Slow Cooker Ginger Chicken

I haven't posted in a while because the last couple weeks have been a whirlwind!  We got back to school on January 2, had 7 days of pathology lecture and workshops, then had our exam this past Friday!  The huge upside to having the exam on Friday is that we have a completely FREE weekend with nothing to study for!  We start Immunology tomorrow, and from what the upperclassmen say, it will be a handful. So I broke out my new Crock Pot for the first time, and I'll be eating for a week!

Ignore the thyme!!!! That's for another recipe...oops!

I chose a relatively simple recipe for the first use: Gingery Chicken from the Slow Cooker Revolution cookbook by America's Test Kitchen.  I plan on eating it throughout the week with brown rice or sweet potato.  I'm off to my friend's house for dinner tonight, but I tasted this and it is quite delicious!  No knife needed, the chicken just shreds!  The prep was easy, except for grating the ginger.  Ginger is a great flavor, but grating it is such a hassle!!

I changed the recipe a bit to make it healthier.  The original recipe calls for skin-on, bone-in chicken breasts, but I used boneless skinless.  I also used olive oil instead of canola oil.

Onion, ginger, garlic

Ingredients:
5-6 boneless, skinless chicken breasts*
Olive oil
1/2 large onion, minced (or 1 med-small onion)
3 tbs ginger, grated
6 cloves garlic, minced
1/4 cup all-purpose flour
1 cup low-sodium chicken broth
1 tbs sugar
3 tbs low-sodium soy sauce

*(The chicken breasts I had were huge, so I cut them in half horizontally.  This also allowed them to cook through faster.)

Season the chicken with salt and pepper.  Heat about a tablespoon of olive oil in a large skillet, and brown the chicken breasts.  Remove them from the pan and place them on a plate to the side.  Add the onion, ginger, and garlic to the pan and saute until the onion is translucent (this mixture smells amazing!!).  Add the flour, mixing for about a minute.  Slowly add the chicken broth while stirring, and you'll be left with a thick mixture.  Add this to the slow cooker, then stir in the sugar and soy sauce.  Place the chicken in the slow cooker, and set it on low for 4 hours.  Mix everything around every hour so that each piece of chicken has time in the sauce.  Serve!

Also, I started a little project on New Years Day - a picture a day!  I've been documenting it on a separate blog: 2013-365.  I usually try to post something interesting or unique about each day, considering much of my time is spent in class and studying, so hopefully I can keep that up!! :)

Baked potato chips (again!!)

One of my new kitchen gadgets from Christmas was a mandoline.  I got to try it out over break when I made baked potato chips (original post) for a New Year's Eve appetizer feast!  I had to leave for Pittsburgh early on the 1st, so I stayed in with my parents for a quiet New Year's celebration.

Using the mandoline!

Perfect slices

Baking to a crisp!

Healthy homemade potato chips!

Our New Year's Eve feast: honey-lime shrimp, the chips, cheese and crackers, hummus, and chips for our leftover Mexican chicken/Spanish rice/black bean fiesta!  Yum!

OMG CHICKEN!

Chicken is easy to make, but it gets boring quickly.  I have a ton of chicken recipes pinned on Pinterest and several packs of chicken sitting in my freezer, so I need to start actually making these recipes!  Some pinner called this "OMG chicken," but it's just a much healthier version of Hellman's Parmesan crusted chicken, using fat free plain Greek yogurt instead of the mayo.  While the chicken cooked, I made a quick veggie stir-fry with mushrooms, yellow squash, orange bell pepper, and grape tomatoes.  Yum!

Did you know that a serving of chicken is about the size of a deck of cards and weighs 3-4oz?  I usually cut chicken breasts in half (butterflying them like this, but cutting the whole way through to make 2 pieces).  I'm still left with more than a serving of chicken (4-6oz depending on the size), but it's a lot more manageable and cooks more evenly.


Here's the easy recipe for "OMG Chicken"!

Ingredients:
2 boneless skinless chicken breasts, each butterflied in half
1/2 cup fat free plain Greek yogurt
1/4 cup grated parmesan cheese
Sprinkle of Italian breadcrumbs

Mix the yogurt and cheese together and slather the mixture over the chicken.  Sprinkle some breadcrumbs over the top and bake at 350 degrees for 20-25 minutes.  How easy was that?

