Crikey!
It has been a while since the last post - partly from being too busy with work but mostly from being overseas. I have been in Canada visiting family - Toronto and Vancover mostly with a short stopover in San Francisco. My advice in short, don't go to Canada if you are expecting a luscious array of good food and coffee. Rich and I looked long and hard for these and came up mostly lacking. In the next post I will do a quick rundown on what was on offer and some recommendations on what is worthwhile.
Part of the inspiration for this dinnerlastnight is the lack of vegetables we experienced overseas. The vegetable mainstay of North America seems to be the potato - for breakfast, lunch, dinner and everywhere in between. Our first dinner at home after the trip had to make up for our vegetable deficiency.
Ingredients for this dish were green beans, carrot, button mushrooms, rocket, garlic, birds eye chilli, broccoli, chicken breast, roma tomatoes, chilli oil, chat potatoes and spring onions.
Preparation:
Top and tail the a bit handful of green beans, slice a carrot and four or five broccoli flowerettes. Bring a saucepan of water to the boil and blanch the vegetables till tender but still crunchy. Plunge the blanched vegetables into iced water to halt the cooking process and set aside.
One of the best things you could buy is a microwave vegetable steamer. If you don't have one go out and buy one right now! You can use it to precook potatoes for the perfect baked/bbq potatoes or vegetables for salads as in this case. Throw three or four large chat potatoes into the steamer, add a little water, cover and microwave on high for five minutes. This should cook the potatoes enough to slice and still hold their shape. Slice the potatoes into discs
Marinate the cubed chicken breast in the chilli oil. Slice a clove of garlic and a birds eye chilli. Heat a little oil in a frypad and fry the garlic and chilli until fragrant. Add chicken and fry until cooked through. Once cooked throw in some sliced spring onion and toss.
In a large salad bowl place the cooked vegetables, torn rocket leaves, sliced tomato, quartered button mushrooms and chicken mixture. Toss salad with fresh cracked pepper and sea salt. Add more chilli oil if necessary and toss again. Serve with a slice of rye bread.
dinnerlastnight rating: 6/10
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