Easy Cheesy Jalfrezi Chicken

I got a really positive response to my last quick 'n easy chicken recipe (or at least no one skewered me for using *gasp* a can of soup), so I figured I'd post this one too.

This time around, I used a jar of Seeds of Change jalfrezi cooking sauce. I got some samples from them a while back, but I've gone back and bought more of the jalfrezi. The best way I can describe it is that it's curry for people who aren't sure they like curry. It's got a teeny bit of heat and hints of typical Indian flavors, but it's not in-your-face.

What it is, though, is really, really tasty. Flavorful. Scrumptious.

And then I added a can of (gasp!) cheddar cheese soup.

My first experience with canned cheddar cheese soup was when my mom invite me over for dinner and she was giggling with delight about her new cheese sauce recipe that she used on the broccoli.

Prior to that, she generally didn't put cheese sauce on vegetables. Sometimes she'd sprinkle a little cheese on top of hot broccoli or cauliflower and let it melt, but she never made a sauce.

Until this one time. She gloated. She cooed. She rubbed her hands with glee. She was over-the-moon about her recipe and she waited until dinner was over and she asked me to guess what was in the sauce. And finally she announced that it was nothing but undiluted canned cheddar cheese soup.

Well, how about that.

Once I wrapped my head around the fact that it was nothing but canned soup, I had to admit that it totally worked.

These days, I don't use a lot of canned soup, but lately I've been using it in some slow cooker recipes. Because ... hey, why not?

Easy Cheesy Jalfrezi Chicken

1 tablespoon olive oil
8 bone-in, skin-on chicken thighs (about 4 pounds)
1 onion, diced or chopped
1 orange or red bell pepper, cored, and diced or chopped
1 jar Seeds of Change Jalfrezi sauce
1 can cheddar cheese soup
1 teaspoon salt*
1 bag frozen broccoli florets (about 14 ounces, depending on brand)

If you have a slow cooker with a browning feature, heat the olive oil in the cooker and brown the chicken, skin-side down. You might need to do this in batches. If your slow cooker doesn't have a browning feature, brown the chicken in a pan on the stove, then transfer to the slow cooker. If there's a lot of fat in the slow cooker, drain most of it before continuing.

Add the onion and bell pepper and cook for a few minutes in the pan or slow cooker, stirring as needed.

Add the  jalfrezi sauce, cheese soup, and salt. Stir to mix it all together. If you like, you can mix them prior to added to the slow cooker - depending on whether you think washing a bowl is easier, or trying to stir stuff in a fairly full slow cooker.

Cook on high heat until the chicken and vegetables are cooked through - 2-3 hours on high, depending on your slow cooker. Add the broccoli, stir to combine, and continue cooking until the broccoli is done to your liking. It will be crisp-tender and warm in about 15 minutes. If you prefer it cooked until tender, plan for another 15 minutes.

Serve hot. I served it with rice to soak up the sauce.

*Before you point out that canned soup is salty, I totally agree. It's salty - for soup. But for my taste, it's not quite salty enough for 4 pounds of chicken and another pound or so of vegetables. If you don't believe me (which is fine - I don't always believe me!) then leave the salt out until the chicken is cooked and give it a taste. Keep in mind that the broccoli is going in the pool, too. And adjust the saltiness to your taste.

The Perfect Chai

Like Indian food? Want to make it at home?

The Cafe Spice Cookbook touts 84 "quick and easy Indian recipes for everyday meals," and the chef who wrote the book says that ingredients are readily available. That's good news, because I've grumbled that some Indian cookbooks require ingredients that have to be purchased in specialty stores.

Indian recipes typically use a lot of spices, but they're all common enough. The problem I had with other Indian cookbooks was that some of them required specific spice mixes like garam masala or chaat masala. This book does, too, but it also gives recipes to make those mixes yourself.

If you're near an Indian market or you have the mix in your pantry, you can use that - if you can't buy the mix, you can make your own from spices that are easy to find. A simple thing like that makes this book a lot easier to cook from. A lot.

The book also has a recipe for Ginger-Garlic paste, which is another item that is common in Indian cooking and sold at Indian grocers - but again, if you don't live near an Indian grocer, you can make your own.

The very first recipe that caught my eye was the Chicken Tikka Masala, and the second was the Tandoori Spiced Roasted Chicken. Another recipe I have bookmarked is a veggie sloppy joe - I don't think I'll serve it as a sandwich as suggested, but it sounds like it would be a really good vegetable stew.

