Honey Lime Chicken

It's usually pretty rare that I have all ingredients necessary for any new recipe I want to try. Trying a new recipe usually requires a trip to the grocery store to buy some specialty ingredient that I would never think to have on hand and may never use in another recipe again. Tonight however there was the perfect storm of ingredients and I actually had everything on hand (namely limes and jalapenos) necessary to make this Honey Lime Roast Chicken in this month's issue of Food Network Magazine. Yes, yes, I know, it's more chicken! But this chicken was 98 cents a pound and the recipe looked tasty so there you go.

The only change I made was that I used split chicken breasts instead of half chickens and I didn't have regular thyme so I used my lemon thyme from the herb garden. Not really major changes at all.

The chicken was delicious and came out looking really similar to the picture (as you can see from above).  I served it with rice and roasted broccoli. Kevin declared that it was 'the bomb'.

Shrimp and Chicken Etouffee

Picture from the food network website, I forgot to take pictures of my dish. Mine wasn't nearly this pretty.

I got this recipe from the January '10 issue of the Food Network magazine.

I've never tried making etouffee before. I rarely do anything involving a roux or involving more than one type of meat (unless I'm doing shishkabobs). So this was definitely a branch out recipe for me. 

I did make a few substitutions. I did not have any chicken broth on hand so I used chicken stock instead and supplemented it with half a bottle of beer and a half cup of water to get to the full 4 cups of liquid that it asks for. I only had frozen shrimp on hand so I threw those into the oven for about 10 minutes to precook and dethaw to make it possible to peel them later. I also served over just regular jasmine rice instead of the toasted nutty rice shown in the picture.

I did a analysis on the recipe to get the nutritional data (I'm trying to keep track of the calories I eat) and if I did it right each serving of the etouffee (not including the rice) come in at around 493 calories. Just a little FYI for those that care.

On to the important bit. Was it good? It was. It was damned tasty. I had a very generous bowlful and Kevin ate at least 2.5. We also had it for dinner again last night (I made it on Sunday) and it was just as good the second time around (just less appealing once the soup congeals up). Be warned, this pot makes up a LOT of food so serve it when you have guests or be ready to freeze at least half of it. I did the freezing bit and hopefully it will be a thing to have on hand to thaw out on those nights where I just don't feel like cooking.

It was a bit of work as far as browning the meat and shredding the chicken and making the roux but nothing so advanced that I felt like this recipe was out of my range. I would love to make it for a group of friends sometime, but that will have to wait until Kev and I have a real kitchen where we can entertain folks.Until then, it will have to live out it's life as leftovers.