June 14, 2014 New Recipe: Chicken and apricot skewers, fried rice, jicama salad shortcake fruit desserts

June 14, 2014 New Recipe: Chicken and apricot skewers, fried rice, jicama salad shortcake fruit desserts

We invited Cynthia and Ricardo for dinner tonight.  Melissa searched the internet for a recipe that included chicken and apricots to use the fresh apricots, since we had picked lots of them from Megan’s tree and found a Thai recipe using coconut milk, jalapeno and yogurt marinade and grilling the chicken with the apricots on skewers.  Here is the recipe:

I had a can of coconut milk but not many of the other ingredients, so I went to Trader Joe’s on Saturday morning and bought European yogurt. creamy peanut butter, boneless organic chicken thigh meat, and 8 artichokes.  Then I drove to Total Wine and bought three bottles of 2013 D’Auberbois rosé and three bottles of Marques de Riscal Rueda and a bottle of Anjou rosé.  Then I drove to Pro’s Ranch market and bought limes, squash blossoms, a couple of jalapeno’s ($.67/lb.) and cilantro.

When I arrived home Melissa said we should make the marinade and start the chicken marinating.  She cut the chicken into large cubes and chopped up the jalapenos. Because of the large amount of chicken, we doubled the recipe.  We added the first six ingredients as the recipe directed into the Waring blender and pulsed them (the coconut milk, yogurt, peanut butter, garlic, lime juice, light brown sugar).  Then we added the cilantro and jalapenos and pulsed them together.  The mixture seemed to be missing something so I looked in our Thai cookbook and realized that the sauce was missing that salty pungent flavor of fish sauce. I added about 2 Tbsps. of fish sauce and a bit more lime juice and the sauce took on a completely different and more wonderful flavor.  We then put the chicken cubes in a gallon freezer bag with about 2/3 of the marinade and put the rest into a container for a dipping sauce for the grilled skewers.

I also boiled the artichokes for fifty minutes and left them on the stove in the water.

Later in the afternoon I talked to Cynthia and she said she had made some jicama slaw last night so we decided they would bring the jicama slaw and a bottle of white Bordeaux wine.

I had picked up a lot of berries yesterday, at a meeting and then stopped at Sprouts and bought shortbread cups.  On Thursday evening we had picked up blueberries and raspberries at Costco and container of whipping cream, so I told Cynthia we would prepare a berry dessert and the menu was set.  Except I had a nagging feeling we needed a starch.  I had PPI boiled rice in the fridge in the garage and so I decided to make fried rice.  We decided to grill the artichokes.  So, we needed a dipping sauce for the artichokes, also.

Suzette had a huge Father’s Day celebration at the Center for Ageless Living in Los Lunas, but I went down for a nap at 3:20 and Suzette followed shortly when she arrived home.

We went to the kitchen at 5:00 to start cooking.  I pitted and cut in half 18 apricots and chopped up the rest for cobbler.  Then I made the artichoke dipping sauce with about ¼ cup of chopped fresh dill, about 2/3 cup of mayonnaise and the juice of 1 lemon and a pinch of salt.  I cut the artichokes in half and paid them into a pyrex baking dish into which Suzette had poured some olive oil and a bit of sea salt to coat the artichokes with oil.

Then I started on the fried rice.  Suzette made an egg pancake with two eggs, while I sliced three green onions, six or seven stalks of old asparagus. four or five fresh shitake mushrooms, and 1 Tbsp. of fresh ginger.  Melissa chopped up the PPI grilled scapes that had been stored in the rice pot.

Suzette and Melissa soaked the eight bamboos we had in water.  When Cynthia came she brought additional skewers and Melissa skewered the marinated chicken cubes and apricots using two skewers for each brochette so they could be flipped easily.

Ricardo made us all wonderful mojitos and we walked around the garden so Cynthia, the landscape architect would inspect.

 

We then returned to the kitchen and Suzette cooked the egg pancake I started the rice with some of the peanut oil that Suzette had used in the wok to cook the egg pancake and added some sesame oil and chili oil and then the chopped asparagus and then the mushrooms and scapes and ginger.  I then added about two cups of cooked rice and cubed the egg pancake and added dashes of Chinese cooking wine, rice vinegar, and sweet soy sauce, and then turned off the heat while Suzette and Melissa grilled the chicken skewers and basted them with the marinade and then grilled the artichokes on the upper rack of the grill so they would not burn.

Cynthia’s jicama slaw included julienned jicama, carrots, and red cabbage in a light dressing of vinegar, cumin, and sugar.

The skewers were to be garnished with roasted peanuts and cilantro sprigs, but I could not find the raw peanuts.  Suzette suggested that we use piñon nuts, so I heated about ¼ cup of piñon nuts in a dry skillet until they were toasted to brown and Melissa tore cilantro leaves from the stalks and we garnished the grilled skewers We put the artichoke dipping sauce and the chicken dipping sauce into bowls and put them on the table and I heated the fried rice and after Melissa garnished we were ready to eat.  I opened the bottle of Mouton Cadet that Cynthia and Ricardo brought and put the fried rice into a bowl and the skewers on a platter and Cynthia’s bowl of jicama slaw and Suzette set the table and we were ready to eat.

 

Needless to say, we all enjoyed dinner the Thai flavored chicken and fresh poached apricots were delicious.  The slaw was a perfect complement and like a Thai cold salad and the fried rice was surprisingly good, with its combination of garlic scapes, asparagus, egg, shitake mushroom, and green onion.

After we drank the Bordeaux, I poured a bottle of 2011 Marques de Riscal Rueda and everyone liked it also. Several days ago i discussed the history of Rueda and how Riscal, almost single handed, created the Denominacion de Origen for this new wine district in the upper Duero Valley in Spain.  It is a great story about how tradition, recognition of quality strong international brand acceptance and distribution and political stroke combined in a good way to create something wonderful; putting this wonderful new white wine on our table for $11.99 a bottle (Total Wine).

After we ate all of the food and sat for a bit to finish the Rueda, we all returned to the kitchen everyone went into action to create our dessert.  Melissa washed the pots and cooking gear and loaded the dish washer while I plated up the shortcake cups and drizzled Grand Marnier and cognac into each cup and Ricardo and Cynthia cut up the strawberries and pitted the fresh picked cherries from Ioanna's tree and filled a large bowl with raspberries, blueberries, cherries, and strawberries and Cynthia added honey and lemon to the fruit, while Suzette made stiff fresh whipped cream with heavy cream, powdered sugar and a dash of vanilla.  I fetched a bottle of La Granja Cava (a bargain at $7.99 at Trader Joe's) and Suzette fetched champagne glasses and we returned to the table and ate a lovely dessert and sipped champagne.  Cava does not have the complexity of French champagne with its characteristic mixture of chardonnay, Pinot Meunier and pinot noir grapes, but its lack of complexity was exactly what I wanted to allow the intense fruit, cognac, cream flavors dominate the dessert course  and  went perfectly with  as the conversation flowed until 10:30 when we all said goodnight.

Here is some more wikipedia info on Cava:

Cava (Catalan pronunciation: [ˈkaβə], plural caves) sparkling wine of Denominación de Origen (DO) status, most of which is produced in Catalonia. It may be white (blanco) or rosé (rosado). The macabeu, parellada and xarel·lo are the most popular and traditional grape varieties for producing cava.^[1] Only wines produced in the champenoise traditional method may be labelled cavas, those produced by other processes may only be called "sparkling wines" (vinos espumosos). About 95% of all cava is produced in the Penedès area in Catalonia, with the village of Sant Sadurní d'Anoia being home to many of Spain's largest production houses.^[2] 

Bon Appétit