Sunday, September 02, 2007

Karen's Chicken Potato Paradigm

My wife recently started eating meat after a ten year hiatus. I took a portion of the hiatus with her, but I jumped back into the meat world three years ago. My first meal: leg of lab, medium rare.

Needless to say, my wife's a bit more tentative. So far, she's tried chicken breast. Even then, she's iffy. She has rules:

1. The chicken must be skinless and cut away from the bone.
2. The chicken must be slathered with BBQ sauce.
3. The chicken must be served with potatoes.

The chicken-potato thing drives me crazy. She simply will not eat chicken unless it is served with potatoes. I call this Karen's Chicken Potato Paradigm (KCPP) and, to be honest, it terrifies me: Clearly, I am the normal person in this marriage. This is not necessarily a calming thought.

Anyway, lately I've been thinking about how I might disrupt KCPP. One thing my wife is swayed by is deliciousness. For example, a few weeks ago, she happily ate a chicken breast with a delicious corn risotto. (We bought fresh Silver King corn from Lancaster.)

Friday night I had soaked a pot of rice. So I went out on a limb and brined some chicken. Then I went on a run and thought about how to sway my wife. Simply slathering the chicken with BBQ sauce wouldn't work because she would then demand potatoes. So I tried to think of an ingredient that was definitively anti-potato, but also pro-chicken, a sauce that might induce her to eat chicken with a simple pot of rice. Somewhere around mile two, I alighted upon my key ingredient: Coconut. Since my mom, a lavender addict, was coming over for dinner I added a bit of lavender to the mix...

Lavender Coconut Sauce

1 tablespoons extra virgin coconut oil
1 onion, thinly sliced
1/2 teaspoon turmeric
1/2 teaspoon fresh ground cumin
1/2 teaspoon sweet paprika
1/2 cup dry white wine
1 14 oz. can full-fat coconut milk
2 teaspoons grade b maple syrup
2 tablespoons fresh lavender, chopped
1 tablespoon fresh squeezed lemon juice
1 teaspoon freshly grated lemon zest
Sea salt and fresh ground pepper

Warm oil in a medium saute pan over medium heat. Add the onion and saute gently for 5-7 minutes until soft and translucent. Add the turmeric, cumin, and paprika, increase the heat to medium-high, and saute 1-2 minutes. Add the white wine. Simmer for two minutes Add the coconut milk, maple syrup, lavender, lemon juice, lemon zest, 1/2 teaspoon salt, and fresh ground pepper to taste.

Simmer for ten minutes. Let cool. Puree in a blender until smooth. Pour back into pan and simmer until thick. Adjust seasonings to taste.

Serve as a dipping sauce for roasted chicken to suspicious wife.

4 comments:

Steve said...

I don't know what the problem was that you guys weren't eating meat for so long. What the hell? Welcome to the game.

I've been all about organ meat lately, mostly kidney and liver. I have a friend in rabbinical school who currenlty learning how to perform kosher slaughtering. He used our kitchen to cook the first chicken he slaughtered because his then-pregnant wife couldn't stand the smell of roasting chicken. I was a bit dissapointed when I tried a small piece of the heart meat- it just tasted kinda like chicken.

Karen said...

I admit that my Chicken Potato Paradigm is a bit strange.

I admit too that I loved this sauce.

I admit that I would be really freaked out standing in that kitchen watching Steve, post-slaughter, nibbling on a chicken heart.

Seth Pollins said...

Mmm, chicken heart.

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