagrees and has convinced me he likes it. When I stop pouting, I will probably try toasting it.

I am going to take a break from these sponge breads and return to some more basic recipes, things at which I have previously succeeded and enjoyed doing. This weekend we are having some of Manatee's family over for make your own pizza so I will be making the crusts the next few days. Hopefully I can rebuild my baking confidence. 

Thai Spring Roll Cups

This recipe came about from my love (and overdose) of Thai Spring Rolls and from having the Food Network on when I was organizing my closet (which was an all day event therefore lots of cooking shows).

Exhibit A: For our dinner party a few weeks ago, I got it into my head to make Thai Spring Rolls. Essentially basil, broccoli slaw, chicken, rice noodles, and hoisin sauce all wrapped up in rice paper. We had them for the party and then in an effort to use up leftovers, I continued making spring rolls, all week. Now I can't look at rice paper.

Exhibit B: Giada at Home. 

From Giada, I took the idea of the wonton wrappers. I brushed on Canola oil and then placed the wonton wrappers in a mini muffin pan. I baked them at 375 for 7 minutes, let them cool in the pan for 5 and then took them out to cool. Those would be the 'rice paper' of the spring rolls.

The main filling was chicken breasts ground in a food processor with hoisin sauce and Thai Chili Garlic Sauce. The ratio was approx. 3 breasts to 3/4 bottle of hoisin sauce to 1 Tbsp of Chili Garlic Sauce. As a warning, the ground chicken looked nasty. So nasty that I fried it up before my guest arrived because I wasn't sure if she would have wanted to see it if she saw it raw.

In each wonton, I put:

• 1/2 leaf of fresh basil
• a few rice noodles
• ground chicken
• dab of Sirracha 
• broccoli slaw

The leftover meat we used for lettuce wraps which were amazing! We put some meat with a little hoisin, Sirracha and some broccoli slaw. Yum. 

Birthday Cake

Biggest lesson learned from making my own birthday cake: A common tip when you are frosting a double layer cake: "Place squares of wax paper under the cake when you are frosting. When you are finished, pull out the wax paper and there will be no frosting on the cake stand."
This is either a vicious lie or just another demonstration of my lack of coordination skills. I pulled out the wax paper and the cake almost came off with it. Then I was trying to pull the paper out while keeping the cake on the stand so there was frosting everywhere. Luckily I had extra frosting and some time before my guest arrived to clean up the stand. If anyone has any suggestions on how to get this tip to work: send them my way. I'm planning another cake for my nieces this weekend.

It's my birthday and I will bake if I want to...

Yes, it really is my birthday and this is the first time in a long time that I have had off on my birthday. Manatee and I went back and forth on whether to go out to eat or not, then I decided I wanted to make dinner for us and a very close childhood friend. This was for two reasons. One, and the more practical of the two, I have had a 'twitchy gut' as one of my friends calls it which is generally more twitchy after eating out. Some of it has to do with hidden fats and oils, some with bad luck, some with poor choices on my part. Secondly, I feel a lot of pressure on my birthday to do things, that I somehow need to live up to the day. In California, I had no plans one year so I booked a manicure, pedicure and massage. The massage released some kind of a emotional floodgate and I was left sobbing for an hour afterwards for no apparent reason. Lesson learned.

Since I like baking and cooking, I thought why not spend the day doing that and then have a nice, healthy, home cooked meal to share with the people I love. It was a bit of no-brainer. At first, I wanted to pull out all the stops and have some super fancy dishes I have never made before. That thought didn't last too long. I am going to some oldies but goodies with only exception being the appetizer which I am making up based on a couple of different recipes/ideas.

Shredded Carrot Salad (Around my French table)
Thai Spring Roll Cups
Chicken Pad See Ew (Ultimate cookbook with my own variations)
Double Layer Carrot Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting (An amazing Weight Watchers recipe so I can have it for breakfast the next day and not feel bad about it)

Notice the recurrence of carrots? This brings me to my next point. I hated, hated, HATED carrots as a kid. I thought they were the most repulsive thing ever. Too sweet to be a vegetable, not juicy enough to be fruit. It always amazes me how our tastes evolve throughout time. This is one of the reasons I keep my cooking magazines. Though I generally pull out recipes that appeal to me, I know that in three years, next year or even next month, I may have a new taste or developed a new liking to a food. I also try to keep trying foods even if I didn't like them before.

As a now older woman, that is my sage advice. You never know what you may start liking.

Tedious Prep, Quick Dinner

I'm on a mini vacation for two weeks as I transition jobs and decided to use some of the time to tackle some recipes that may be difficult during the week. Today's challenge: Parsley Stuffed Shrimp and Green Beans with Balsamic Pesto.

So, when I read the recipe for the stuffed shrimp, it was a no-brainer must-do in my book. I love shrimp, I love parsley and I love homemade bread crumbs. Sold! We used the remainder of our Jesus bread (see previous post), so named because the more we took from it, the more there seemed to be, and I had pots of fresh parsley. I prepared the bread crumbs and parsley and then came the stuffing of the shrimp. This is when I realized why you don't see this dish on restaurant menus. Shrimp are not very big creatures. Stuffing them = trials of patience. It took about 15 minutes and me becoming very intimate with the shrimp, but I got 'er done and threw them in the fridge.

Next up the pesto: this was the easiest pesto recipe ever.

Pesto


1 clove of garlic
3-4 Tbsp of Olive Oil
1 1/3 cup of tightly packed fresh basil
3/4 cup of grated Parmesan cheese


1. Put garlic and olive oil in food processor. Pulse until smooth.
2. Add basil and cheese. Pulse until basil is chopped but not fully processed (aka a liquid).
3. Put in covered container at room temperature until ready to serve.


I then left to meet Manatee at the bike store to finish outfitting my bike for my new bike commute. Exciting!

We got home and we were both rather ravenous, so I turned on the broiler. The shrimp took 4 minutes. I steamed green beans which also took 4 minutes. Then all I had to do was toss the green beans with the pesto and 4-5 Tbsp balsamic vinegar (mixed with 1/2 tsp brown sugar), then serve.

Bread versus Badger Girl?

It's a tie.

After wrestling with the dough, it did come out looking (and tasting) like bread. It's just a monster loaf and I was actually worried it was going to rise right off my baking stone.

So here is how I enjoyed my first bread with a sponge...

Dieter's Tartine from Around My French Table. An open faced sandwich with cottage cheese and sour cream, tomatoes, cucumbers and fresh herbs drizzled with olive oil. Yummmmmm....