Monday, February 16, 2009

Baked Chicken, Noodle Soup, Tsasiki sauce, and Radishes

Bisquick Baked Chicken:
Cheap chicken legs ($1 lb)
Bisquick
Paprika
S & P

Preheat oven to 425 degrees F.
Place a casserole dish (to which you've added a lump of butter) in the oven.
Mix the powders and roll the chicken legs in it.
Place the legs in the casserole dish.
Bake on one side for 20 minutes, turn over, bake another 15 minutes (until 180 temp. in thickest part of thigh).

Noodle Soup:
Background first: I actually had some fresh chicken stock ready that I had prepared from the carcass of a Rotisserie chicken. I filled up a pot, added the bones/skin/fat/juices along with a lump of onion and garlic (skin and all), celery tops, a few baby carrots, bay leaf, couple cloves, bouillon cubes, thyme, peppercorns... whatever herb or veggie that you have around can be added... After it's boiled for a while and coled, I strain it and store it in the fridge.

Today: boiled the broth, added a few slices of fresh ginger (to be thrown away later), and a few dollops of coconut fat that were left over from the other day (for extra zing), added salt for flavor, and broke in a couple packaged of Ramen noodles (I threw away the seasoning packet). It sounds like a lot of work, but really, if you make the broth while you're making dinner another day it doesn't take much extra work, and the kids LOVE it with Ramen noodles (and it's actually healthy for you). The coconut and ginger are optional -- I just added it cause I happened to have them lying around (from making a green chile Thai dish the other day which was DELISH!!! I used a few Tbsp of green chili paste along with coconut milk and fresh chicken broth to which I added shredded chicken which was left over from the Costco Rotisserie chicken). Note: the Costco Rotisserie chicken is tasty and you get a lot of meat from one chicken (which makes me wonder about the hormones they add to it so it will get so big, but...).

Radishes:
Thinly sliced radishes mixed with lime juice and salt... nice little side dish (which my kids will actually eat if I go easy on the lime).

Tsasiki sauce:
This doesn't really go with anything but I love it and wanted to try it out. I've made it before in the blender but it gets too soupy. I found a recipe that calls for grating the cucumber and DRAINING it. (I saved the juice, added a bit of lime and salt, and drank it straight! Yum! I think you could use it to make a good gin and tonic with the juice if you want a cool drink.) After it's drained for a while (mix it around to get as much juice out as possible), stir some plain yogurt into it, crushed garlic (I actually grated the garlic on a fine grater for zesting lemon or finely grated Parmesan cheese - it worked great!), lime juic, and salt. For a bit of extra decadence you can at sour cream or drizzle some olive oil into it (especially if your using nonfat yogurt). Season to taste with salt. I love it plain -- it was good dipping the chicken into it. I might marinate some chicken in the leftover sauce tomorrow to make another dish (with an Indian flavor to it).

1 comment:

  1. I love that you're doing this -- I bake all the time, but I'm frequently stumped for dinner ideas. Or I just make the same things over and over, which gets boring eventually.

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