Puppy in the Snow!

Since I've been home, there have been two or three small snowfalls.  Each was just a couple inches and melted soon after, but we took my dog out to play in the snow the other night.  He loves catching snowballs!

Moroccan Chicken Soup

I first made this soup a couple summers ago, and since then I've made it a few times for my family.  It is easy to make (takes about 15 minutes) and is very hearty and filling.  The recipe is from the Best Simple Recipes cookbook by America's Test Kitchen, one of my first cookbooks!  It calls for garam masala, an Indian blend of spices, made up of black pepper, coriander, cumin, cinnamon, and cardamom, among other spices.  Most of these spices are also abundantly used in Moroccan cooking, so I think the recipe calls for using the Indian spice in order to simplify the recipe.  I like that it's mild (I'm a wuss when it comes to spicy things) and it gives the soup a flavor very similar to what I tasted in Morocco. (see the end of this post for some of my pictures from Morocco!)

Ingredients:
Olive oil
1 onion, chopped fine
1 teaspoon garam masala
5 cups low-sodium chicken broth
1 14.5oz can of diced tomatos (we use the no salt added version)
2 15.5oz cans of chickpeas, drained and rinsed
2 zucchini, cut into half moons
1/2 cup plain couscous
1 rotisserie chicken
Salt and pepper to taste

Using a rotisserie chicken makes the whole process a lot faster, but making the chicken will work just as well.  Discard the skin and shred the chicken into bite size pieces.  You'll only need about 3 cups of chicken for the soup.

In a large Dutch oven or stock pot, cook onion in ~1 tbsp of olive oil over medium-high heat until translucent and lightly browned (takes about 5 minutes).  Add the garam masala and stir, cooking for another 30 seconds.  Add the broth and tomatoes and bring to a simmer.  Add the chickpeas, zucchini, and couscous, cover the pot, and cook for about 8 minutes.  Uncover, stir in about 3 cups of the chicken, and add salt and pepper to taste.  Let it simmer for a few minutes so the chicken can absorb the flavors, then serve with some crusty bread!

Morocco 

Morocco was the last port on my voyage on Semester at Sea, the study abroad program I did in the summer of 2010.  We docked in Casablanca and a group of us took a day trip to Marrakech, which was amazing!!  I had so many amazing dishes throughout the summer, but one of the best was a lamb dish with couscous, chickpeas, vegetables, and stewed dates.  Check it out:

 Soooo delicious.  I may or may not have had more than two helpings... :)

 And this is one of my favorite pictures of the whole trip, in a garden in Marrakech:

Navidades!

I hope you had an excellent Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, or whatever holiday you celebrate this season!  I had a fun week full of family and delicious food, and now I'm just enjoying a few quiet days before heading back to school.

I was in class until the 20th, when we had our Cell Path exam and histology practical...adding another completed syllabus to the stack!!  To the right is a picture of all the syllabi and books I've accumulated in the first semester of medical school!  Classes start again on Jan 2, when we'll begin the pathology portion of the Cell Path course.  Then Immunology and Microbiology, all before spring break!  Looks like I have my work cut out for me...

My grandfather (we call him Abuelote) came up from Florida for the week of Christmas, and he got to meet his two newest great-grandchildren!  The two older kids remembered him, so they were happy to see him too.  We had a full house on the 22nd, just like on Thanksgiving!  We exchanged presents with my brother and his family, since they were leaving the next day, and ate a wonderful Italian dinner - turkey sausage and homemade meatballs in Ina's marinara sauce.  We also celebrated Abuelote's 85th birthday with a big chocolate cake!  I also spent a good amount of time playing and cuddling with the kiddos :)

Pork on pork! Mmmmmm

My sister and her family came down for Nochebuena (Christmas Eve) to do presents and dinner.  I got a lot of kitchen stuff, which I am super excited to try out!!  I have a lot of Crockpot recipes pinned on Pinterest, so I'm looking forward to trying them out on the weekends.  Nochebuena dinner is always pork and black beans over white rice - Cuban tradition!  The pork was marinated with a mustard/honey/garlic mixture and covered in BACON.  Oh yes.  Delicious.  My sister made the black beans from scratch, and they were wonderful as always!

