Baked Spicy Curry Masala Chicken Legs

Ingredients:
6 chicken drumsticks
1 tsp curry powder
1 tsp paprika
1 tsp garam masala
1 tsp salt
1 tsp pepper
1/2 cup coconut milk
2 tsp garlic powder



Directions:
1. Combine all marinates in one gallon size zip lock bag

2. Marinate the chicken drumsticks at least 2 hour or overnight
3. Preheat oven to 425°F
4. Line baking sheet with foil, place the chicken drumsticks along with the marinate

5. Cover with another foil, bake for 45 minutes in 425°F
6. In the last 10 minutes, uncover the chicken, change the oven setting to broil to crisp up the chicken skins

Serve!

Super easy and very minimal effort needed. The dish has a nice spicy kick into it without being overwhelming.

 

Chaotic Sunday Cooking

On Sunday morning, I got up a little later than usual and I had a bunch of things to do.

So many that I even had to write them down to keep my sanity.

On the list:
– Five Spice Baked Chicken – marinate DONE!
– Cream Broccoli soup
– Butternut squash puree
– Dumplings
– Marinate tofu – press first
– Vacuum/cleaning
– Ab-tastic Exercise Challenge

Obviously, I didn’t finish everything on one day.

Here what I managed to do:
– Five Spice Baked Chicken – baked
– Cream Broccoli soup
– Dumplings
– Ab-tastic Exercise Challenge
– Pressed the tofu

K was kind enough to do the vacuum and cleaning 🙂

Five Spice Baked Chicken (Primal)
Ingredients:
– 2 cornish hen
– 1 white onion -sliced
– 1 Tbsp honey
– 3-4 Tbsp tamari soy sauce
– 2 tsp salt
– 3-4 tsp five spice powder
– 3-5 garlic cloves
– 1 inch of ginger

Directions:
1. Mash garlic and ginger with mortar pestle or food processor
2. Mix with the tamari soy sauce and five spice powder

3. Line the sliced white onions on the baking dish
4. Place 2 cornish hen and rub the seasonings generously

5. Marinate for about 4 hours or overnight.
6. Bake for about 1 hour or until done in 425°F – turn it over once (I reduced the heat to 375°F towards the end b/c the onions start to get burn)

Not quite pretty but taste very very yummy! 😀 It has similar taste to those char siu sauce. Who needs a sodium, msg, processed sugar and chemical added store bought char siu sauce when you can make it your own? The onions gave the sweetness and nothing beats the smell of caramelized onions! Hmmm….

Next…
After I saw Zuzana from Bodyrock.tv posted her Broccoli Cream Turkey Breast recipe I couldn’t wait to try it. As usual, I always HAVE to tweak the ingredients. For some reason I just CAN’T stick to the recipe to the “T”.

The recipe should be very simple but since I don’t like do good with milk, I used my homemade almond milk. I spent at least 1 hour to make the almond milk prior making the dish. But fresh almond milk always taste the best 😀

Cream Broccoli Soup with Chicken (modified from Bodyrock.tv) – Primal
Ingredients:
About 1.5 lbs boneless skinless chicken breasts -cubed
3-4 broccoli crowns
About 2 cups of almond milk
Freshly squeezed lemon juice (1/2 lemon)
Salt, pepper
1 tsp coriander powder
1/2 tsp cumin powder
1 white onion – minced
2 shallots – minced
2 cloves crushed garlic
1 Tbsp butter
2 Tbsp avocado oil

Optional:
– chopped walnuts
– shredded carrots

Directions:
1. Heat up the pan with 1 Tbsp avocado oil in medium high heat
2. Saute onions, garlic and shallots until translucent – add in the butter
3. Pour in the almond milk- bring slowly to boil – don’t over boil – just simmer is enough
4. Once it simmers, add the chopped broccoli

5. Season with coriander, salt, and cumin to taste
6. When the broccoli is soft, turn off the heat and let it cool down
7. While waiting, heat up a pan with 1 Tbsp avocado oil in medium high heat
8. Lightly pan fry the cubed chicken meat until brown
9. After the soup has cooled down, puree it in your food processor

Serve!

Instead adding the chicken into the soup, I decided to keep it aside and add them in when consuming it.

Option: Add grated carrots and chopped walnuts or any other nuts for extra crunch!

The cream broccoli soup might not look appetizing (it reminds me of baby food LOL) but it taste AH-mazing!

Still with me? One more: Dumplings!

Pork Dumplings/ Meatballs (not quite primal due to the gluten in dumpling wraps)
Ingredients:
– 2 lbs ground pork meat (I picked a meat cut and asked the butcher to ground it. I don’t like buying pre-grounded pork)
– 1-2 jicama – minced
– 1 egg
– 3 green onions – chopped
– 1-2 cups of shredded cloud ear fungus
– 3-5 cloves of garlic
– 1 inch of ginger
– 1 white onion -minced
– 1/2 tsp white pepper
– 3-5 Tbsp tamari soy sauce
– 1/2 package of dumpling/wonton wraps (to keep it primal, skip the wraps and just make meatballs)

Directions:
1. Mash garlic and ginger (I used mortar pestle)
2. Soak the dried cloud ear fungus until soft
3. Mix all ingredients (mushrooms, mashed ginger-garlic, chopped jicama, chopped green onions, egg) – season accordingly.



