Mango Chicken

Somehow I ended up with yet another case of mangoes. Huh. Guess I'll just have to try some new mango-y things!

Last night I made mango chicken, with no recipe, as an experiment. There are a few things I would tweak, but in general it was darn good! I didn't really measure as I went, so these are guesstimates.

Ingredients:

1 chicken breast per person (4), sliced into bite sized strips

1/4 cup lime juice

2 Tbsp coconut oil

1/4 cup soy sauce

3 cloves garlic

2 chopped mangoes, 1/2 mango reserved fresh for garnish

2 Tbsp. brown sugar

red pepper flakes

1/4 cup flour

1/2 can coconut milk

First I dried and dredged my chicken in flour. I heated my pan to med-high and let the coconut oil melt and heat up. In went the chicken for some browning. It doesn't need to be fully cooked, just nicely browned for flavor. At the end of this step toss in your chopped garlic to soften it a bit.

I turned down the heat to about medium and sloshed in the lime juice and soy sauce to deglaze the pan. Make sure to scrape up all the little browned bits on the bottom of the pan! They are tasty! Now you can put in the brown sugar, coconut milk and the chopped mango. Give it a good stir, cover, and let it simmer until the chicken is cooked through and the mango starts to get a little bit mushy.

Just before you decide it's done give it a taste. You may want more lime juice or more brown sugar. Put in the red pepper flakes to taste. Give it a good stir, it should have thicken up a bit. You should probably taste it again. Just to make sure. And then one more bite? Ok, ok, serve yourself a plateful already! Top it with the fresh mango for some oh-so-pretty color.

I served this with brown rice and brussles sprouts. I used this recipe, which was surprisingly good. I kind of want to add turkey bacon to it next time though!

This was a very flavorful and filling meal. I'll be trying it again, maybe with some tweaking. Less soy sauce? Dried shredded coconut mixed in? Oh the possibilities!

This is my island, in the sun...oi oi!

Is it hot where you are? Cuz it's hot here!!! So hot, that i have been loathe to do any exercising. Actually I haven't moved much yet today, and it's almost 5pm! (Please remember that I am a baker, and work from 9:30pm until 3am. I'm not as lazy as all that!) I think it might be cooling off a bit now, and the ocean breeze is making it's way up from the coast. Ahhh!

This morning (2pm-ish ;) i tried to eat a bit of blueberry bran muffin that B made at work last night, but it seemed to stick to my mouth. Not because it wasn't delicious and moist, because it was, but because of the heat! So, after downing a few bites i gave up and just drank my tea. Of course, this lack of breakfast meant that i was ravenous an hour later. Luckily we have been doing lots of shopping lately, and have tons of wonderful fresh fruit in the house. I ended up with a bowl of chopped strawberries, honey mangoe, and cherries with a little lime juice sprinkled over the top. I thought this whole luscious bowl of goodness was for me, but when B came over to see what i was up to i suddenly only had half a bowl full. Ah well. The point is, it was amazing! I'm sorry i didn't manage a picture of this, but it was gone so fast!

Last night, to beat the heat, B made a big shrimp and scape salad for dinner (which is likely what we'll have tonight too). Here it is in all it's glory!


Not the prettiest thing ever, but sooo good! lettuce, mushroom, cucumber, avocado, toasted almonds, mangoe, and a saute of shrimp and scapes. What is a scape you ask?

Scapes are the shoots and flowers from growing garlic. I had never heard of these until this week! My father-in-law says they're called scapes because after you eat them everyone want to 'scape from your breath! Ha ha! Not sure how much truth there is in that one. There is a garlic farm down the road from us, and they gave a lovely bag of these to us! Yay! They have a mild garlicky flavor, and can be eaten raw or cooked. We just chopped them up and tossed them in with the shrimp for a quick saute, chilled it, then tossed it on the salad. What a great new discovery!

I'm not sure what the rest of today holds for me, but i think i see a smoothie on the horizon. I bought some vanilla rice milk in town, and we have strawberries that need to be eaten. Oooh, i might be having smoothie sooner than i thought, it sounds good!

I also need to give poor Izzie, my dog, a bath and a haircut. Then, it'll be off to work for me, although it is my Friday! Hurray!

When it's super hot like this, what do you guys have for dinner? Just wondering.

Well, have a happy evening all, until next time!