I get a bit of a kick from coming up with something new to cook. Often, it will start with me pondering on what's in the fridge as I wander round the supermarket, and before long I've come up with something to create. It's often something I've cooked before, but every now and then I'll start thinking about trying this with that and what if I did that and lo - a new meal is born.
To be honest, this isn't a dramatically DIFFERENT meal. You've almost definitely had these flavours together before, maybe even with chicken and rice. In fact, it started as I was walking around Tesco clutching a pack of chicken breasts, pre-marinated in chilli, ginger and lime and thinking about how you usually lost the flavour in these pre-marinated meats once you cooked them, and I was annoyed by that. So I put the pre-marinated stuff back, picked up some plain mini fillets, a bag of chillies and some fresh ginger and hopped off home, determined to make something tasty and healthy.
This was so tasty - and the sauce I made tasted amazing, although I must confess I overdid the chilli. I usually deseed, but this time I thought I would be fine with only deseeding one chilli and it was spicy! Still tasty, mind, but if you aren't a spice fan just bear that in mind.
If you're doing Weight Watchers, unbelievably the sauce has NO points meaning this meal works out at a tiny 6 points per portion! It's packed full of veg and goodness, but it doesn't taste like rabbit food, so it's a winner.
Chilli, lime and ginger chicken rice
The sauce
2 red chillies (deseeded or not, depending on how spicy you like them)
20g fresh grated ginger
15g fresh coriander (one big handful)
1 tbsp soy sauce
2 cloves garlic, crushed
Zest and juice of one lime
2 tsp Truvia or artificial sweetener (regular sugar is also fine)
Splash of water
The rest
180g rice
300g chicken breast (chopped)
1 yellow pepper
1 pack sugar snap peas
1 pack spinach
1 red onion
8 mushrooms
1 tbsp soy sauce
Serves 4 / 5 Weight Watchers SmartPoints
1. Deseed and roughly chop your chillies, then add to a blender or food processor with the ginger, coriander, soy sauce, crushed garlic, lime zest and juice, sweetener and splash of water, and blend until it forms a sauce. I used my BlendActive with no problems.
2. Cook your rice according to the package instructions, then drain, rinse off the starch and set aside.
3. To a wok or non-stick frying pan, add your chicken along with a tablespoon of soy sauce, and cook until almost done
4. Add the onion, pepper and mushrooms and cook for about 10 minutes until all the veg is softened - pop a lid on if you can to speed this up
5. Throw the rice into the wok then pour the sauce over, stirring until everything is coated.
6. Serve with a wedge of lime and some fresh coriander.
PS - I know that rice is meant to kill you or something if you reheat it but if you like to live on the wild side like I do, this reheats really well.
This looks so good. My family are Persian and so I grew up eating reheated rice and haven't died yet - I didn't even realise that people thought it was a bad thing to do until last year or so! x
ReplyDeleteLilyLipstick
What a great tasty sounding recipe! The photos are simply mouthwatering!
ReplyDeleteI found your blog through 30plusblogs and wanted to say hello.
Carrie
http://www.cazmosworld.com