But I decided to start with something simple, before I launched into one of the more complicated recipes.

Chai seemed about as simple as it could get, and I like chai. When I went digging through my stash of tea, I realized I didn't have any plain black tea. I did have a ginger-peach black tea, so I figured I'd give that a try, since the chai used ginger.

The chai was good, but the peach flavor in the tea I had was a little too strong in the finished drink. It would have been a lot better if I had used a plain black tea - I suggest that if you make this, you use the right tea

The Perfect Chai
Adapted from The Cafe Spice Cookbook by Hari Nayak

2 cups water
1/4 teaspoon fennel seeds
1 1-inch piece fresh peeled ginger, lightly crushed
6 green cardamom pods, crushed
1/2 cup milk
2 teaspoons loose black tea, or 1 teabag black tea (like English breakfast tea)
Sugar, for serving

Put the water, fennel seeds, ginger, and cardamom pods in a saucepan and bring to a boil on high heat.

Lower the heat to medium and boil for another minute.

Add the milk, let it return to a boil, then take it off the heat and add the black tea. Cover the pot and let the tea steep for 3 minutes.

Pour the mixture through a strainer into 2 teacups. Add sugar, as desired.

I received this book from the publisher at no cost to me.

Broccoli with Garlic, Ginger, and Lime

Okay, I'll admit it. I like vegetables pretty plain. A little salt, some butter, and I'm good. Maybe some lemon juice. But that's about it, most of the time.

That doesn't mean I don't like seasoned vegetables. It's just that most of the time I'm spending my time (and creativity) on the main dish, and I don't want the vegetables to compete.

This time, though, I decided to try some crazy broccoli from the cookbook Spices and Seasons. Not only does this have a lot of flavor, it's got some extra color thanks to the red onions.

The original recipe included 1/2 cup of toasted cashews tossed on top of the broccoli before serving. I didn't add them, but feel free. Other nuts would be good, too. I'm thinking walnuts or pecans would be tasty.

And the nuts would add a nice crunch to the dish. I might give that a try next time.

Meanwhile, I've got a whole lot of other recipes bookmarked to try later, including more vegetables, chicken, lamb, and even bread.

What I like about this book is that although the recipes have Indian flavors, they're accessible to most home cooks - the recipes aren't too complicated, and the ingredients are all pretty easy to find. So you can plan on cooking something and actually make it after a quick shopping trip rather than having to go on a treasure hunt.

And, although you can now find a lot of the spice mixes you need at spice shops, this book has recipes for blending your own, if that's what you want to do. Or, at least you'll know what in them.

But for now, we have broccoli ...

Broccoli with Garlic, Ginger, and Lime
Adapted from Spices & Seasons by Rinku Bhattacharya

2 tablespoons olive oil
1 red onion, diced
1/2 teaspoon sugar
1 tablespoon finely chopped ginger
2 garlic cloves, minced
1 1/2 pounds broccoli, cut in bite-size pieces
Salt, to taste
1/2 teaspoon red pepper flakes
2 tablespoons fresh lime juice

Heat the oil in a large skillet on medium heat for about 30 seconds, then add the onion and cook for a few minutes, then add the sugar and continue cooking until the onion softens and begins to brown a bit.

Stir in the ginger and garlic and cook for another minute or so until they're golden - but watch carefully and stir often so you don't burn them.

Add the broccoli and salt. Continue cooking, stirring as needed, until the broccoli is done to your liking. Add the red pepper flakes and lime juice, stir and cook for just a few moments more. Serve hot.

Tandoori Chicken, Channa Masala, and Ginger Lentil Rice

When I got Flavors of My World by Maneet Chauhan, I thought it was interesting that her book was "A culinary journey through 25 countries." I figured, hey, she travels a lot, so this must be her favorite recipes from places she has visited.

Nuh uh. These are fusion recipes, taking traditional fare from other countries and then adding an Indian twist to them. Some are much more twisted than others.

To be perfectly honest, I found this book a little hard to cook from. I suppose if I was well-versed in Indian cooking, it would have been easier. But there's no glossary or explanation of what the ingredients are, so I needed to look things up online.

That said, the recipes and photos all looked good, and someone who regularly cooks Indian food would probably have a better idea what gur is or where to buy a sheet of vark or what a ginger-garlic paste is supposed to be.

