Oriental Grilled Chicken Pasta with Fresh Vegetables

Two elements played strong roles in this Friday Night's Challenge: hot weather and fresh vegetables. Both tended to serve the Challenge well. 


The hot weather sent me out the kitchen and onto the deck to the grill. This meant some pre-seasoning of the good things for tonight's menu. I decided to go oriental since a sesame taste was beckoning me.


I mixed up a marinade of canola oil, chili sesame oil, sesame oil, soy sauce, and a generous portion of ginger sesame spice.


Using some heavy-duty foil, I made a pocket and coated it with canola oil. Then I added in a layer of the first ingredient, chicken, that was coarsely chopped. I poured a bit of the marinade over this. For the next layer, I broke into 3 inch pieces whole wheat pasta, and poured a bit more of the marinade. I then added coarsely chopped zucchini, red bell pepper, tomatoes, and off the cob corn. 


Everything was put together on the grill. I wasn't too sure about grilling pasta, but with the natural juices from the veggies and the moisture of the chicken, it did just fine. It also nicely soaked up the mild sesame flavor.


Easy to do; easy to fix. Gotta love this time of year with all the freshness of our food...be sure to enjoy!

Spam Time! for the Friday Night Challenge

It seems the lines are clearly drawn when it comes to Spam--people either really like it or detest it. There's just not much area in between. I happened to be married to a nice guy that really likes Spam. Plain Spam, Spicy Spam, you name it--it's all good. So when it was time for a Friday Night Challenge, he asked if he could play along and name Spam for one of the ingredients. Well, of course! And so he did. The other four ingredients were:

Velveeta cheese, pineapple, water chestnuts, and avocado

It was way too hot to heat much up in the kitchen and what's nicer to have than a grill in the summer? So, with little hesitation, I coarsely chopped the avocado, the water chestnuts, and the Spam into bite-sized pieces. I kept the pineapple in slices--pineapple and a grill just really get along well, so why mess with what works? Once the avocado was tender and the rest of everything else warmed through and a bit caramelized, it was time to remove it from the grill and add some thin slices of pepper jack Velveeta and let it do some serious melting. 

My Spam man agreed it was pretty darned good!

Friday Night Challenge: Balsamic-Seared Tuna Steaks

After a cool-down period of over a week, I was ready to get the Friday Night Challenge up and running once again. It is summertime, after all and that means grill weather! (The calendar doesn't show it yet, but the temperatures in the 90's do!) 
Here are the ingredients that came my way for this week:
tuna, artichoke, lettuce, strawberries, feta cheese, mushrooms


Here is the finished product:

And here's the recipe:


Take one jar of artichoke hearts, one jar of shiitake mushrooms, 1/2 dozen sliced button mushrooms. Toss all these together and place in a foil packet with some salt, a sprinkle of olive oil, and a dash of balsamic vinegar. Place on the grill on low heat and let cook for around 15 minutes.


Take tuna steaks and slice to about 1/2-3/4" thickness. Add a bit of salt, a sprinkle of olive oil, and balsamic vinegar. Drop on the grill--that's it. Watch them until they just start to lose their pinkness. Don't cook any longer or they'll dry out.


For the salad (another very easy to fix item): take lettuce (any kind you prefer). Slice some strawberries thinly.   (Earlier I fixed some strawberries the regular way, i.e. sliced and sugared a bit--needed the syrup for the dressing, and besides--dessert, anyone?) Pull the lettuce into bite-sized pieces, place the strawberry slices on the lettuce bed, sprinkle some crumbled Feta cheese over the salad, and then add the simple dressing of the strawberry syrup, a bit of balsamic vinegar, and olive oil. Yep, that's it!


If you need something quick yet substantial for a meal, this is an easy fix and it tastes great with the addition of olive oil, balsamic vinegar, a bit of salt. 


Enjoy!