greg cooks

nourishing the body

chicken

Just Grains and Legumes

Ok, maybe not just grains and legumes, but mostly. I like healthy grains and legumes and I often cook up a big batch of mixed things. I like to make a lot and use it for a long time. They stay good in the fridge for a week or so and I package them up into smaller ziploc bags and freeze them. That way I can just pull out some grains to use during the next few days for salads or in other dishes. Whole grains and legumes are fantastic for their healthy complex carbohydrates and they taste so good. I was so happy to see Susan announce a Legume Love Affair event over at The Well Seasoned Cook. I’ll try to use these in a number of different recipes.

On Sunday I made a big batch to use for the next few weeks. I started with the legumes. Shown below from left to right are: black eyed peas, black beans, mung beans, soy beans and adzuki beans. It’s what I had in the cupboard.

Let’s talk legumes. Whenever I am browsing my local health food store or my favorite Asian market I always look to see what kind of cool interesting grains they have in stock. Here are six that I used in this batch. From left to right: whole wheat berries, kamut, quinoa, spelt, coarse bulgar wheat, and Thai brown rice.

I used simple proportions for this – 1/2 cup of each of the 11 items show above. Here is a closeup picture of the legumes all mixed together.

These whole grains from the top left going clockwise are wheat berries, kamut and spelt on the bottom. These will be soaked with the legumes for about 5 hours prior to cooking.

This grain plate contains quinoa on the upper left, bulgar on the upper right and the Thai brown rice on the bottom. These will not be pre-soaked as they cook just fine directly from their dried state.

This picture shows the legumes and the whole grains soaking. These were rinsed well several times first.

I cooked everything together in my rice cooker set on the brown rice setting. I didn’t measure the amount of water I added but simply added enough to have about an inch above the top of the grains and legumes. Here they are all cooked.

For Sunday dinner the grains were served simply as a side dish along with some roasted chicken, steamed broccoli and carrots, and caramelized onion and crimini mushrooms. Dinner was served with a wonderful white burgundy wine.

Chicken

Dinner last night was GOOD. My wife stewed some chicken leg quarters in the crock pot until the meat was falling off the bone. To the pot I think she added some carrots, celery, onions, bay leaf and thyme along with a bit of chicken stock. Again with the low fat, good healthy complex carb theme I steamed some brussel sprouts without any oil. I ‘baked’ a sweet potato in the microwave. Just 5 minutes and it was tender and steaming. Again, I didn’t use any fat to cook it. I can’t say much for the presentation, but the flavor was excellent. What really put this over the top was the little bit of sauce that was spooned over all of this. I made the sauce from the stew pot juices. I strained off all the spent vegetables and separated as much of the chicken fat from the juice that I could. This left me with about 3 cups flavorful chicken stewing broth. I put this in a pan and reduced it down almost to nothing! I was left with about 3/4 of a cup of wonderful, delicious chicken demiglas. I’ve never made a demiglas from poultry before. I was very very pleased with the result. Just a little bit added huge flavor to the plate.

Chicken and Broccoli

I came home from work last night and wanted to make something that fit my three requirements: 1) easy to throw together, 2) healthy and low carb, and 3) delicious. This is what I came up with. I makde a chicken and broccoli stir fry and served it on a bed of spaghetti squash. It turned out really nice.

I love spaghetti squash. It is healthy and delicious and it has such an interesting texture. I use it fairly often when I want to lower the carbs in a dish where I would normally have rice or pasta. Of course it isn’t the same but it still tastes great. I had a small sized squash here. The question was how to cook it quickly. I usually bake it in a hot oven for 45 min to an hour to get it soft and tasty. I didn’t want to wait that long so I looked to my microwave. I sliced the squash in half lenghthwise and removed the seeds. Then I placed the halves back together and tied it with some butcher’s twine. This I placed in the microwave and cooked it on high for 10 minutes. It was cooked to a perfect texture. Although you don’t get the caramelization that you would in the oven, it still performed well. I left it to rest while I prepared the rest of the dish.

I pre-steamed the broccoli for just a few minutes. Just until it was slightly cooked but still a bit crunchy. It would cook more in the stir fry. I cubed the chicken and seasoned it. I also added red onion, garlic and ginger. The onions, garlic, ginger and chicken were stir fried in my wok until the chicken was done. I added liberal doses of soy sauce, sesame oil and mirin. I tossed in the broccoli and covered it to cook through for a few minutes. I then added some corn starch slurry to thicken up the sauce a little bit.

This was so good I’m having the leftovers for breakfast this morning!

To brine or not to brine

That is the question. Well, frankly, I prefer brining my poultry as it makes for a juicier and tastier bird. Here is a simple everyday chicken soaking in a mixture of sugar, salt and spices. For this three pound bird I let it brine for about 3 hours. A very good rinse in lots of fresh water and it was patted down with towels to dry it off. I rubbed the skin with a bit of butter and sprinkled it with salt and pepper. The bird was placed on top of a bed of carrots onions and celery in my favorite Revol chicken roaster. I set the oven to 450F to roast this at a high temperature. Once the internal temperature reached 170F I took it out, covered it with foil and let it rest for about 20 minutes.

This day I also spent a few hours cleaning out my pantry. I have lots of different kinds of dried beans and grains on hand so I thought I would make a medley of healthy grains to serve with the chicken. There’s kamut and red beans and mung beans and bulgar wheat and wheat berries and spelt and thai brown rice and yellow somethings and black eyed peas and black beans and lots of other things I had. These were soaked for a few hours before being thrown into my rice cooker and cooked on the “brown rice” setting.