Friday Night Challenge 2: Madeira Chicken w/ Sweet Potato Posey

My Friday night Facebook challenge brought some more great ideas for supper. Tonight's five ingredients were: chicken--garlic--shallots--wine--potatoes (regular or sweet). Here's what I came up with as a result:

I took two chicken breasts and pounded them soundly to tenderize them. I then salted and peppered them and put them into olive oil to cook. While the chicken breasts were cooking, I peeled and sliced a medium-sized sweet potato and cubed a small regular potato and put them on to boil. I then diced up a large shallot.

Once the chicken breasts were about 1/2 done, I drained the olive oil from the pan and replaced it with Madeira wine (ahhh the aroma!).  I turned down the heat, covered it, and let it steam and simmer slowly.

Once the potatoes were done, I drained them and let them cool just a bit. I took the regular potato, whipped it, added some garlic powder, salt to taste.  Once done, I formed a flower on the plate and then added the garlic whipped potato as its center.

I added a bit of olive oil to a saute pan and added the shallot along with a bit of garlic powder and let it cook until just lightly browned.

Below is the final product in the "studio" getting its picture taken.

Enjoy!

Black Bean Stuffed Green Peppers

Today, courtesy of Facebook, I decided to post a challenge to myself. I asked for friends to give me five random ingredients to put together and create a supper. I was given a total of six ingredients. As a result of the good suggestions, we had a supper that was healthy, low calorie, low fat, high fiber, and economical.

The ingredients were green bell peppers, eggs, onions, cheese, black beans, and ancho chili pepper. I decided upon vegetarian stuffed peppers. Here's the process.
(serves 2)
Cut the tops from 2 green bell peppers and clean out the seeds and membrane. Reserve the tops that were removed.
Open a can of black beans. (To lighten the sodium, you can rinse the beans before cooking.) Add some chopped red onion and chop the tops of the bell pepper and cook these in with the beans. Add 1 t. ancho chili powder. Put the bell peppers into hot water and cook until tender, but not to the point of collapsing.
Once the beans start cooking steadily, take an egg and whisk it into the beans. Once it is blended, taste for adjustment of the chili powder.
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Put the bean mixture into the peppers and put the peppers into the oven so the flavors can blend. This takes about 10 minutes. While they are in the oven, grate approximately 1 T.  Parmesan reggiano cheese for each green pepper. When the peppers have been removed from the oven for a couple of minutes, add the grated cheese to the top. Enjoy!

Savory Lobster Filo Stacks

Tonight was "create a recipe" night. I had some filo dough in the fridge along with a packet of lobster. What to do? Perhaps a savory version of the beloved baklava. So, out came the handy chopper. I chopped up some onion, green and red bell pepper. I chopped the lobster meat into small bits. Now to melt the butter (Smart Balance works great and is a great source of vitamin D--so sought after in these winter months) and then start layering the filo. I didn't want the stack to be incredibly high, so I ended up with one level of the chopped onion/pepper mix, one level of lobster, and one of the two items mixed. I also chopped up some spinach and made two layers of it. To this, I sprinkled on some garlic powder, some ancho chile pepper, and some cumin. The final layer consisted of finely shredded cheese (any type will do...pick your favorite). Then a couple of layers of filo dough to finish. I baked this for around 35 minutes on 350. Once it was finished, cut, and plated, I added some homemade guacamole to the top. (A simple processed avocado, onion, and cilantro w/ a dash of salt.)

Butternut Squash Soup

On a cold, rainy January evening, butternut squash soup seemed to make perfect sense. The extra warming quality of a little bit of cumin made it downright cozy.

The recipe is very easy to make. Take one butternut squash, cut it into slices about 1 inch wide. Coat a baking sheet with a spray of olive oil and place into a 350 degree oven. It takes a good 1/2 hour or more for the squash to become very tender. While it's baking, go ahead and chop one onion and two shallots up finely and place into a pan with 1 T. oil or butter (I use Smart Balance--it has a good taste and 1T. gives you 50% of your vitamin D for the day). Once the onions are sweated, add 2 potatoes that are cubed and 6 c. chicken broth. Once the potatoes are tender, add the baked squash that had been cut away from the rind. Once everything is cooked down a bit, turn off the heat and let it sit for a bit. Put the soup into the blender and puree until smooth. Return to the heat and add a dash of nutmeg and 1/2 t. cumin. Season to taste with a bit of salt and pepper.

Good, easy, and healthy!

Orange Zest Dessert

Looking for a fairly easy yet pretty dessert that uses just three ingredients (including water)? Try orange zest dessert.
First zest an orange into strips (use a vegetable peeler to make this easier). Then, taking a pair of kitchen shears, cut the zest into narrow strips. Put a pan of water onto boil with the strips added in and then turn the heat down and cook until they're pretty tender (around 10 minutes). While this is happening, you can section the orange (use one orange per serving--navel oranges are best--no seeds!) Once you take the peels off the burner, pour them into a bowl and then, using the same pan, mix 1/3 c. sugar and 2 or 3 T. water and put onto boil, stirring occasionally until this turns to syrup. Once it is "syrupy", add the peels in, turn down to medium, and let them cook for at least 10 minutes. They'll reach a shiny and chewy stage; remove them from the syrup and add the orange sections to coat and cook about 5 minutes. It might take two rounds to get all the slices done. Put the slices into a pretty bowl, add the candied peels on top, and put into the fridge to cool. Enjoy!

Smoky, Spicy Split Pea Soup

I've been on the search of late for good, warming soups that contain anti-inflammatory ingredients. After perusing several recipes, I concocted the following recipe:
Cook up 1 cup of split peas (they don't need to be soaked ahead of time, but they will remain undercooked if they don't get a head start). Once the peas are partially cooked, add a couple of cans of vegetable broth, 1-3 t. of the adobo sauce that comes with chilies (if you really like spicy, you can cook the soup with a couple of the chilies, too--just remove when the soup is about finished. Also add one sweet potato, a can of diced tomatoes, and garlic powder to taste. To get a bit of richness to the soup, I added a tablespoon of "better than bouillon" chicken seasoning. Once all this is combined, add in one large onion chopped and one stalk of celery chopped that has been sauteed  in a couple of tablespoons of olive oil. Let everything cook down and then adjust the seasonings to taste. If you want a more "smoky" flavor, add a little smoked paprika.  Enjoy!