Crispy Chicken Tenders with Dijon Dipping Sauce

I strive for alliteration in my titles, can you tell?

I have been neglecting my posting. Life is full! But that's no excuse because people need to eat, and they need paleo recipes to do so! Good thing I'm not the only paleo blogger in town or we'd all be starving  :D I do have a long list of posts in mind, and I shall endeavor to get cracking with the actual writing of them down. So, without further ado, here's one that I've made at least 5 times since taking the picture of the first try and vowing that they were delicious enough to warrant a post. Chicken Nuggets! With Dipping Sauce!! Chicken is just so boring on it's own. It needs help. Help your chicken out.

  

Crispy Chicken Tenders with Dijon Dipping Sauce

I make mine coated in almond and coconut flour. I think they would be fine with just one or the other. A word of caution about the mustard. I made it once with a mustard that had some serious nasal clearing properties, and it was a bit much. Possibly horseradish? Anyway, pre-test your mustard is all I have to say.

 

Ingredients

Tenders

• 2 boneless chicken breasts
• ~ two handfuls of almond and/or coconut flour (I use roughly one each)
• seasonings, to taste (I use sea salt, pepper, and a bit of garlic powder)
• 1 egg

Dipping Sauce

• Two parts mustard (I use French's Original Dijon with Chardonay, pictured on the right...it's lovely, and I think it's paleo but for the Chardonay. You purists will just have to make your own mustard)
• One part honey
• 1/2 part olive oil
• ground ginger, to taste
• sea salt, to taste

1. Heat some olive oil in a pan. I use a bit more than normal so that my tenders are nice and crispy!
2. Get your batter ready. Mix flour and seasonings in a bowl, and beat an egg in a second bowl.
3. Slice your chicken in nugget sized pieces.
4. Coat each nugget in egg and then the flour mixture and toss in the pan (hmm..I just wondered for the first time if it wouldn't be sensible to mix the egg into the flour to make a batter, and then toss the chicken in it to coat.....gonna try that next time....)
5. Cook until crispy on both sides. Mine are done by the time I make the dipping sauce and tend to my side dish. I always crack open the thickest nugget just to be sure.
6. For the sauce, just stir everything together, taste it, and add whatever you think it needs to be worthy of your nuggets.
7. Dip and consume!

I would have loved these as a kid...SO much better than McD's.

Super simple "cream" of mushroom soup (with Chicken!)

As a brief aside before the food part, I don't have anything particularly wise to say about games wod #2. I do however wish to point out all of the most excellent efforts that went on at my gym. The plethora of people getting new max snatches under pressure was amazing. This was just the reason I was encouraging everyone to participate! so many people ended up surpassing their own expectations and, as usual, the support from everyone was outstanding. The atmosphere on games day is my favourite thing about the whole process :) Now if only someone could give me a cure for my compulsion to check the leaderboard constantly. Also, if someone could maybe go back in time and tell me to go to olympic lifting classes a bit more regularly so I could do a 100 lb snatch that would be super.

So food.

My mom used to make this tasty dish where she threw rice, porkchops, and cream of mushroom soup in a casserole dish in the oven. I had a craving for it last week and decided to try my own version. I didn't have a recipe so there was a large risk of wasting a can of coconut milk and two chicken breasts, not to mention being left without edible dinner, but it turned out splendidly. The coconut milk as a substitute for cream was not too coconutty, as I'd feared it might be, and the mushroom flavour was lovely.

"Cream" of mushroom soup with Chicken (and possibly "rice")

The prep for this is really quick, but you do have to leave it in the oven for a while. If I'd had more prep time I would have added cauliflower rice to the casserole but I was in a hurry.

Ingredients
2 chicken breasts, boneless/skinless (I think porkchops would also be yummy)
1 can coconut milk (and equal part water)
lots of mushrooms (I used cremini)
green pepper (or red, or some other vegetable you think might taste good)
salt and pepper to taste
garlic and onion powder, also to taste
green onions (would have added them if I'd had any)
cauliflower, riced (optional)

1. In a casserole dish, mix the coconut milk and water (less or more water depending how thick you like your soup). Use a dish of a size that the chicken/chops will be covered by liquid.
2. Chop up the mushrooms and green peppers and add to the casserole
3. Season with salt, pepper, garlic powder, and onion powder. Stir it up and add the chicken breasts.
4. If you want "rice", mulch up your cauliflower and add it too. I haven't made the dish with the cauliflower rice before, so I'm not sure about how much to add to keep the liquid ratio optimal. I think it would taste lovely though. Let me know if you try it!
5. Bake at about 350 for 30-40 minutes depending how thick your meat pieces are.
6. I think some green onions would garnish the dish nicely, but I had none.

