Sasha's Kitchen: Sesame Chicken with Edamame Coconut Rice

I love making at home styled chinese dishes.  It's so much healthier than actual chinese food, and the sauces are delicious when you make them fresh yourself.  I've invented some of my own recipes, which are basically stir fries, but this one came from Janice's Cole's new book Chicken And Egg, a book of all chicken and egg recipes. I'm happy to report that I'm finally going to be taking another cooking class at the Brooklyn Kitchen, and this one is a chinese dumpling class on December 4th. Should be a lot of fun!

As far as this recipe goes, it's for a stir-fried style sesame chicken.  I made it a second time with beef and it was equally good that was as well. It's a health dish, with a delicious hoisin-based sauce and is as fresh as the vegetables and high quality meat that you use in the dish. The original recipe called for mushrooms as well, but I left that out and added a yellow zucchini instead.

Sesame Chicken with Edamame Coconut Rice
Rice
1 cup jasmine rice
1 14 oz can lite coconut milk
1/4 cup water
1/4 tsp kosher salt
1 cup frozen edamame beans

Sauce
1/4 cup plus 2 T hoisin sauce
1/4 cup plus 2 T orange juice
1 T sesame seeds
2 T soy sauce
1/2 tsp dark sesame oil
1/4 tsp Asian chile hot sauce

Stir Fry
2 T canola oil
1 lb chicken breasts, cut up into 1 inch pieces
2 cups cut up broccoli
1 large onion cut into wedges
1 red bell pepper, cut into one inch pieces
3 garlic cloves, diced
1 T minced ginger
1/4 cup chopped cilantro
1 T sesame seeds
1 yellow zucchini, cut up into slices

To make the rice, put the coconut milk, water and rice and salt in a saucepan.  Stir and bring to a gentle boil, covered, over medium heat.  Reduce to low and simmer for 15 minutes.  Stir in the edamame and cook until the liquid is absorbed and the edamame is tender, about another five minutes.

Combine the ingredients for the sauce and set aside.

Heat half the canola oil in a skillet, wok or stir fry pan. Cook the chicken for 3-5 minutes and set aside.  Add the reaming canola oil and add the broccoli, zucchini onion and bell pepper and cook for about 3 minutes on medium high heat until the vegetables begin to soften.  Add the ginger and garlic to a separate pan and cook for about a minutes before adding to the other vegetables. Stir fry for a few more minutes until all the veggies are crisp-tender. Add the sauce and bring to a boil to coat everything.  Stir in the cilantro and remaining sesame seeds, and serve with a side of the coconut rice.

Sasha's Kitchen: Sesame Chicken with Edamame Coconut Rice

Sasha's Kitchen: Chicken Pineapple Stir Fry

Here's another quick and easy recipe for a chicken dinner with a bit of tropical pineapple goodness. This is a recipe that I pretty much made up at the time, and worked out quite well. It is also easy to make, so it is perfect for a weeknight dinner. There's nothing especially breathtaking or spectacular about this dish, but it does the trick to feed your family and tastes delicious when you are juggling other responsibilities on a busy night.

Sasha's Pineapple Chicken Stir Fry
Package of chicken breasts (I used Empire)
1/3 of a cup low sodium soy sauce
1 tsp sesame oil
1/2 of worcestershire sauce
1 T lime juice
2 T dried lemongrass
1 can of diced pineapple
several handfuls of sugar snap peas
salt and pepper to season

To prepare the dish, cut of the chicken breasts in small pieces. Add to a small amount of olive oil in a non-stick stir fry pan. In addition, add the soy sauce, sesame oil, salt and pepper, lime juice, lemongrass and worcestershire sauce to the pan and stir fry the chicken over medium heat until it is cooked through. About two thirds of the way through this process, add the pineapple and the sugar snap peas, and continue cooking until they are both cooked, but not overdone to the point where they lose their color.  Serve with coconut rice.

Sasha's Kitchen: Chicken Pineapple Stir Fry