Tandoori Chicken with Sweet and Spicy Stirfry

Summary

I recently bought a bunch of spices of of Penzey's, and decided to screw around with some of them to get a feel for the flavors. After watching House of Flying Daggers last night, I had intense craving for Chinese food, and yes, I realize tandoori has nothing to do with China. I was feeling [i]hungry[/i], not intellectual.

Servings: 4 (or 3 starving college students)

Ingredients

The players:

• 1 cup brown rice
• 1 white onion
• 1 red bell pepper
• 1 green bell pepper
• 1 cup plain non-fat yogurt
• 2 cups frozen corn
• 2 carrots
• 2 chicken breasts
• Chinese Five Spice
• Tandoori Spice
• Soy Sauce
• Bangkok Padang Peanut Sauce
• Sriracha
• Flogging Molly playing in the background. Yes, I know.

Brown Rice

Brown rice takes a long time to cook, nearly 50-60 minutes. I got it going, then went to the store to buy the yogurt, because I had no clue how to make tandoori until after I started the rice. When the brown rice was done, I drizzled a small amount of peanut sauce over the rice for a tiny bit of spice and a nice jazmine/peanut aroma, and then dashed some soy sauce in to keep it moist while everything else was cooking.

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Stirfry Vegetable Prep

I threw the chicken breasts into boiling water, and diced up the vegetables save for the tomato. I have no clue why the tomato is in the picture, that cheeky bugger.

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The chopped up onion went in first with a couple tablespoons of vegetable oil to get soft and translucent. I wanted the onions to be a background flavor, not really noticeable, while keeping the other vegetables crisp. So when the onions were pretty much ready, I dumped in the rest with a couple tablespoons of soy sauce. I used too much five spice at this point, but it came out really well. I'd recommend less than a teaspoon, but it's really a taste thing. Five spice to taste!

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Tandoori Chicken

I turned the heat off of the vegetables and let them sit on the burner. To make the tandoori, take 1 cup of yogurt and add tandoori spice. I used 3 teaspoons, and that made a good flavorful mixture. If I had wanted to make it a spicy tandoori, I would have bumped it up to 4 teaspoons and added ground chili peppers.

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When the chicken is done, shred it all up. I use two forks and that seems to work well. Add the chicken to the tandoori mixture and toss thoroughly. About this time, I cooked the corn.

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With a frying pan on medium, I scooped the chicken in and poured as much on top as I could get out. Then I cranked the heat up to high and let that sucker go!

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While that was boiling happily away, I added the rice and corn to the vegetables and squirted a healthy serving of sriracha over the whole concoction. The camera decided to do a flyby!

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I let the tandoori liquids reduce down for a few minutes before serving, piping hot.

Presentation

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It's not the prettiest coloring of a meal, but it was tasty! The tandoori was smooth and meaty. The stirfry was sweet at first, then had quick soy flavoring and then WHAM spicy that sticks to the back of your throat! I dipped the chicken in sriracha, because I'm a sucker for hot stuff.

I love meals like this because it's pretty healthy for heart-conscious people like myself. I use very little soy sauce and no salt, so the sodium is pretty low. The yogurt I made the tandoori with was non-fat, and I don't even put a lot of vegetable oil in. Brown rice is great for you, and how about them veggies? Plus if I portion it right, it will be my dinner for 4 nights in a row.