Barbecue sauce-slathered chicken thighs with a surprising ingredient.
These chicken thighs get roasted in the oven in no time flat, and slathered with a barbecue sauce that has an unlikely ingredient.
Peanut butter.
Make that creamy, too, not chunky.
It’s the taste of the American South meets Indonesia.
“Roasted Chicken Thighs with Peanut Butter Barbecue Sauce” is a fun and delightful recipe by Kay Chun, a recipe developer and editor, that was printed in the New York Times.
Not just for sandwiches with jelly.
The peanut butter really thickens up this barbecue sauce, giving it a nutty, rich taste reminiscent of satay, but with added sweetness, spiciness and tang.
I think Prince would have definitely approved of these Brussels sprouts, don’t you?
With vivid purple streaks, these beauties were grown by Covilli Organics, a family-owned, fair trade-certified farm in Mexico. I snagged them recently in my grocery deliver order from GoodEggs.
They’re slightly sweeter and a little less bitter-sulfur in taste. And yes, the purple will fade a bit once cooked.
Still, what a marvel these are. I typically halve Brussels sprouts, and place them cut-side down in a cast-iron pan on the stove-top to cook or on a sheet pan in an oven at high temperature. But a new sprout called out for a new technique to try.
No surprise, I found what I was looking for in the seminal “Vegetable Literacy” (Ten Speed Press, 2014) by Deborah Madison, the founding chef of San Francisco’s Greens, the pioneering plant-forward restaurant.
Her “Slivered Brussels Sprouts Roasted with Shallots” is a very simple recipe. The only part that takes any real effort is slicing the sprouts with a mandoline.
A tasty Thai noodle dish — with a little tweaking.
Far from it for me to disparage this “Drunken Noodles with Chicken” recipe from America’s Test Kitchen.
But I think someone might have been hitting the sauce when writing this one.
America’s Test Kitchen, with its meticulous and detailed recipe testing, is typically the holy grail. But when I saw that this recipe that uses 8 ounces of noodles called for half a cup of brown sugar in the sauce, I was aghast. A tablespoon or two maybe. But half a cup?!?
Still, because I like to adhere to new recipes exactly the first time I make them, I followed suit. The result was what I feared — noodles as sweet as candy. Definitely not what you want. The noodles also were swimming in that sauce.
So, the next time, I cut the sauce amount in half, but kept the quantities the same for everything else. What I ended up with was far more delicious and balanced.
Chicken gets marinated in soy sauce, then roasted on one pan with fresh pineapple and baby bok choy.
My childhood memories of Chinese soy sauce chicken revolve around my mom trekking to a deli in San Francisco Chinatown with me toddling by her side. There, she’d carefully point to a plump one hanging in the window, which would get chopped ferociously with a cleaver into manageable pieces, and wrapped up in a takeout box for our dinner that night.
At home, I’d help plug in the rice cooker for fresh steamed white rice, while my mom stir-fried some asparagus, bok choy or gai lan from the fridge. It was the makings for a quick, simple, and satisfying weeknight family meal.
Pineapple was not something she’d necessarily think to pair with it. But thankfully, food writer Cathy Erway, whose mother hails from pineapple-growing Taiwan, had that light-bulb moment. Because like Tom Cruise to Renee Zellweger in “Jerry Maguire,” pineapple completes soy sauce chicken.
The fresh juicy chunks add sweetness and tropical bright acidity, providing another level of flavor to the soy-caramelized chicken. After all, who among us doesn’t zero in on the pineapple pieces in a dish of sweet and sour pork, right? Best yet, Erway makes this complete dish in a sheet pan in the oven for utmost convenience.
“Mom’s Soy Sauce Chicken with Pineapple and Bok Choy” is from her new cookbook, “Sheet Pan Chicken: 50 Simple and Satisfying Ways to Cook Dinner” (Ten Speed Press). Erway, a Brooklyn-based James Beard Award-winning writer, has created 50 recipes for everyone’s favorite protein using the “it” method of laying it all on a sheet pan, sliding it into the oven, and forgetting about it until the timer goes off.
Pecorino focaccia gets even more delicious depth with fresh rosemary and Pazazz apples.
Think of this as a subtle riff on a cheddar apple pie.
Because this focaccia that’s loaded with salty-nutty tasting Pecorino also gets a pretty crowning touch of thinly sliced, sweet apple rings over the top.
This tender, airy Italian bread started out life simply as “Cheese Focaccia.”
But when life gives you a bounty of fresh, crunchy, and juicy Pazazz apples, you want to put them on simply everything.
After all, these delicious apples, a relative of the popular Honeycrisp, are a great source of fiber, too. In fact, the American Institute for Cancer Research has joined with Pazazz apples in the fight against cancer. February is National Cancer Awareness Month, the perfect time to double-down on a diet rich in healthful foods such as apples.
Red-skinned with sunshine-yellow striations, the Pazazz is a relative of the Honeycrisp.
You can do your part even further by uploading your photo to the Pazazz superhero filter here, and Pazazz will donate $1 to the American Institute for Cancer Research. Or simply text PAZ to 797979 to generate the $1 donation, too.
Find Pazazz apples now through summer at local Safeway stores. Then, get ready to bake a big pan of this focaccia.