To taste, boil a little bit meat piece in microwave.
4. Wrap in the dumpling skin

place the meat in the middle - not too much

wet the edges with egg white wash or water

fold diagonally

connect the corners together

5. Boil a pot of water
Good ones – boil for about 5 minutes – until it’s floating

Badly wrapped – steam for about 7 minutes or more

Dash with sesame oil – serve!

I froze the rest of the meat mixture for another time. Next time I might just steam the meat 🙂

Remember the homemade chicken broth I made?
It came handy to make this super simple vegetable soup!

tomatoes, carrots, some Asian veggies – yummers!

After all those chaos, I still completed my workout of the day! 😀

Do you always stick to the t when following a recipe?
I can never make same dishes exactly the same. There’s always something a bit different from the last time I made it. Baking on the other hand is the ONLY thing that I usually do it consistently.

How do you and your significant other or roommate divide the house chores?
I usually do most of the cooking and some cleaning, K does most of the cleaning and dishes. 🙂

 

Totally Proteined

After my morning workout today, I made another old fashioned oats again. This time it turned out to be a bit watery…darn it! Regardless, it was still good! Topped with one banana and a bit of PB as I’ve seen so many other bloggers put PB in their oatmeal. It was actually pretty good.

The oatmeal kept me full until around lunch time. However, I was having my wheat bread slice during late morning, just because I had it in my lunchbag. I wasn’t really hungry or anything, but oh well.

I had lunch around 1 pm and I wasn’t that hungry either. For me, even though I don’t feel quite hungry, I keep telling myself to eat as usual time. It helps me to keep my eating schedule on check.

baked chicken breast with lots of veggies underneath

Believe me, this lunch kept me full all afternoon and even until dinner time! I actually didn’t have the whole 1/2 chicken breast, but still my stomach was really full and I couldn’t even have my fruit dessert and late afternoon fruit munchies.

So those ended up as my dinner instead.

But I still made the actual dinner for my husband. Lentils and vegetables. Simple as that.

lentils, tofu, celery, carrots, banana squash, red onions and tomato sauce

Also I finally received free samples from Bragg!

The only thing that really interest me to try is the Nutritional Yeast seasoning. I’ve heard so much about nutritional yeast being cheese substitute for vegans but I’ve never tried it before. If it turns out good, I might want to add this into my kitchen pantry.
Btw, you can get free samples from them too.

 

Finally, the chicken!

I got up early as usual to do my morning workout – P90X Legs & Back and Abs. Quite good workout, I was drenched in sweat. Anyway, after the workout, I had my recovery drink, one cup of plain soymilk with 1 scoop of Chocolate Protein Powder and the last banana. It refueled my energy as I needed it after a hard workout in early morning.

can't really see the mashed banana

After updating my workout blog, I packed my afternoon snacks, which were 2 small gala apples and a bag of mixed nuts.

they're crunchy!

some remaining Carr's Water crackers

Also I need my second breakfast, which I’d eat in the office later. Same thing as yesterday, plain low fat yogurt with some dried cranberries and remaining of Kashi® GoLean® Crunch Cereal. Seriously, I STILL haven’t finished that bag in the end! Those fiber cereal really filled you up!

Around 11 am, my stomach demanded to be refueled so I snacked on the nuts & crackers. I finished most of the nuts, except the pumpkin seeds or whatever they’re called. So hard to eat them! I always end up break the whole thing with the shell and can’t get the inside part. 😦

this is what left

I packed a really good lunch today so I was pretty full even throughout the rest of the day, until I got home.

My brother was home first this time and he was nice enough to start steaming the chicken that I marinated last night. It’s supposedly baked chicken, but it’s faster to cook if you steam it first for about 30 minutes, then bake it at 375°F for another 30 minutes.

Chicken turned out soooooo GOOD! The marinate is pretty simple. I usually didn’t measure anything to the t, but here’s the rough idea:

Baked Whole Chicken marinate:
2 tsp salt
2-3 tsp brown sugar
1 tsp black pepper
a dash of cumin powder
1 tsp coriander powder
1 tsp chili powder (or more if you like spicy)
4 tsp garlic powder
1 tsp turmeric powder

Mix all the marinate together, then rub generously over the whole chicken. I cut mine into half because my countertop oven is pretty small. Besides it’s easier to spread out the marinate evenly.

Also try to rub in the marinate underneath the skin as well, otherwise, the meat won’t have much taste. I don’t eat the skins so I always try to rub a lot more marinate underneath the skins.

Leave it for at least 4 hours or overnight for the best result.

Steam on high heat for 5 minutes (when it started to boil) then turn down the heat to medium high for about 25-30 minutes (depending on how big the chicken is). If you do the whole chicken, might need to leave it a bit longer.

After it’s done, preheat the oven for 400°F. Turn down the heat to 375°F, put the steamed chicken in, and bake for about 30-35 minutes. Again, depends on how big the chicken is. The way to check it is make sure there’s no blood coming out from the meat when you poke the thickest part of the chicken.

Remove the chicken from the oven, and enjoy! 😀

Had to cut the chicken in half b/c it won't fit into my countertop oven

The rest of the dishes were pretty simple, lots and lots of veggies.

raw celery and grape tomatoes

Dinner was done early today, but my husband didn’t come home until around 7 pm. I was hungry and while waiting for him, I snacked some nuts from this container:

I have to tell myself to go easy on the nuts. I feel a pimple coming out on my chin 😦

So here’s my next day lunch! Chicken, brown rice, boiled bok choy, raw celery and grape tomatoes. Also along with the chili paste that my mom made 😀