Paleo Chinese food SUCCESS! Lemon chicken and Mushroom fried rice

My apartment is right next to a chinese food restaurant. And this place serves Seriously Good Chinese food. If it were gross, I could ignore it, but try having to walk past the smell of Seriously Good Chinese food wafting at you every time you come home, and then having to go inside and cook something for yourself that probably won't be quite so Seriously Good. This is after convincing yourself to pass by the Seriously Good Burrito place that's in between my apartment and where I park my car.

Because of this, I have been attempting to make my own lemon chicken since I moved here. And not some healthy smealthy lemon and rosemary seasoned grilled chicken breat with a side of steamed green beans. I'm talking about the kind with the weird, gelatinous, gloopy sauce that you just know is full of who knows what but is still somehow the most appealing thing ever dispite its weird gloopy nature. Well folks, after some disasters whereby I misunderstood the properties of arrowroot powder, I have succeeded, and it is glorious, because not only did I manage to make credible lemon chicken that made Ashley go "Tastes like Chinese food!", but I also made almost-actually-fools-you Mushroom Fried "Rice" to eat with it. You're welcome.

I can't take full credit for these recipes. I went searching for a recipe for chicken fried rice and found this wonderful entry at Paleo Effect. I modified their rice recipe a tad, and adapted their General Tso's Chicken recipe for the lemon chicken. Their wonderful guidance was what I was missing in my attempts to make sauce thickened with arrowroot. Previously, I was trying to make the sauce and then add the arrowroot near the end. Don't do that, everything goes sloooooop and blobs up into jello-like lemon clumps instead of sauce. And it's not as tasty as jello...

Lemon Chicken

Ingredients
2 chicken breasts, chopped into bitesized pieces

Batter:
2 tablespoons arrowroot
one egg
salt (the recipe called for coconut aminos, which is a soya sauce substitute, but darned if I know where to find these, other than ordering them)

Sauce:
2 tablespoons arrowroot
1 tablespoon honey
3 tablespoons coconut sugar (or more honey?)
~2/3 cup lemon juice
1/8 teaspooon ground ginger
1 tablespoon vinegar
salt (or coconut aminos) and garlic powder to taste

1. Stir up the chicken cubes with the batter, and fry in some oil (I used olive) until cooked and set aside.
2. Whisk the sauce ingredients together and pour into the hot pan. Stir for a couple of seconds and it will start to thicken right away (when it starts to boil I think?).
3. Add the chicken back in and stir the gloopy goodness all together.

Paleo Mushroom Fried "Rice"
This is a tasty stand-alone version of the plain cauliflower rice I normally make for stiring in with curries and other such runny sauce things. The oil combination isn't important, except for the sesame oil, which gives it the Chinese food vibe.

Ingredients
1/2 head cauliflower (makes enough for 2-3 servings)
lots of cremini mushrooms (or whatever sort you like)
sesame oil
coconut and/or olive oil
garlic/onion powder
salt to taste (or coconut aminos if you have them) and pepper

1. Chop mushrooms fairly small and sauté in some olive oil with garlic and onion powder and sea salt.
2. In the meantime, mulch up your cauliflower (I have a hand crank food processor, or use an electric one. There are also things called "ricers", apparently, or if you don't mind a mess you can just chop it up but there will be cauliflower everywhere, fair warning).
3. Add the "rice" in with the mushrooms once they're good and sautéd. Add a generous helping of sesame oil, and I also added some coconut oil for extra moisture. Add more salt and pepper if needed. I like salt.
4. Stir intermitently and fry until it's the desired tenderness. The original recipe also added a beaten egg and stirred that in but I left it out.

Serve together with the lemon chicken! Or apart, however you feel about these things.

I plan to try this next with orange juice on the chicken instead of lemon, stay tuned!

Creamy chicken avocado alfredo

I'm newly obsessed with the song "A Warrior's Call", by a Danish band called Volbeat. I've never heard of them before, but apparently they've been around since 2000 (says Wikipedia). Every time this song comes on the radio I feel a strong urge to get to the gym and lift/throw heavy things. My friend points out that while he wouldn't have thought of it on his own, it seems somehow fitting that the perfect crossfit anthem would be by a Scandinavian metal band. I'm going to have to add it to the request list for the Games workouts.

In other news, avocados are super! So versatile. When it was suggested to me that one could use them as a base for a creamy pasta sauce, I was sceptical, but it turned out to be delicious! The avocado somehow simulates the creaminess of a proper alfredo, it's marvelous. I cobbled together several internet-searched recipes and ended up with this pesto-alfredo hybrid. I ate mine over zucchini noodles but I think it would go well with spaghetti squash as well. Oh! OR perhaps as a cold salad with cucumbers and cherry tomatos...must try that.