Among my kitchen-related gifts were a new cute cupcake apron from my sister, an Ina Garten cookbook autographed by Ina herself (!!!), a mandoline for thinly slicing food (and for making better potato chips), and the Crock Pot.

All the girls got aprons!

Ina Garten touched my cookbook!

Mandoline!

Sooo excited to try some new recipes!

Carols, Chips, and Chanting!

Like the alliteration?  So do I.

I was rather productive today!  Unfortunately not in the realm of academics, but that's what Sundays are for!!

Earlier this afternoon, my acapella group sang Christmas carols in the Pittsburgh Strip at the Pittsburgh Public Market.  I caught an early bus, and since it was such a nice day (50 degrees and sunny!), I got off about a mile early and walked to the market.  The Strip is such a happening place on weekends, full of people and shops (and wonderful smells!) so I highly enjoyed that little walk.  Finally we all met up, warmed up, and sang our little set list to the market.  People loved it!

Afterwards, I walked around the market.  It's quite small, nothing like the Central Market at home, but there were lots of little vendors selling handmade jewelry, treats, produce, and other fun things.  I sampled some maple bacon coffee, and it was surprisingly good!  Mostly maple flavored with a hint of smokiness.  A bunch of us hovered around a vendor selling different types of jams, so I sampled some, and they were delicious!  Especially the ones made with wine and beer :)  I walked around and enjoyed the colors, "appreciated" (as Dr. Schumann would say) the tempting baked goods, and went on my way home.

Once home, I had a couple hours to kill before my next engagement, so I decided to try out a recipe I had been wanting to do for a while - baked potato chips!  I had a regular potato and a sweet potato, so I tried out both.  I don't normally eat potato chips, but these were so good that I don't think I'll ever eat commercially produced chips again!

Let's all just appreciate the thinness of these slices, shall we? :)

What you need:
Potatoes
Water
Olive Oil
Good knife skills or a mandoline
Optional: Salt/Pepper/whatever you want to season them with

Preheat oven to 400F.  Slice the potatoes to desired thickness.  The thinner you cut them, the crispier they get.  I don't own a mandoline, so I just tried cutting them the thinnest I could possibly manage, which ended up being about 1/8 inch.  If you're using regular potatoes, soak them in water for about 10 minutes to release some of the starch.  Sweet potatoes don't have to be soaked.  Put all the slices in a bowl, then drizzle with olive oil and use your hands to make sure each slice has some oil on it.  No need for a lot of oil! I probably used about 1/2 tbsp over 2 potatoes, just enough to make sure each slice had seen some oil.

Lay them out on a foil-lined baking sheet in a single layer, and sprinkle with whatever spices you want.  I used a bit of salt and freshly ground pepper.  Stick them in the oven and set a timer for 12-15 minutes, depending on the size of your slices.  The smaller and thinner pieces will obviously cook faster, so you don't want those burning while the bigger ones are still cooking.  Take the tray out and remove the chips that are done, then let the larger/thicker pieces cook for another 5-8 minutes.  My large pieces took about 20 minutes total, but yours may vary.  Remove them from the baking sheet, let cool, and enjoy! (Or you can enjoy them hot, they're really good that way too!)

I'll be taking the chips to school tomorrow so some of my friends (*cough*guineapigs*cough*) can taste them and see if they're still tasty a day later.  We'll be practicing doing physical exams on each other since we have to do our first full exam on a standardized patient this week.  At the very least, the chips will let us hear bowel sounds!  (Sorry, that might have been too much info for the general public...)

Today is December 1, and that means it's World AIDS Day, a day to bring awareness to HIV and AIDS.  (Pittsburgh)Red, the Pittsburgh AIDS Task Force, Pitt's graduate school association, and many more organizations came together tonight for a rally and march down Forbes Ave.  There was a rally at Carnegie Mellon with several speakers, including Pittsburgh's mayor, then everyone marched down Forbes Ave with candles to Pitt's campus, where there was free food, free HIV testing, and a bunch of organizations (PittMed LGBTPAM, Planned Parenthood, Rainbow Alliance, ONE, etc) tabling with information.  I had volunteered to help out on Pitt's side with food, so I was unable to take part in the march, but it was amazing seeing the 100+ participants walking down Forbes.  The music and food brought in a lot of people that were just passing by, so I thought it was really successful!