It's the little tips that we pick up on the playground that really make our lives a little easier. I was having a conversation with my friend Debbie about my recent paranoia about e-coli in fruit and veg (relating to the e-coli spinach scare and a feeding a bunch of relatives from Glasgow) which led to a discussion of how we wash our fruit and relatives (which does not remove ecoli) and she said she uses her salad spinner. Genius! The same day I read in Cook's Magazine that a few drops of cider vinegar does as good a job as those pricey fruit washes in cleaning bacteria from raw fruit and veg (and if you have ever read Cook's you know that they are very obsessive about every detail). So now I have a new routine: plop whatever fruit into the salad spinner with a few drops of vinegar get a random child to give it a swirl and then rinse it off and swirl again. It's sort of against my lazy inclinations and anything really dangerous is very hard to clean off but I feel like I have a little bit of control. I even got a better salad spinner which has a much more fun mechanism and gave the old one to the kids which is now their favourite Hot Wheels car wash.
Chicken recipes. Chicken is our fail safe meal around here and I have two easy recipes. Well not even recipes but I'll call them that. I picked up the new organic boneless chicken thighs at Loblaws and they had a honey mustard recipe on the back. I don't usually follow supermarket recipes (you know use the Green Label wildflower honey and then add the Memories of Syracuse sauce and garlic powder and voila). But I thought hey why not. Their recipe is one tablespoon of honey and one tablespoon of prepared mustard. Ok, so I don't even have prepared mustard in the house, so I added Dijon and then some hoisin sause and then some chilli garlic sauce for hubby and I and yum everyone loved it.
Honey Mustard Chicken
Preheat oven to 400 degrees.
One pack boneless thighs, or two boneless breasts
1 ½ tbsp honey
2 tbsp Dijon mustard
1 tbsp hoisin sauce
2 tsp chilli garlic sauce
Mix together honey, mustard and hoisin. Put aside one third of sauce and add chilli garlic sauce. Spread first sauce on as much of the chicken that your kids will eat, spread the spicier sauce on how much you will eat. Put chicken in oven and bake for approximately 25 – 30 minutes or until done.
It's sweet and every single person ate it! Even the one who only wants plain, white chicken.
Roast Legs and Thighs
This isn't really a recipe but it is a very good method for roasting chicken pieces and even bigger chunks of meat. Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Heat a small amount of oil in a cast iron or oven proof pan, salt chicken pieces and add to hot pan. Place chicken pieces skin side down in hot pan, flip over after three or four minutes. Cook the other side for three minutes and then place in oven for 30 minutes. When it comes out it will crispy and delicious for those who love the skin (me) or easily removable for those who don't (crazy people like my husband). If you are so inclined you could drain some of the fat off and fry up some onions and tomatoes in the pan and make a sauce. But that's for a more ambitious day.
Thanks for the chicken "recipe" Em! I've got a couple of breasts thawing in the fridge for dinner tonight, so I'm definitely going to give it a try. The kids love both mustard & honey, so this should be a sure thing:-)
Posted by: Katie | September 18, 2007 at 11:11 AM