Creamy chicken avocado alfredo
All of the sauce ingredients are to taste. I fail at measuring stuff. For the pesto I used my hand crank processor, which worked well. An electric one would have made it all smoother but I think I like the texture. This made enough for 2 meals.

Ingredients

2 chicken breasts
Garlic/onion powder, salt and pepper, and olive oil for the chicken
3 small zucchinis (or enough for two servings of noodles) (or spaghetti squash)

For the sauce:
1 ripe avocado
a small handful of fresh spinach
basil (I would have used fresh but I only had dried)
a good squirt of lemon juice (2-3 tablespoons, roughly?)
a smaller squirt of lime juice
olive oil (maybe a tablespoon)
some crushed walnuts for texture (about 2 tablespoons)
1 clove of garlic, chopped or minced
salt to taste

1. Chop chicken into bite-sized pieces. Season with salt, pepper, onion powder, garlic, etc, and saute in some olive oil.
2. If you're making zucchini noodles, boil some water, and cook them for about a minute and drain. I normally just let my sauce cook them, but this sauce isn't heated.
3. Meanwile, dump all of the pesto/alfredo ingredients into a food processor and blend well. I may have accidentally knocked some parmesan cheese in there as well...
4. Toss the sauce with the chicken and noodles and enjoy!

Warning: the internet says not to heat the avocado sauce, so if you made enough for leftovers, set aside your sauce separately and reheat the chicken/noodles on their own.

Spicy Citrus Coconut Chicken

I started out thinking I would make a creamy mushroom sauce for my chicken. But then I remembered I had some clementines threatening to shrivel, and no body wants to waste a good clementine (don't you hate when you pick one up that looks great on one side, just to find that it's covered in blue mold on the underside and threatening to contaminate the rest of the basket with its grossness?). So, I ditched the mushrooms, kept the creamy sauce part, and came up with this delightful concoction, if I do say so myself. It looks a little bland in colour because by the time I remembered about the red peppers I had planned to add, everything else was all ready. Also, I forgot the ginger, and felt the whole thing was slightly lacking, but I added it to my leftovers, and happily my lunch the next day was more complete. Ginger is always a good idea. Like bacon. Except bacon jelly beans, seriously, don't do it.

Spicy Citrus Coconut Chicken (with Cauliflower Rice)
This made 3 meals for me

Ingredients
1 can coconut milk
2 large chicken breasts
~ 3 tablespoons lime juice
~ 6 clementines (4 juiced, 2 for garnish)
~ 2 teaspoons chili flakes (more or less depending on your level of spiciness)
fresh ginger
a pinch of cumin (if you like that sort of thing)
1/2 head of cauliflower
leaks or onion
other veggies? (red bell peppers or snap peas, mayhaps?)

1. Sear the chicken breasts on both sides in olive/coconut oil for a couple of minutes and set aside.
2. Chop and saute the onion or leaks briefly. Also saute sliced peppers here, like I forgot to do.
3. Add coconut milk, ginger, lime juice, clementine juice, cumin (optional), salt to taste, and chili flakes. I recommend adding a small amount of the chili flakes at a time and taste testing, because the hotness seems to intensify as you go along. I put a bit too much for my liking.
4. Put the lid on and let simmer while you "rice the cauliflower" in your handy dandy hand crank food processor, or your electric one if you're one of those fancy folk.
5. I added my cauliflower to the sauce at this point to let it cook. Ashley tried this recipe after smelling my leftovers, and cooked hers a bit separately first with some chicken broth, then added it to the sauce at the end. Either way, the point is to get your cauliflower cooked somehow, so long as it ends up in the sauce at the end, because I've decided it's better that way.
6. Slice the chicken into bite sized pieces and add back into the sauce to finish cooking.
7. Add some clementine wedges, if you please, and serve! Ashley also added orange juice to her sauce concoction, by the way, and something else but I don't remember what....hm....oh well!

Banana Curry Chicken on Cauliflower Rice

You know what's awesome? Cauliflower rice. You know what else is awesome? Kitchen gadgets that can chop the cauliflower without it flying all over the kitchen. The first time I made the stuff I tried just chopping it, with the result that I had to actually sweep the floor afterward. I also tried grating on the mandoline, but cauliflower is too structurally unsound and, again, ended up all over the kitchen.

BUT THEN for Christmas mum got me a hand crank food processor thinger, in which the cauliflower was contained while I mulched it into rice format. AMAZING! Also, much cheaper than the fancy electric food processors.

