Coconut Chicken Strips with Orange-Endive Salad

I have a terrible tendency to mess with recipes - it's a meddlesome quality that sometimes results in a good twist and sometimes....I learn why the recipe said to do such-and-such. 

With this chicken dish, we learned that there is such a thing as taking it too easy on the oil!  Lucky for us, the results were edible, just not golden.  You'll see what I mean in the photo below.

We started with some buttermilk - soaked the chicken strips (about 1 lb of chicken breasts, cut into thin strips) for about 30 minutes, then dredged them in a mix of 1 cup panko, 1 cup shredded coconut (unsweetened!) and 1 tsp of chili powder.

Now, we've already made some modifications to the original recipe I was inspired by, but here's where I went wrong: I didn't use enough oil in the pan.  The recipe said 3 TB of oil.  I thought I could get by with a large non-stick pan and some canola oil spray.   As the chicken strips cooked, the outer edges of the coconut got very cooked, nearly burning, but the panko crumbs didn't brown at all.  In an effort to lighten the dish, we ended up with some visually unappealing chicken.  When we used a little oil, they looked great.

For the next batch, I used 3 TB of oil in the pan and amazingly enough, they browned.  There are times when I get too impatient and try to cut corners.  Then there are times when I learn the hard way why certain formulas appear over and over in our cookbooks.  Putting some oil in the pan seems like a pretty basic one, hum?

At any rate, we served the chicken strips with some carrots (microwaved and seasoned with a little salt and pepper) and an orange-endive salad.  The endive was just chopped, raw, and tossed with lettuce and segments of a blood orange.  The dressing was a store-bought vinagrette and the contrast between the slightly sweet chicken and the tangy, citrus of the salad was excellent.

The kids love dredging and coating things for the stove top, and I love an experiment, so it was a successful dinner all in all.

Chicken with Coconut Curry

This dish turned out to be a very simple one-pot dinner that required very little effort on our part.  The hardest part was peeling and chopping two carrots and cleaning and chopping some mushrooms.  Once that was done, we were pretty much on mix-and-cook mode.

Veggies prepped, we heated a couple of tablespoons of olive oil, browned four chicken thighs for about 6 minutes each side and poured off some of the oil (you can use a baster to just suck it out if you have a high-temperature baster, or you can just tip the pan over a jar, catching most of the oil - we didn't even remove the chicken!).  We added the veggies directly in with the chicken, tossed briefly then added a can of light coconut milk, a cup of chicken stock, two crushed cloves of garlic and two tablespoons of red curry paste.

I like the flavor of curry but didn't want this dish to be overpowering.  You could add more curry paste if that's to your family's liking.  We also tossed in a couple of stalks of chopped celery, but you could add water chestnuts or another veggies (chopped bell pepper or onion, for instance) depending on what you have on hand.

Once the liquids came to a boil, I turned the heat down to a simmer and let it cook about 25 minutes, until the chicken was tender and cooked through.



We served ours with a prepared mix of wild and brown rice (Uncle Ben's microwave mixes are really handy on a weeknight;although I find them to be a little too salty for everyday use, they are convenient).

This dish was everything you want in a homemade weeknight dinner.  Minimal prep, not too much time at the stove, and it cooks just long enough to set the table, wash up and oversee a few worksheets of fractions and spelling words.

Based on this first foray into homemade curry, I think we'll be coming back down this path!

Chicken with Coconut Curry
4 chicken thighs
1 (14 oz) can of light coconut milk
1 cup chicken broth
two large carrots, peeled and chopped into 1/2 inch pieces
8-10 mushrooms, cleaned and quartered (stems can be removed or left on)
2 stalks celery, optional, chopped into 1/2 inch pieces
2 cloves garlic, crushed
2 TB (or more to taste) red curry paste
Cooked rice or noodles, for serving.

Brown the thighs in 2 TB hot oil about 4-6 minutes each side.  Add chopped vegetables and garlic, toss for about 1 minute, until garlic is fragrant.  Add broth and coconut milk (shake the can well before opening).  Bring to a boil then reduce heat to simmer the chicken for about 25 minutes.

Serve over rice or noodles.