I just found it puzzling that this book didn't explain these things to make the recipes easier for folks who are new to cooking Indian cuisine.

If you're willing to take this book as a sometimes-loose guide to this fusion cuisine, I'm sure you'll breeze through the inconsistencies and do what you want.

But if you need a step-by-step guide with specific and detailed instructions, you'll get a little frustrated. Fortunately, you can look up herbs, spices, vegetables, and substitutions online.

I finally decided to make tandoori chicken since I had almost everything I needed. I didn't have tandoori masala, but I did have Penzey's tandoori seasoning. I figured it was close enough.

And while the recipe called for 4 chicken breasts, I used half of a large chicken, instead. I cut it into pieces before cooking.

Tandoori Chicken
Adapted from Flavors of My World by Maneet Chauhan

3 tablespoons vegetable oil
1 teaspoon ground coriander
1 teaspoon ground cumin
1 teaspoon ground turmeric
1 teaspoon ground cayenne pepper
1 tablespoon tandoori masala (I used tandoori seasoning from Penzey's)
1 cup plain yogurt (I used plain Greek-style yogurt)
2 tablespoons lemon juice
4 cloves garlic, minced
2 tablespoons minced ginger
1 teaspoon salt
4 chicken breasts* (I used half of a chicken, cut up)

Heat the oil on medium heat in a small pan. This is just for toasting the spices, so you don't need anything too big. Add the coriander, cumin, turmeric, cayenne pepper, and tandoori seasoning. Cook, stirring almost continuously for 2-3 minutes, until the spices are fragrant. Watch it carefully - burned spices are not a good thing. Don't ask my how I know that.

Transfer the spice mixture to a medium bowl (something that will hold all the chicken) and set aside until the spices have cooled to room temperature.

Add the yogurt and whisk to combine, then add the lemon juice, garlic, ginger and salt and give it another stir to combine everything.

Add the chicken and move it around in the marinade to coat it. Cover the bowl and transfer to the refrigerator. (Or you can transfer it to a suitable lidded plastic container or a plastic bag - whichever is better for your refrigerator space.)

Let the chicken marinate for at least an hour, and up to 6 hours, if you prefer.

When you reach the 8-hour mark, you're risking that the chicken will develop an odd texture, so you don't want to do this the day before.

Preheat your grill (I did this outdoors, but a grill pan should also be okay.) Cook the chicken on indirect heat until cooked through (use a thermometer). How long this will take depends on how hot your grill is, and also how bit the piece of chicken are.

The great thing about cooking on a grill is that for something like a cut-up chicken you can move the smaller pieces to a cooler part of the grill while you keep the larger pieces closer to the fire. The chicken I bought was pretty big -- even though I cut the breast into three pieces, those pieces were pretty big.

When you take the chicken off the grill, let it rest for at least 5 minutes before you cut into it.

In the book, this chicken was used in bahn mi sandwiches, but we ate it as is on the first night, and made tacos with the leftovers. How's that for fusion cuisine?

*A similar recipe that I used to make years ago required boneless, skinless breasts, and was cooked in the oven. The coating formed a crust of sorts. For this recipe, the chicken I used had both skin and bones. Use what you like. I'm guessing this recipe would also work well in the oven.

And now for some sides

I recently received some samples from a company called Tasty Bites and figured  this would be the perfect chance to try a few of them. I thought the channa masala and ginger lentil rice would pair well with the chicken.

These products are shelf-stable and can be cooked in the microwave or in the pouch in boiling water. They're fully cooked, so you just need to heat them up.

It's nice that there's not a lot of extra packaging - I've seen similar foods that put the cooking pouch into a box.

The channa masala was a spicy chickpea dish in a tomato-based sauce. Definitely spicy. This was a great side dish, but it would also be wonderful as a vegetarian meal on top of some rice (which would also temper the spice level).

The ginger lentil rice had a good punch of ginger flavor - there was no way you could miss that. The lentils added texture and contrasting color to the dish. It was a nice spicy side, but I think next time I'd pair with with a less-spicy main dish. Three different spicy items was just a little too much. But this would have been great with some broiled shrimp or a simple pork roast.

So farm those are the only products I've tried, but I imagine the others are similar. I don't normally buy pre-made products like these, but I can see how they'd be handy to have on hand.

Disclosure: I received the cookbook from the publisher and the side dishes from the food company. I was not required to write a post about them.