quick meal

Chicken, Tomato & Zucchini Packets

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One of the best things about this meal, besides being quick and simple, is that it is almost completely free of any kitchen clean up!  By baking the chicken and vegetables in little foil or parchment packages, you don’t have to worry about scrubbing down a pan that is coated with the remnants of roasted vegetables.  It felt so good to just wad up the foil and toss it in the trash!  I am sure Ben was thankful as he is almost always the one who does the dishes after dinner.

So, is this quick, simple and clean-up free meal any good?  I thought so.  The recipe is from Eating Well and is full of vegetables.  I love when a meal is heavy on warm cooked veggies.  Having a salad can be a good way to get your daily amount of vegetables, but it can often become monotonous.  This is a good way to actually incorporate vegetables into your main course instead of having a separate salad with your meal.

I used more tomatoes than called for in the recipe, replaced the cubanelle pepper with an anaheim, and only used one shallot since the ones at the grocery store were monsters!  These guys were huge.  I also made the great error of leaving out the mustard.  This came to my attention as they were coming out of the oven…not the best timing.  So, I just spread some mustard onto the chicken after it was cooked, and all was well.  I am sure it would have been better had I remembered the mustard earlier, but it didn’t ruin dinner.  I served the chicken with white rice, and so the liquid that remained in the packets was a good sauce despite its thin consistency.  Since I had it on hand I used dried thyme, but I think that fresh would give this a much better flavor.

Overall, a good, tasty meal that can be scaled down to make a quick dinner for 2. If you’re like me, finding recipes and cooking for 2 is often a challenge, unless you want leftovers for the rest of the week.  A reviewer on eatingwell.com said she doubled the ingredients and cooked everything in a Dutch oven, so that is another way to go to serve a larger crowd.  Enjoy!

Chicken, Tomato & Zucchini Packets

From Eatingwell.com

Ingredients

  • 4 boneless, skinless chicken breasts, (1 1/4-1 1/2 pounds)
  • 2 tablespoons whole-grain mustard
  • 2 small zucchini, thinly sliced
  • 2 sweet banana peppers, or cubanelle peppers, cut into 1-inch pieces (I used 1 anaheim)
  • 2 shallots, thinly sliced (I used 1)
  • 1 1/2 cups halved grape or cherry tomatoes
  • 4 teaspoons extra-virgin olive oil
  • 1 tablespoon chopped fresh thyme, or 1 teaspoon dried
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt
  • 1/4 teaspoon freshly ground pepper

Directions

  1. Preheat oven to 400°F.
  2. For the foil packets you will need 4 pieces of foil, about 18 inches in length.
  3. Place a chicken breast in the center of one piece of foil and spread with mustard.
  4. Toss zucchini, peppers, shallots, tomatoes, oil, thyme, salt and pepper in a large bowl. Place about 1 1/4 cups of the vegetable mixture on top of each piece of chicken.
  5. Close the packet to cover the ingredients. Starting at the top, seal the packet by folding the edges together in a series of small, tight folds. Twist the tip of the packet and tuck it underneath to help keep the packet closed. Place the packets on a large rimmed baking sheet (packets may overlap slightly). Bake until the vegetables are tender and an instant-read thermometer inserted into the thickest part of the chicken registers 165°F, about 25 minutes. (Carefully open one package to check for doneness and be cautious of the steam.) Let the packets rest unopened for 5 minutes before serving.

Dinner Rush: Shrimp with Mango Sauce and Quinoa Salad

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The school year is about to begin!  My first day of teacher prep began today, so my casual lifestyle with tons of free time is about to come to an abrupt and unpleasant end.  Taking 8 months off from work to take a couple of part time jobs was pretty great.  It enabled me to move in to our new house and spend time getting things organized and just like I wanted them, running errands as needed, going to the gym whenever I wanted to, playing with the dog, baking and cooking without time restraints, perusing the Internet at my leisure and blogging whenever I pleased!  These days are sadly over.  I will miss you, my lazy life.

I must somehow move on to my new life with a positive attitude and a determination to somehow manage a full time job and the rest of the things I need and want to do.  Hold on, there are women who have more demanding jobs than I do, AND they have children, AND they’re members of groups and clubs, AND they take care of their house, AND they cook dinner, AND do laundry, AND blog!  If they can do it, then measly little me can do it!

I will not allow my new Monday thru Friday, 8-5 (or 6 some days) job keep me from making dinner on the weeknights.  I will also not stoop to macaroni and cheese from a box or putting a frozen pizza in the oven.  I WILL make real dinner!  So, every week I will make, review and blog about quick and easy dinner recipes that can be accomplished by a full time working woman…like I will be as of August 24.

shrimp2

These recipes come from Epicurious Dinner Rush from issues of Gourmet and SELF.  They are both quite delicious.  The most time consuming thing about them is the chopping and prep.  I modified the quinoa recipe quite a bit after speaking with my wiser and younger sister, Sarah, who told me that the preparation of the quinoa in the actual recipe was a bit ridiculous.  I hadn’t ever used quinoa before, so I thought the process of washing it 5 times in cold water, cooking for 10 minutes in boiling water and then steaming it in a sieve for 10 minutes above the boiling water was normal!  Turns out, all you have to do is cook the quinoa as you would rice.  Hooray!  That little change made this dish much faster.

There is a recipe for lime and cumin dressing that goes with the salad, but I didn’t use it.  Instead of the olive oil based dressing, I simply tossed the salad with lime juice, cumin and some kosher salt.  I found the salad to be incredibly light and refreshing.  I thought about adding chopped tomatoes, but opted not to this time.  It would be delicious, though, so I may try it next time.  Here is the original recipe.

Shrimp is always a good choice for a quick meal.  Shrimp cooks quickly, just 2-3 per side, in a hot skillet.  The mango sauce has a great combination of flavors.  Sweet, spicy and perfect with the shrimp.  I served the sauce warm, but it would be good chilled also.  Here is the recipe from epicurious.

I served this meal with a few warmed corn tortillas, so Ben made shrimp tacos.  I liked it better without the tortillas, Ben liked his taco version better.  I think he likes when all the components of a meal come together in a nice little package.  He likes burritos, sandwiches, pizza, stromboli, lasagna, enchiladas, chimichangas and always seems to mix the food on his plate into a new casserole type dish.

This is a fairly quick recipe, and definitely a good choice for a weeknight dinner.

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