Cauliflower rice is a really excellent substitute vessel for your meats and sauces. The texture is similar to rice, and it soaks up sauce flavours nicely so that the cauliflower taste is not overpowering (which is good, because I happen to think cauliflower is gross). It's also easy to make, albeit quite messy without the proper tools (thanks mom!!). I've tried it with a few different curries. I hadn't ever made curry in my previous life so I'm still trying to find a recipe that tastes as good as my favourite Indian restaurant (next time, I'm trying something with pineapple!). This recipe is the best one I've found so far, and was pretty darn tasty. Original recipe here.

Banana Curry Chicken

Ingredients
Sliced veggies (bell pepper, carrots, zuccini, etc)
Chicken breasts
Sea salt and fresh ground black pepper, to taste
1 large banana, peeled
1/2 cup light coconut milk
2 large scallions, sliced
1 tsp curry powder
1/2 tsp ground turmeric
1/4 tsp ground cinnamon
1/8 tsp ground cayenne pepper
1 tbsp grated fresh ginger
Fresh chopped cilantro, for garnish

1. Preheat oven to 425ºF. Place sliced vegetables and a chicken breast on a piece of foil. Season chicken with salt and black pepper.
2. In a blender (or with a fork), add banana, coconut milk, scallions, curry powder, turmeric, cinnamon, cayenne pepper and ginger and process (smoosh) until smooth. Pour banana-coconut milk mixture over each chicken breast, dividing evenly. Seal foil packets, place on a rimmed baking sheet and cook in oven for 22 to 25 minutes. Set aside to cool for a few minutes before opening. (NOTE: I had to cook mine much longer, perhaps they were thicker).

Cauliflower Rice

Mulch up some cauliflower until it's the size of rice grains. As per the discussion above, I recommend some sort of food processor. I haven't tried the blender but it might do. Heat a generous amount of coconut oil in a pan. Stir in the cauliflower to cover with oil. Cook with a lid on medium-low, stiring occasionally, until the cauliflower is the desired squishiness. I do mine for 15 minutes or so.

Tangy Orange Chicken

I stole the idea for this sauce from Ashley B's thanksgiving cranberry sauce. Mine is more orange and less cranberry so the effect is totally different. It's just the right amount of tart and sweet, and satisfies the craving for orange chicken from Manchu Wok. Crazy thought....would lemon juice instead of orange juice somehow make me some lemon chicken? I miss lemon chicken. Filing that idea for later.

The dish pictured below is the second iteration of this recipe, tried with pork instead of chicken. There weren't any fresh cranberries so I used dried. It was still tasty (although not quite as awesome), and slightly less paleo for the sugar in the dried fruit. Alas. I ate it with roasted sweet potato chips, which is my favourite side dish, and is good for when you're a bit too hungry to be totally satisfied by meat and greens. The first time I also made kale, which would have made the picture less ORANGE, but I was lazy this time. And I didn't have any Kale.

Orange Chicken

Ingredients
~1/2 can of orange juice concentrate, unsweetened (I'm quite sure actual orange juice or freshly squeezed oranges would be as good if not better)
- cranberries (fresh if you can, dried works too)
- 1 or 2 apples, peeled and diced
- boneless chicken breasts (or porkchops)

1. Heat the orange juice (diluted with equal parts water), cranberries, and diced apple in a pan that's large enough for your meat to fit in as well, and let simmer.
2. Sear the chicken in some olive oil in a separate pan. I have no idea if this is necessary, but I did this with the intention of keeping the juices in. The chicken was very juicy, perhaps the searing was responsible.
3. Add the chicken to the pan with the sauce and cover. I flipped the chicken repeatedly to cook both sides and to keep the top from drying out.

The time needed will depend on how thick your meat is. The chicken took probably 30 minutes or so, and the thinner porkchops were quicker. You're done when the meat is cooked, and the apples and cranberries are all squishy. The first time, the sauce reduced too much before the chicken was done, so I added more water as needed. The second time the pork cooked before the sauce was reduced, so I will reduce the sauce a bit more before adding the pork next time.

Roasted Sweet Potato Chips

1. Thinly slice a sweet potato. You can peel it but I never bother (although I do remove any sprouting roots or funky looking spots!).
2. Spread out on a cookie tray, and drizzle with a little bit of olive oil.
3. Season with sea salt and cracked pepper. Sometimes I also use garlic powder, and once I even used ginger!
4. Bake for about 20 minutes, flipping half way. If the potatoes are cooked but still too squishy, broil for a few minutes to crisp. I bake them until the thinnest parts start to burn.