Chicken Adventure Round 2

My evening classes have officially started this week so now I'm forced to do a lot of meal planning and I'm also back to cooking our entire meal for the entire week during the weekends and stuffing them in the freezer for later use. I love to cook and I prefer to make our meals each night but when there's so much going on, I prefer something convenient which is not always the healthy choice so in order to avoid getting take-out or stopping at McDonald's I spend one afternoon cooking each weekend. I guess it also helps me save because then I don't have to buy my lunch. I guess cooking is my little me time. No, I don't have a life. I won't until the term is over anyway.

So this week, here's what I have in store. Again it's another chicken adventure.

For starters, we're off to Mexico with arroz con pollo. I didn't have a recipe, I was going by how I imagined arroz con pollo would have tasted like. I just sauteed some chicken pieces in crushed tinned tomatoes, garlic, onion, cumin, oregano, chili pepper flakes and seasoned it with a pocket of Sazon Goya. I then added a cup of long grain rice and 2 cups of chicken stock (I used home-made of course!). To make it look pretty and taste fresh, I also added some chopped cilantro. It takes about 30 minutes to make. We ended up eating this for dinner though because I was a little bit worried about freezing the rice.



Then after that, we're off to India. Nope, it's Vancouver actually. This is Vij's family chicken curry but as usual I didn't follow the recipe exactly. I don't feel like typing the recipe so I just made a link to Barbara Jo's Books to Cook's test kitchen blog which by the way is an excellent cookbook store if you're ever in Vancouver. It is a cookbook addict's paradise. Back to the recipe, I made short cuts here and there because I didn't have all of the ingredients listed in the cookbook but hey, the result wasn't too shabby.



Next, I tried to recreate Morocco. I've never been there but Mr. Cat has, the disappointing thing about it though is he does not remember what the food was like. I sauteed some chicken thighs in onion, garlic, harrissa, cumin, cinnamon, ginger powder, ras el hanout and a tablespoon of honey. I don't know what got into my head but I also added some fresh apricots. It sure smelled amazing. I'm sure looking forward to this.



This should have been a chicken adobo, so I sort of get to come home to the Philippines but I run out of vinegar so I ended up making Thai red curry instead. Thai red curry is one of those 30 minute things you can whip up when you're a little bit pressed for time, that is if you're using store bought paste.



If you want a step by step video on how to make the real thing, check out Hanuman's video. He is the Thai food master at Recipezaar.



Yes, we're eating a lot of chicken. Sometimes I wonder why we still don't have wings and feathers. If only the growth hormone will seep into my bones and make me grow taller.