The Bride has returned to China for another month of business kicking butt. Meanwhile, that leaves me cooking for just myself again. I wasn't going to be home until after seven o' clock, which didn't leave me much time for marinating or prep. So the recipe needed to be simple, quick, and quickly flavored. The first recipe I came across that met such criteria was the Yakitori Chicken on page 254.
Sure enough, I wasn't home until well after 7:30. While at Kroger I made an executive decision that worked out quite well, but more on that later. Naturally, the first step was to make the marinade. I was excited because I was able to use mirin, which is an ingredient that has laid dormant since the last time I used it for this blog (a long time ago).
I set to work on the vegetables first. After work I only wanted to make one stop as I knew the dog was probably at home doing her best not to make a mess. I stopped by my neighborhood Kroger, and was rather disappointed to learn that they no longer carried pearl onions. In a hurry, I decided to use a big onion and cut it into wedges to simulate the size of pearl onions.
Boneless, skinless chicken breast (which is hard to buy at Kroger for just one person for one meal) was around six or seven dollars. Whole chicken breast - skin, bone, and all - was $2.12. I was going to cut it into cubes for kabobs anyway, so I went the cheaper route, removed the skin and bones (which took all of ten seconds), and then cut the now-boneless, skinless chicken breast into skewer-sized pieces.
I set them in the marinade and took the dog for a walk.
About an hour later I drained the marinade into a saucepan. The recipe calls for you to boil this for a minute (to remove those pesky prokaryotic nasties), but I boiled it for about ten minutes in order to reduce the marinade into a thicker sauce/dressing.
While the grill was warming up, I took my time and skewered the onions, bell pepper, and chicken.
Off the grill they smelled quite pleasant and delicious.
Remember my executive decision at Kroger? Here it is! I knew that I wanted to plate this over a bed of rice or something, but when I saw Kroger's salad bar, I realized that it would be nutritionally better to plate the final result over fresh greens. So I assembled a small salad for about two dollars and went about my business.
After removing the pieces from the skewers, I just placed them on top of the salad in the container that it came in. This meant I would have one less dish to wash, and because I was eating alone, what difference did it make that I was plating it?
I poured the dressing over the salad and was ready for my meal-for-one.
I am going to file this into the It Was Cool, I Liked It, But I Probably Won't Make It Again category. It was healthy, tasty, and interesting, but the most notable aspect of the meal was the dressing. I REALLY liked the dressing, but it was easily the most unhealthy part of the meal. It was basically everything that is wrong for you...a truckload of sodium, alcohol (the mirin), and oil. It was quite delicious, but not good for you. Otherwise, it was grilled boneless, skinless chicken breast, which can only get you so far on the excite-o-meter of life.
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