“Anybody Got a Peanut….” Chicken

Posted on August 11, 2016 by Our Growing Paynes

Who doesn’t love a good classic? My family loves The Princess Bride. Though I’m not sure I’m ok with a movie I grew up with being called a classic. To me those are the black and white films from another era. I know it’s denial! But I’m sticking with it.

It’s a film that we love to watch with popcorn reciting the quotes as they come up in the film. Well to be honest we throw out the quotes even if we aren’t watching the film. Get to the food you say? “As you wish….”

Because it’s just been my husband and I for the past month (our kids come back tonight!) we had two chicken thighs left over from the four pack that needed to be used.

I wanted to go with Asian flavours for this dish. Prep the marinade for the chicken thighs first. In a bowl whisk peanut oil and soy sauce (we use gluten free amino acids) in a ratio of 3:1. Finely chop a clove of garlic, some scallion, and grate about a teaspoon of fresh ginger. Season with sea salt and pepper. Mix well and coat the two chicken thighs.

Set aside for at least a half an hour. While you make the sauce, cook the rice noodles to the package instruction and grill the chicken. In a skillet heat up a couple of tablespoons of peanut oil. Chop 3-4 cloves of garlic and saute them on medium heat. You don’t want to brown the garlic.

After a few minutes add about half a cup of chopped scallion.

Add the leftover marinade from the chicken and 2 tablespoons of the soy sauce. Bring to a simmer and add a tablespoon or two of lime juice. Stir in a large spoonful of peanut butter. I chose chunky to save me a step of chopping up peanuts.

Add more peanut butter as needed to get the right the balance between the sweetness of the peanut butter and saltiness of the soy sauce.

When the chicken is nearly done add about a cup of chopped red bell pepper.

Add the rice noodles with 1/2 a cup of the hot water the noodles were cooked in to thin out the sauce. Toss to coat.

Top with the chicken and serve as soon as possible.

I have to say even though our food bill was much lower with the kids off on their adventures I am so excited they will be home. With huge appetites and all. 🙂

Grilled Thai Steak and Ever So Grateful

Posted on August 24, 2015 by Our Growing Paynes

It was a very long week last week but everything went well with my dad’s surgery. Yesterday they discharged him from hospital and now he is recuperating at home. We were all breathing a sigh of relief. Still are if you want to know the truth.

So he’ll be causing trouble for a good long while now and we wouldn’t have it any other way!

As you can imagine I’m a bit backed up with blog posts and getting everything else back on track. Kids are back at school this week so we’re winding down the summer the next couple of days. Making sure they get back into the routine of things.

Last weekend I was in the mood for Thai flavours and decided to do a grilled steak with rice noodles. We have had some success with growing fresh garlic this year and we also had ginger and cilantro on hand.

In a bowl mix 2 tablespoons peanut oil, 2 tablespoons oyster sauce, 2 tablespoons amino acid, 1 tablespoon lime juice, one to two teaspoons of fresh chopped cilantro, a large clove of garlic, finely chopped, and salt and pepper. Add the steak to marinate for at least an hour.

When it is time to cook, heat up a couple of tablespoons of peanut oil. Add a few cloves of garlic, finely chopped, and a couple of scallions, chopped. Saute until the garlic starts to soften. Add a cayenne pepper. When slicing use gloves, saves on burning skin. We keep the seeds but some may find that too hot. Saute for a few minutes.

Add a cup of chicken stock and bring to a simmer. I made the mistake of adding the rest of the veg too soon. I like my veg on the crispy side. If you like them soft then add the peppers and mushrooms when you add the stock. Also add carrots. I added a couple of tablespoons of green curry paste, a tablespoon of oyster sauce, a tablespoon of amino acids, and a splash of lime juice. Continue to simmer. As it cooks adjust the flavour to your liking.

Grill the steak to medium rare.

Take the leftover marinade and add it to the skillet and continue to simmer. While the steak is resting add half a cup light coconut milk. Add a few more teaspoons of freshly chopped cilantro at this stage as well.

While this is being created cook rice noodles according to the package. Toss the noodles in the sauce and serve. Top with the steak and peanuts.

I enjoyed this dish. The heat was mild but you could always add more hot pepper as you cook. Tonight we are doing Pad Thai for dinner. Another one of our favourites!

Peanut Satay and My Rain Dance isn’t Working

Posted on May 27, 2015 by Our Growing Paynes

The dirt is dry. Bone dry, just puffs of dust. It does not bode well that we are struggling already and May isn’t over. Usually we don’t have issues with rain. But this season we desperately need some rain to fall from the sky.

This past weekend was Memorial Day Weekend in the states and that is also the start of serious planting in our zone. It also means we have a ton of plants to get into the ground. We are facing a semi-disaster with the peppers. Half of the seedlings were small because I was behind the eight ball at the front end in getting them started in the first place. I tried getting enough water into the raised bed but the small seedlings immediately went into shock and died. We have some more to try so fingers crossed we succeed because I was really hoping for some home grown habaneros.

We’ve spent every day since trying to soak the beds. It’s frustrating because we soak them leaving puddles and do that a few times but when we poke the soil it’s still dry! This could be a long season.

This past Friday I wanted to make one of the dishes my family made for me on Mother’s Day. Grilled chicken with a peanut satay sauce. We had plenty of the satay sauce left over so it needed to be used up.

The recipe I got influence from was from the “Appetizers, Finger Foods, Buffets & Parties”.

For the satay mix the following:

2T each of smooth peanut butter, soy sauce, and lime juice

1T of sesame oil and brown sugar

2 finely chopped scallions and garlic cloves

Mix well and set aside.

