Recipes of the week
I tried two new recipes tonight, one for wheat berry and chick pea stew, the other for a tandoori chicken, both from the Weight Watchers New Complete Cookbook.
Wheat berries being what they are, that required a couple of hours to cook, and I needed to get the marinade going on the chicken, so I did all the prep when I got up this morning to be sure I'd actually get it done in a reasonable amount of time. My usual cooking practice is to vastly underestimate the time for mise en place, thus leaving me to eat dinner at approximately 10PM.
The stew has a vegetable stock base, with mirepoix veggies, garlic and the chipotle chillies and you simmer the wheat berries for twoish hours to soften them up. It's a little spicier than most things I eat, but most people would think it quite mild, probably. I dosed it with some of the plain yogurt left over from the marinade to calm it down a little.
The chicken is not bad, but hardly tandoori. The lack of a tandoori oven in my house might have something to do with that. It's got a nice mustardy sauce with cumin, and I added a bit of tarragaon, as well, primarily to dress up the colour a bit, since it was so hideously babyshit brown to start with. Low calorie though, since there's no fat anywhere in it except what little is left in the chicken after you take all the visible fat off.
I also made the roasted asparagus again, and this time successfully managed not to burn it. Yay for that!
Culinary Advice Note: when you're chopping chipotle en adobo, and you accidentally dunk your finger in it, don't lick your finger off. Because that would be stupid. And painful.