Cooking Crusade

I love throwing together easy, simple ingredients to make a delicious dinner for myself and my fiance.

On this particular night, I wanted to make something Moroccan spiced to go with my new cous cous craze and this is kind of what I came up with and Mike and I were pretty pleased with the results. Definitely going to keep this one around for time to come! I love throwing things in the oven and then coming back later and dinner is pretty much done. It also gives you an opportunity to clean up all of the mess that you created (which I tend to do quite a lot) in the process.

Ok! Lets get started.

Ingredients: Serves 2.
4 chicken thighs (this makes a big dinner! if you are a girl, like me, you may just want 1 chicken thigh for yourself. keep the remaining in the fridge to slice for a sanger. brill!)
2 teaspoons of moroccan spice
1 teaspoon of garlic powder (optional)
1/2 a cup of plain flour
some olive oil.

Line a baking tray with some baking paper and preheat the oven to about 180 deg C. In a small bowl, blend together flour and spices.

Rub your chicken thighs with about a teaspoon of oil or less per thigh.

Dip each thigh into flour/spice mixture until thoroughly coated and place on baking tray.

Repeat until all chicken is coated.

Chicken after abou 1 hour – golden brown.

Bake in a hot oven for about 1 hour, or until golden and crispy. Occasionally turn then about every 20-30 minutes to evenly brown them.

You could take them out at 1 hour and they would be fine, but if you have some extra time, 1.5 hours turns the thigh meat into a dark golden, lovely colour and the meat literally falls apart.

Chicken after 1.5 hours – dark golden brown and.. amazing.

Serve with cous cous and steamed greens and most of all.. Enjoy!

xx

Christine

I’ve learnt a new trick of cooking chicken with less fat than stir frying but still packs a lot of flavour and punch to any dish you want to add chicken to.

This seems so easy, it’s almost like a kitchen-cheat code.

It’s super simple.

1) Rub chicken thighs with sesame oil and salt (and pepper if you wish, but just salt is pretty good.)
2) Bake in a hot oven (180-200 C) in a lined tray for about 20-30 minutes or until golden brown/juices run clear.
3) Cool. Slice. Add to your fave chicken dishes.
And that’s it! Easy peasy. So delish, full of juicy flavour and low fat! Okay, I digress, chicken thighs are not low fat, but I’ve tried this trick with chicken breast with equally great results. (One time I even stuffed it with minced garlic, that was really awesome.)

You could use a different, milder flavored oil, since sesame is quite an intense flavour that can often overpower other dishes (especially depending on what you’re planning on adding it to), but I looooove sesame oil and that special oomph it gives to this.

Some things this goes great with:

Diced, thrown into pasta sauce (that’s what these babies went into.)
With stir fried vegies and oyster sauce and rice
Thinly sliced into a sandwich
Sliced as a pizza topping
For a chicken salad (salad leaves, diced chicken + salad dressing)
OR, just plain as it is, with a couple of side dishes/salad. Just awesome.

Try making your own variations! Give this one a go!

I got the inspiration for this one from Anh’s food blog, specifically her recipe for roast hoisin chicken and I came up with this chicken cashew nut salad.

I made a chicken marinade using hoisin sauce, grated ginger, sugar, some maple syrup and some soy sauce. I used about 1/2 jar of hoisin sauce, a couple tablespoons of soy, about 2-3 tablespoons of brown sugar, a good sized heaped teaspoon of grated ginger and a dollop of maple syrup. I poured everything into a lee kum kee hoisin sauce jar I had leftover and shook the whole mix up, ensuring the sugar would incorporate with the mixture. After shaking it for about a minute, I marinated chicken thighs in several tablespoons of it (so they were thoroughly coated) in a glass bowl for about an hour, then roasted them in a shallow dish for about 1 hour at about 170 degrees in a hot oven until they were a lovely dark golden colour and cooked through. Keep the rest of your marinade in the fridge for next time!

I allowed the cooked chicken to rest for about ten minutes, then I sliced the meat into strips and placed them on top of a green salad (I used a simple Coles bag o’ salad, but you could just use a mixture of rocket, spinach and whatever else you fancy. I also added one chopped up cucumber.) Dress the salad with a simple mixture of balsamic and honey and sprinkle with cashew nuts. Serve. Yum-yum! Low-carb, high protein

Give this one a try!

xoxo
Christine