Tuesday, August 28, 2012

Chicken and Peaches

This may be the simplest main dish ever made.  Seriously - 6 ingredients and you have the most lovely dish.  I love to cook with peaches when they are in season and currently they are in season!  YUMMMM

Chicken and Peaches Served with Roasted Potatoes
Serves 2

Ingredients:
  • 2 chicken breast halves with the bone (more flavour and less chance of drying out on the BBQ!)
  • Cooking Spray
  • 1 onion, diced
  • 6 peaches, peeled, pitted and sliced
  • 2 tbsp soy sauce
  • 4 tbsp bbq sauce + extra to baste the chicken, I use one for chicken and ribs but you could use your favorite.

Instructions:
  1. Preheat BBQ to high
  2. Preheat a sauce pan to medium high and spray with cooking spray
  3. BBQ the chicken on the BBQ for 30 -35 minutes, depending on how thick the breasts are.  (you can also roast some nice potato wedges at the same time!)
  4. In the sauce pan toss the onions and cook until browned
  5. Reduce the heat on the pan to medium and add the peaches
  6. Cook until softened, about 5 minutes
  7. Add the soya sauce and bbq sasuce and simmer on low for another 10 minutes
  8. Add water by the tablespoon if the sauce is too thick for your liking
  9. Baste the chicken with the extra bbq sauce during the last 5 minutes of cooking time
  10. Serve the peach mixture over the chicken.  And the potatoes if you roasted some.
With the soy sauce and bbq sauce there is plenty of salt in this dish so don't add any unless you really need it at the table.

Enjoy!




Thursday, August 23, 2012

It's summer time and the livin is easy.

Truer words were never spoken.  Lately I've been grilling some meat or fish and serving it along side some farm fresh steamed veggies usually tossed with butter or maybe a salad from the lettuce and tomatoes out of my garden.  There really is only one appropriate summer cooking method - KISS - Keep it Simple Silly! 

I finally found some soba noodles at the grocery store recently so I thought I'd make some of those wonderful snow peas into a Japanese inspired stir-fry.  And the leftovers for lunch would be awesome.  I toasted up some sesame seeds in a dry wok first and removed them from the pan.  I made a sauce out of hoisin, soy, chili sauce, brown sugar, rice vinegar, garlic, ginger and water. I was psyched. 

I set a pot of water on to boil the noodles.  I figured I'd cook the whole package since it indicated it was for 4 people and I wanted leftovers for lunches.  Once the water was at a rolling boil I snipped the top off the package and dumped the noodles in the pot.

Anyone see what's coming?

Yeah soba noodles come tied up in bundles with a thin paper wrap around each one. These paper wraps were now keeping my noodles together in an nice organized fashion as they twirled around in the pot.  I said a few swear words, grabbed my tongs and started grabbing bundles of noodles out of the pot.  Not only were the noodles starting to soften but they were also friggin hot.  I managed to get the paper wraps off but not before the noodles started to stick together forming noodles gluepy noodle masses.  Back into the water they went and I called for back up. 

Mom tried to seperate the gluepy masses while the noodles finished cooking in the pot.  Never to throw food away, I finally said "enough" and I pulled the looser ones out of the pot and tossed them in the stir-fry. 

I currently have a container full of glumpy noodles sitting in my fridge.  I intend to freeze them and use them later in a soup.  I figure they'll work well there. Waste not, want not!  And now I'll go back to simple grilled meats and fish with sides of farm fresh steamed veggies for what's left of our summer.