Wednesday Dinner - Chicken Satay

Tonight's menu:

• Sauteed chicken with peanut dipping sauce
• Cucumber salad
• Basmati rice

This dinner was extremely satisfying. The chicken is based on a Thai dish, but we used a recipe from my files that called for sauteeing the chicken rather than grilling it (since grilling is rather unpleasant in 20-degree weather). Unfortunately, I don't know where the recipe came from so I can't give proper attribution. If you've seen it somewhere, let me know!

The ingredients (for 4 servings) are:

• 1.5 lbs chicken cutlets
• 1 tsp Asian chili sauce
• 1 tbsp soy sauce
• 1 tbsp rice vinegar
• 2 tsp lime juice
• 2 tsp brown sugar
• 1/2 cup creamy peanut butter
• 1/4 cup hot water

Cooking it was very simple. We just sauteed the chicken in oil until it was browned on both sides and cooked through. Then we mixed all the other ingredients together for the dipping sauce, and it was done! The cucumbers were just sliced and mixed with a little rice vinegar, lime juice, and brown sugar. A fast, easy, and delicious meal.

Oh, I almost forgot to mention the rice. Normally I wouldn't even comment on cooking plain rice but tonight we discovered a new method that was so great we were both raving about the rice...just the rice! The instructions, from startcooking.com, involve adding some butter to the rice as it's cooking, and the butter makes a huge difference. The rice came out creamy and wonderful. If you've never cooked rice this way, I definitely suggest trying it.

A quick note: I really liked the peanut dipping sauce, but Matt thought it was too rich and too peanut-y. I'm thinking this could be toned down some by thinning it with extra water. It was a little thick for a dipping sauce, so maybe we'll try that next time.

Daily Dinner - A Meal in a Tomato

Tonight's menu:

• Stuffed tomatoes with golden crumb topping
• Steamed green beans

This meal was so easy to make! There was a good deal of chopping and prep work, but then the food basically cooked itself. And I love a dish whose ingredients are a meal in themselves. This tomato dish included vegetables, grains, and protein and in one pretty, round little package. Fun!

The one thing I had trouble with (and of course I opted to try it instead of letting Matt do the dirty work) was hollowing out the tomatoes. I did get firm tomatoes as called for in the recipe, but it was still tricky to scoop out the insides without ripping through the tomato wall. The recipe suggested using a melon baller, which we do not own (kind of ironic I suppose, given my nickname). Maybe I'll get one and try that next time.

I will also say that this recipe had a little too much "golden crumb topping" for my taste. Not that I don't love toasted bread crumbs with olive oil, garlic, and parmesan...I most certainly do! But it kind of overpowered the stuffing, which was really good. I think if we make this dish again I'll cut the bread crumbs in half. After all, they're meant to be a topping, not the whole dish.

All in all, we rate this a 3.5 star meal...great idea, tasted good, but needs a little tweaking.

Daily Dinner - Asian-Inspired Take on a Classic

Tonight's menu:

• Asian "Salisbury" steak on a bed of wilted watercress
• Brown rice with red bell pepper garnish

It drives me crazy when recipes give a "total time" of, say, 30 minutes but then half the ingredients listed need some kind of preparation (chopping, slicing, peeling, etc.) that isn't included in the given time. So a dish that is supposed to take 30 minutes to make ends up taking 45. This was one of those dishes, but fortunately with two of us cooking we can split up the tasks and it goes much faster. We got this one finished about 40 minutes from the time we walked in the door. Not bad, and certainly a manageable amount of time for a weeknight dinner.

The recipe itself was pretty good, but the sauce was a little sweet for my taste. We added some garlic to the steak, because we are of the opinion that garlic makes everything better. And it did.

Also, these instructions from Steve Pavlina's blog are our favorite method for cooking brown rice. It comes out perfect every time!