Thursday, March 3, 2011

Birdseed and Chicken Skewers

I get sucked in by some of those catch words these days.  I saw this bag of multi-grain rice and the words "rich in dietary fiber" caught my attention.  Fiber, fiber, fiber, are you getting enough fiber in your diet?  I don't know, but I figured I should give this a try and see how it tastes.  When I opened the bag, it released a scent similar to birdseed, and when Chris saw me pouring it out, he said, "What's that stuff?  Looks like birdseed."  But into the rice cooker it went following the directions on the bag of 1 cup rice to 2 cups water and 1 tbsp cooking oil.  
To help out my rice experiment, I thought some well seasoned chicken skewers might be right.  

1 1/2 lbs boneless chicken thighs, cut into large bite sized pieces
3 tbsp fish sauce
2 tbsp sweet soy sauce
1 tbsp rice wine
1 tbsp brown sugar
1 tsp oil
6-8 fresh kaffir lime leaves
1" piece of ginger
1 large shallot
2 lemongrass stalks
20 or so red basil leaves

Crumble the lime leaves in your hands to release the scent.  Slice the ginger and smash.  Cut the shallots into large piece and smash.  Cut lemongrass into 2" sections and smash.  Combine all the ingredients together in a large zip lock bag and let marinate overnight.

Soak bamboo skewers in water.  Skewer the chicken pieces.  Since it's still raining too hard outside to grill, I decided to broil the chicken.  Not as good, but still ok.  

I served the rice with pickled fennel, pickled carrots, some fresh cilantro and a poached egg on top along with roasted brussel sprouts.  Birdseed came out great.  Nutty and good texture.  Poached egg, can't go wrong.  Pickled vegetable, a favorite.  Brussel sprouts like candy to me.  Chicken always comes through.

1 comment:

  1. Mary, I heard you have a trick to finding kaffir lime leaves. Something about them being illegal and you have to use a code word? Do tell...