Chicken Adobo

Good morning! Happy Friday everyone!! 🙂 It is a beautiful morning here in Washington! Look at this happy little cloud that popped up in the sky this morning.

I hope everyone had a happy and safe Fourth of July! Our holiday was very peaceful and relaxed. We spent the afternoon with family and had a barbecue! The Fourth landing on a Wednesday kind of made it difficult to do anything über exciting since we wake up bright and early {3:30am} every morning!

Yup. Yesterday was a rough one… we live in the city and there is a casino nearby as well as a reservation, needless to say fireworks go off all night and our dog is not okay with it! We got hardly any sleep on the night of the fourth. Yet – I still drug my buns to the gym! In all my tired glory. Whoop!

This week I bring to you another quick and simple dinner recipe, and a favorite around the Santie household! Chicken Adobo! My husband and I are often on often ends of the food spectrum, he prefers Asian cuisine and I could eat Mexican anytime of the day or week. This dish however is one we both agree on hands down! It is a healthy recipe, but make sure that you are drinking plenty of water throughout the day to counteract the sodium in the recipe. Even with low-sodium soy sauce, there is still a decent amount of sodium.

A cool thing that I found out – you can ‘adobo’ anything! According to a fellow blogger {Happy Jack Eats}: Adobo refers to the process of simmering in soy sauce, vinegar, and garlic. Anything can be adobo-ed, including pork, ribs, and even veggies. I have only ever had chicken adobo but I must say this dish is delish! If you read upon adobo, they say for it to be ‘authentic’ you should use bone in pieces, however, we have become huge fans of boneless thighs because they are so much easier to eat. You could also use breast pieces, but understand it will not be nearly as tender or fall apart delicious! This is one dish to splurge on, and use dark meat.

Don’t let the picture deter you… Sometimes I get in such a hurry to eat that I don’t take the time to check whether the picture quality was good. :-X Whoops. 😉

Without further ado…

Chicken Adobo

Ingredients:

• 2-3 lbs of chicken {bone-in or boneless thighs are best!}
• 1/2 cup rice vinegar
• 4 T reduced sodium soy sauce
• 1/2 tsp peppercorns {we prefer fresh crushed pepper}
• 2 bay leaves
• 3 cloves of garlic

Directions:

1. Heat a large skillet or dutch oven on medium heat.
2. Combine the vinegar, soy sauce, peppercorns, and garlic in a bowl.
3. Place chicken in pot. Pour sauce over top, and add bay leaves to the pot.
4. Reduce heat to medium low, place lid on pot and allow to simmer for 20-30 minutes or until cooked through. During cooking, flip chicken occasionally to make sure all sides are coated in the sauce.
5. Serve with brown rice and green beans or peas. This dish is really good with the adobo sauce over top of the rice.

Source & Recipe: Adapted from many online sources, including Manna and Quail and Happy Jack Eats.

Ahhh, so simple, and yet SO, SO, SO tasty! I love the tangyness of the vinegar, the richness from the soy sauce and of course, the garlic! Delish! If you try it, be sure to let me know if you love it, like it or hate it! I’m curious to get a consensus!

Question/Answer Time:

Q: What fabulous weekend plans do you have planned?  {Leave me a comment about your favorite weekend things!}

A: We are finally getting some gorgeous weather around the Seattle area, so I think the hubby and I might try to go for a hike or head out fishing. And since I have the day off I think I might go for a walk by water!

46/52: 3 Bean and Turkey Soup

Brr! The weather has quickly turned frigid this week. We are definitely approaching winter up here in the Pacific Northwest! In my house, freezing cold weather calls for a nice big pot of soup. My husband works outside, so he certainly welcomes a hot bowl of soup without complaint during the week, or really any time. I came up with this soup this week and it was full of flavor and protein, and best of all is über healthy. Tons of veggies and good for you stuff. My only complaint was I accidentally added too much pasta and it soaked up all of my broth. I added an additional 4 cups of broth but it was still way too thick. The recipe below is adapted to remedy this! So, serve this up with a crispy, gooey grilled cheese and this is a definite comfort meal for a chilly evening! 🙂

Hopefully everyone is gearing up for a wonderful Thanksgiving… I know we are. We are so excited for this year. We’ve decided to start a new tradition in our home. We are going to have 2 Thanksgiving dinners! We have family dinners on Thanksgiving day and we don’t want to forgo those for anything. We love spending time with our family. But we also want a chance to try out recipes and have our own little dinner. Solution? Black Friday Thanksgiving! 🙂 Eee. I am excited. Now I have quite a menu to plan — what desserts I’m bringing to our family dinner, and then an entire menu for our own dinner. Do you have any suggestions on cooking the perfect turkey? I have never made one! Any advice would be much appreciated.