Next the marinade for the chicken needs to be made.

Ignore the large onion. I was originally going to use it because I didn’t have any scallions for the marinade. But I felt the onion would be too much. And I forgot to retake a photo! Ah well.

In a bowl mix 4 tablespoons of peanut oil, 3 tablespoons of soy sauce or amino acids, 1 tablespoon of brown sugar, and 2 tablespoons of lime juice. Grate about an inch/2.5cm square of fresh ginger and finely chop 3-4 cloves of garlic. Next add a small handful of chopped cilantro and a chili pepper, chopped. Deseed it for this recipe because you don’t want the heat to overpower the other flavours.

I chose to use chicken thigh meat instead of breast meat. One it’s less expensive and two it has more flavour. Cut it so it is in cubes keeping the pieces in a similar size. Marinate for at least an hour.

Skewer the chicken and heat up the grill. Cook the chicken while turning to cook the chicken evenly allowing them to sear on each side.

Serve with the sides of your choice. I like making baked potatoes on the grill, just keep them up off the flame.

Spoon the satay over the chicken and enjoy! And keep your fingers crossed for some rain!

Kung Pao Chicken and Maybe Going Overboard on the Healthy Bit

Posted on April 29, 2015 by Our Growing Paynes

Despite my obsession with crisps and chocolate I do try to have very healthy food at the house. It’s important to me to put good food into my family. But my husband, ahem, has made it known to me that I might go a little overboard in my endeavor.

Conor from One Man’s Meat posted a wonderful Kung Pao Chicken the other day that I wanted to try. Of course you need rice for this dish so off I went and bought brown rice. My husband inquired as to why I didn’t get white rice. I replied but brown rice is healthier. He just shook his head and let me know it’s ok to go crazy and have white rice! LOL

At any rate, I had most of the ingredients to give this dish a go. Could not find Schezwan peppercorns anywhere though so I had to use regular black peppercorns. Also, I stuck with amino acids for the soy sauce due to cutting out a lot of gluten in my diet.

Prep everything before you start cooking as it doesn’t take long to cook. Also, prep the rice as well.

Coarsely chop 3-4 cloves of garlic and about an inch and a half(3-4cm) of fresh ginger. Slice the about 2 scallions into inch (2-3cm) slices and the chilies about half that size. Depending on how hot you want your dish, you can deseed the chilies or leave them in. Because we didn’t have the Schezwan peppercorns I left the seeds in the dish.

Because I was making this dish for two I used two small chicken breasts. In a separate bowl mix 1 tablespoon of the amino acid, 1 tablespoon of Mirin (rice cooking wine), a tablespoon of corn flour, and about 1/2 a tablespoon of freshly ground black pepper. Coat the chicken and set aside.

In a separate bowl mix 3 tablespoons of amino acid, a teaspoon of corn flour, the garlic, ginger, and chilies. Set aside. Heat up the wok with 2 tablespoons of peanut oil. When the oil is good and hot fry a heaping 1/2 cup of peanuts. If you have peanuts that haven’t been dry roasted use those. The ones we have on hand were already dry roasted but they worked fine. These will not take long to fry so keep an eye on them. Once golden brown set aside.

Add a bit more oil if needed then cook the chicken. If you are doing more chicken than I did then doing it in batches would be a good idea.

Add the sauce with the ginger and garlic and most of the scallions. I have to admit this is when it started looking different from Conor’s as his pictures show a lot more sauce than mine. I read it and reread it and I followed the amounts. So if this happens to you add equal amounts of the amino acid and Mirin to increase the sauce being careful to keep the balance of the flavours.

Once it is the chicken is cooked through serve immediately over the rice.

We really enjoyed it. The heat was really balanced with the flavours. And it’s a dish that is easily adjusted to make it milder or hotter depending on your taste. My drink of choice for this dish was a lovely Mexican Mule, the ginger was a great pairing.

Roasted Bananas With Caramel and Chocolate

Posted on October 16, 2014 by Our Growing Paynes

We still have a crazy amount the salted spiced rum caramel that I used for the apple bars. So I have to either freeze it or use it. The kids would of course vote to use it up as quickly as possible then have me make more. 🙂

While watching an old season of Top Chef last week I saw that one of the chefs did a dessert that had roasted bananas. I was sucked in with my iPad so I was playing games at the time and didn’t really get what they made but the roasted bananas stuck with me.

I don’t eat bananas because of the texture. It makes me gag but I like the flavour of bananas in things such as banana bread. My family likes bananas so I thought it would be fun to try something new.

This dessert was super easy because the caramel was already made. Preheat the oven to 350F/175C.

Slice the bananas and brush with peanut oil and top with brown sugar.

While these are roasting heat up the caramel and melt some chocolate. When the bananas have softened and the brown sugar has caramelised a bit remove from the oven. Drizzle caramel on the dish and place the bananas on top. Drizzle the chocolate and some more caramel over the bananas. Sprinkle chopped peanuts and top with whipped cream.

This was a huge hit with the kids. And then I put them over the top by giving them some more caramel straight up. I loved the flavour but I can’t get round the texture of the banana. Sigh.

Our Growing Paynes

A journey about cooking, traveling, gardening, and crafting.

Tag Archives: peanuts

“Anybody Got a Peanut….” Chicken

Grilled Thai Steak and Ever So Grateful

Peanut Satay and My Rain Dance isn’t Working

Kung Pao Chicken and Maybe Going Overboard on the Healthy Bit

Roasted Bananas With Caramel and Chocolate