Saturday Night Chicken
Behold the lowly chicken breast...
When one is attempting to reduce the size of one's physique, one becomes so familiar with this humble piece of unfatted protein as to want to weep with ennui.
However, one can think of it as boredom on a plate, or one can think of it as a blank canvas into which one may pour one's own creative fervor.
Or something like that.
The challenge--how to turn this overly familiar chunk o' chicken into something succulent, savory and deliciously exotic.
I assembled a variety of sauce stuffs and the whirligig device of my choice--a blender, because I don't have a food processor, but you could use either.
The basis of this sauce is another humble ingredient...Peanut butter.
This is Skippy Natural, creamy style, which has less oil and less sugar than your average peanut butter, thus skimming even more calories off this recipe, and amplifying the taste of just peanuts. The nice thing about it is that you don't need to stir it--their homogenization process takes care of that typical-of-natural-peanut-butter issue quite nicely.
Throw this in the blender with rice wine vinegar, soy sauce, sesame oil, sugar (or Splenda) and ginger, and give it a whirly.
You then cut up your chicken into chunks...
sauce it well...
and toss it into the oven at 350F for 30 minutes.
In the meantime, take the remaining sauce and set it aside, garnished with a bit of scallion, for dipping.
In the meantime, start a pot of rice, replacing the water in the recipe with chicken broth, and adding the rest of the scallions, a drizzle of sesame oil and a dollop of ginger paste. Cook it as usual.
When the chicken is done, skewer a few chunks onto several skewers, sprinkle with sesame seeds, and plate with the rice and a vegetable of your own choice. I'm personally fond of snap peas.
My husband had two enthusiastic servings.
Always a good sign.
X-posted to food_porn