3 Bean and Turkey Soup

Ingredients:

2 TB EVOO
1 small onion, diced
2 large carrots, shredded
2 stalks of celery, diced
4 cloves garlic, minced
1 red pepper, chopped
3 TB of tomato paste
1 can of petite diced tomatoes
salt and pepper
1-2 tsp garlic powder
2 tsp oregano
2 tsp parsley
1 pound of ground turkey or sausage
1 can white kidney {canelli} beans, rinsed
1 can light red kidney beans, rinsed
1 can dark red kidney beans, rinsed
4-6 cups of chicken broth (or use a vegetable broth) I like to use a hearty stock when I can
1 C of ditallini pasta, or another small pasta
1 C of broken spaghetti
freshly grated Parmesan for garnish

Directions:

1. In large pot or dutch oven, heat 2 TB oil over medium heat. Add onions, and saute for a few minutes, then add garlic and saute a minute more. Add remaining vegetables and tomato paste. Saute until tender.
2. Meanwhile, in a skillet, brown turkey meat and season with salt and pepper.
3. Add browned turkey to dutch oven, stir to combine. Add garlic, oregano and parsley.
4. Add rinsed beans to dutch oven, stir to combine.
5. Add broth and bring to a boil. Add pasta and simmer until pasta is tender.

Bon Apetite!

42/52: Braised Short Rib, Stout and Potato Potpies

Quite possibly my favorite thing about fall is comfort food. I love slow cooking a meal all day, and then digging in all cozied up inside when it’s chilly outside! This meal encompasses all that and more! It really reminds me of my trip to London. My favorite pub meal was steak & ale pie… ohhhh man. What I wouldn’t give for a steak & ale pie from The Eagle and Child in Oxford, England again! {If my laptop hadn’t crashed I would show you a lovely picture of said delicious steak & ale pie!} It was this neat little pub our professor told us about. It is only a few blocks from Oxford University. It is acclaimed for housing famous literary geniuses such as J.R.R. Tolkein and C.S. Lewis… such a fun little place! Anyway… this recipe is delicious and definitely a keeper for the winter.

**Quick substitution note… the recipe calls for boneless short ribs. We couldn’t find any nearby so we opted for stew meat which worked wonderfully. The key is having a cut of meat with some marbelization, you need the fat to make this recipe everything it is! We also couldn’t find cipollini onions, so we substituted shallots. Also — the recipe calls for 6 medium potatoes. I would hesitate slicing all of these until you need them. The amount you need will depend on the serving dishes you use.

Yumm! Serve with peas and dinner rolls for a yummy english inspired dinner!

Braised Short Rib, Stout and Potato Potpies

Ingredients:

For the filling:

4 lbs boneless short ribs, cut into 2-inch pieces
Course salt and freshly ground pepper
1/3 cup all-purpose flour
3 T safflower oil
1 medium yellow onion, halved and thinly sliced
5 garlic gloves, thinly sliced
2 bottles {2 ounces} stout, preferably Guinness {3 cups}
2 rosemary sprigs
1 lb cipollini onions, peeled

For the topping:

6 medium russet potatoes {3 1/2 lbs}
Extra-virgin olive oil, for brushing
Course salt and freshly ground pepper

Directions:

1. Make the filling: Preheat oven to 300 degrees. Season short ribs with salt and pepper. Dredge the short ribs in flour, coating all sides. Transfer to a large plate. Heat oil in a large dutch oven in batches, brown short ribs, about 1 minute per side. Transfer to a large plate using kitchen tongs.

2. Reduce heat to medium. Add yellow onion to dutch oven and cook until golden, about 8 minutes. Add garlic. Cook for 2 minutes. Return meat to dutch oven. Add stout and rosemary. Bring to a simmer. Cover and transfer to oven. Bake for 2 1/2 hours.

3. Remove dutch oven from oven and add cipollini onions. Braise until meat is tender and onions are cooked through, about 30 minutes. Shred meat using 2 forks. Season with salt and pepper. Divide filling among eight mini {1 cup} pie plates, or transfer to a 12 inch {8 cup} gratin dish.

4. Make the topping: Raise the oven temperature to 375 degrees. Peel potatoes, and very thinly slice each {preferably on a mandolin}. Arrange potatoes over meat to form tight concentric circles, working around the edge and overlapping each potato by three-quarters. Brush with oil and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Bake until topping is golden and filling is bubbling, about 45 minutes for mini potpies {1 hour for large potpie}.

Source & Recipe: Martha Stewart Living – October 2011 Issue

I also made some yummy dinner rolls to go with the potpies. I absolutely love dinner rolls and feel that there are some meals that are incomplete without them! Since I was running short on time when I decided to make them, I opted to go for my fall back recipe — the Kitchenaid Sixty-Minute rolls! Yes. They really only take 60 minutes from the time you combine ingredients until they’re coming out of the oven. Including rise time! Love, love, love this recipe.

Kitchenaid Sixty-Minute Rolls

Ingredients:

4-5 cups flour
3 T sugar
1 tsp salt
2 – 1/4 ounce packages quick rising yeast
1 cup milk
1/2 cup water
1/4 cup butter
*optional: additional melted butter for brushing on top of baked rolls

Directions:

1. Combine 3 1/2 cups flour, sugar, salt and undissolved yeast in bowl.

2. Attach bowl and dough hook. Turn to speed 2 and mix for 1 minute.

3. Combine milk, water and margarine in a saucepan. Heat over low heat, until liquids are very warm (120 to 130). Margarine does not need to melt.

4. Turn to speed 2 and gradually add liquid to flour mixture, about 30 seconds. Mix 1 minute longer. Continue on speed 2, adding remaining flour, 1/2 cup at a time, as needed. Mix until dough clings to hook, about 5 minutes.

5. Knead dough on speed 2 for 7-10 minutes longer, or until dough is smooth and elastic. Stop.

6. Place in greased bowl, turning to grease top. Cover, let rise in a warm place 15 minutes.

7. Turn dough out onto floured board. Divide in half and shape as desired. Cover; let rise in slightly warm oven {about 90 degrees} for 15 minutes or until doubled in bulk {usually 15 minutes works just fine!}. **My note: I usually make “clover leaf” dinner rolls. Using a pizza cutter, cut dough in half. Cut one half of dough into 6 pieces. Cut each of the 6 pieces into 3 more pieces. Form the 3 pieces into balls and place all 3 balls in one cup in your muffin tin. Repeat until you have 24 dinner rolls.**

8. Bake at 425, for 12 minutes, or until nice and brown. Remove from baking sheets and cool on wire racks.

Source & Recipe: Food.com

Enjoy!

39/52: Shrimp, Chicken and Sausage Cajun Jambalya

Lately my favorite dishes seem to be the ones we re-create from a really good restaurant meal. The other day we were out and about and stopped into a restaurant for lunch. I ordered some disappointing buffalo chicken pizza {who puts BBQ sauce on a buffalo chicken pizza?! Wth?}, but my husband ordered some delicious jambalaya. I was honestly surprised because we were at a regular restaurant, but the jambalaya was surprisingly yummy! He decided we had to re-create it. After much searching we settled on a base recipe and altered it to our likings. I think the results were perfect. Next time we might try to develop the flavors a little differently, such as with smoked paprika. The thing I love about this dish is you can totally play around with the flavors and get a different result every time. A totally easy dish, and one that screamed comfort food! I’d even venture to say that it was better than the restaurant version. Yum!

Mmm… shrimp, chicken and sausage?! Yum.

Shrimp, Chicken and Sausage Cajun Jambalaya

Ingredients:

2 tsp olive oil
1 boneless, skinless chicken breast cut into pieces
8 ounces polska kielbasa or andouille sausage
15 small-medium shrimp
1 onion, diced
1 red pepper, diced
1/2 cup diced celery
1 can diced tomatoes, drained
2 T chopped garlic
1/2 tsp cayenne pepper
3/4 tsp onion powder
1/2 tsp garlic powder
1/2 T paprika
salt and pepper to taste
2 cups uncooked white rice
4 cups chicken stock
3 bay leaves
2 tsp Worcestershire sauce
1 tsp hot sauce

Directions:

1. Heat oil in a large pot over medium heat. Saute chicken and kielbasa until lightly browned, about 5 minutes.

2. Stir in onion, bell pepper, celery, tomato and garlic. Season with cayenne, onion powder, paprika, salt and pepper to taste {the measurements here are just an estimate. We tend to season things like this with a lot of onion and garlic powder for extra flavor}. Cook for 5 minutes, or until onion is tender and translucent.

3. Add rice, then stir in chicken stock and bay leaves. Bring to a boil , reduce heat, cover and simmer for 20 minutes or until rice is tender.

4. Stir in Worcestershire sauce and hot pepper sauce and simmer for another few minutes.

5. Add shrimp. {We couldn’t find any good fresh shrimp so we used frozen already cooked shrimp. If you are using fresh shrimp, cook in the mixture until done. If using frozen just add them with enough time for them to warm up}

Source and recipe: Adapted from All Recipes.

Have an awesome weekend!