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Lemon Dukkah Chicken Served on a Bed of Lentils, Capsicum and Corn

Happy Monday, everyone! Hope y’all had a lovely weekend and that your brand new week is starting out awesome

Today I thought I’d share a new dish I experimented with last week – lemon dukkah chicken on a bed of lentils, capsicum and corn! It turned out absolutely yum – the dusky, tangy taste of dukkah paired perfectly with fresh citrus-y lemons plucked straight off the tree in our yard. I’m loving that our crop of lemons is just about ripe and ready to go this year and I’m determined to make the most of them!

Baking chicken breasts is something I haven’t tried before and it’s so easy, I can’t believe I waited this long! The meat was so moist and juicy, I’m definitely going to be doing this a lot more in the future.

Side note: is it baking or roasting a chicken? For some reason, I notice people seem to identify putting an entire chicken into the oven as ‘roasting’, but when it comes to just putting it a few separate pieces, like the breasts or wings or thighs, it’s ‘baking’. And that’s how I usually end up referring to it as well! Which term do you prefer?

With the chicken out of the way, I turned my attention to the fillers of the meal. J isn’t the biggest fan of lentils so I don’t cook that often. But I decided since we’ve been so sick, it’s time we had something other than carb-heavy rice and pasta (our usual go-tos when we’re in a hurry or feeling lazy). Lentils was a perfect compromise (besides, I didn’t tell him we were having lentils until it was dinnertime). He still ate them anyway! Brown lentils can often look boring but this time round, paired with bright yellow corn and velvety red capsicum, the colours of our dinner dish really popped. So delish!

Lemon Dukkah Chicken Served on a Bed of Lentils, Capsicum and Corn (recipe makes 2 servings)

Ingredients:

Juice of 2 lemons
2 chicken breasts
1 can of lentils, drained
1 can of corn, drained
1 red capsicum, diced (or any other colour, it doesn’t really matter! I just chose red mainly for the aesthetic )
3 teaspoons of dukkah
2 tablespoons of olive oil
A dash of paprika
Parsley (optional – for garnish)

Directions:

Preheat oven to 180 Celsius degrees (about 356 Fahrenheits). Pour the juice of about 1 and a half lemons into a medium bowl, reserving the other half of a lemon for the lentils. Add the olive oil and about 2 and a half teaspoons of dukkah, mix well.

Prep a tray with a large piece of foil, big enough to fold around your chicken breasts. Spray foil with cooking spray. Wash and pat dry chicken breasts; dip each breast in your mixture of lemon juice, olive oil and dukkah, ensuring it is coated well on either side. place the breasts side by side on the foil and pour the remnants of the mixture over the breasts. Fold the foil around the breasts until securely wrapped and pop the tray into the oven. Roast for about 30 – 40 minutes or until chicken is cooked through.

While the chicken is cooking, heat a little oil in a frying pan. Turn the heat down to medium and add the lentils, corn and capsicum. Mix in the remaining juice of half a lemon, half a teaspoon of dukkah and dash of paprika. Cook for a minute or two before removing from pan and adding to serving plates. Garnish with a sprig of parsley and enjoy!

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Body

Half-Marathon Training (Weeks 13 &14)

April 13, 2014 1:23 am LEAVE A COMMENT MarilynChin

As I was down with the flu bug last week, I decided to combine the last two weeks of training in one post! It’s not been too great – illness combed with the sudden hot weather this week didn’t make me feel like working out much! Still, I’m glad I got quite a few workouts in each week – that’s what matters!

Just check out those pelicans being totally Zen in the sunset… I just had to stop and take a picture of them during my run There are also black swans further out, but it’s hard to make them out as they look small there – but black swans are usually pretty big – and fierce! You don’t want to mess with them!

This is what the past two weeks of training looked like:

March 31^st to April 6^th:

Monday: 8km run
Tuesday: 9km run
Wednesday: ½ hour swim
Thursday: 12km run
Friday: 45 minute swim
Saturday: Rest Day (sick)
Sunday: Rest Day (sick)

April 7^th to 13^th

Monday: Rest Day (sick)
Tuesday: Rest Day (sick)
Wednesday: 7.5km run
Thursday: 8km run/walk
Friday: Body Pump
Saturday: 7km run
Sunday: Day off (swim cancelled)

I was really peeved about losing four days out to sickness. The flu took a serious toll on me and when I got back into running when I was well enough again, it definitely felt like I’ve lost a bit of endurance just from taking four days off. Or perhaps it was just general malaise after being sick. I’m hoping the weather starts to cool down again soon and I can get back on track! The last three weeks just hasn’t been inspiring enough for me!

This Sunday, I was supposed to have a swim class but there seems to be some kind of mix-up with my enrollment so I had to sit it out. I’m hoping to get this sorted out soon so I can get back on track with swimming! Crossing my fingers someone will figure it out on Monday as the woman I was trying to deal with today was rather rude – no points to her for being polite and helpful as a staff member! Now to shrug that unpleasantness off my shoulders and have a lovely brunch with my friend instead!

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Kitchen

Recipe: Spring Pasta with Sugar Snap Peas and Red Chili

April 10, 2014 4:02 am LEAVE A COMMENT MarilynChin

This light, fresh pasta dish is simple, healthy and incredibly quick to throw together – just what I needed this week! It was also a chance for me to try some of our new fresh herbs in the garden courtesy of J’s mother. I’m really excited about having fresh garden herbs!

This is so yummy, even J liked it though it didn’t have any meat in it. It can be served either hot or cold, and is perfect for either spring or fall. I also love the bright green colour of the sugar snap peas as well as the loose peas (unfortunately, the peas didn’t feature in the picture above as they were a last minute quick addition.)

I also have a feeling that mozzarella is going to start featuring in more of my dishes. I recently bought a ball of mozzarella to use for pizzas a couple of weeks ago and I can’t get over how much better it is than the grated mozzarella that comes in resealable plastic bags. Fresh mozzarella anytime for me!

Speaking of healthy food, check out this article by Cassie White, a Sydney student who writes about her attempt to eat healthy on a $5 a day budget. I can commiserate with a lot of what Cassie has written – I too have struggled with trying to eat healthy while on a tiny budget and I can tell you it’s not easy. Eating healthy takes a lot of planning, a lot of time and it can take quite a lot of money as well. Getting your basic essentials together in the beginning can save you a ton of money in the long run but can be quite pricey at the start as well. I would also say that $5 might be stretching it a little – perhaps a flexible budget of about $10-15 a day might be more feasible? (Keeping in mind you might spend more in some weeks and less in others, depending on what you have to stock up on). But Cassie has shown it can be done, albeit with a few potholes and obstacles along the way, so be sure to check out her story and most especially her tips at the end of the article on how best to eat cheap and healthy!

And now onto the spring pasta!

Spring Pasta with Sugar Snap Peas and Red Chili:

Ingredients:

Two small to medium red chilis
A few handfuls of sugar snap peas
A small bowl of frozen peas, thawed
500 gms of spiral pasta
Mozzarella cheese, cut up in cubes
Two generous pats of butter
Olive oil or a little pat of butter
Juice and zest of 1 large lemon
Fresh mint and parsley for garnishing (I used basil in lieu of mint because that was all I had on hand!)

Directions:

Cook pasta according to directions. While waiting for pasta to cook, deseeded chilies and dice into small pieces. Also, if needed, trim sugar snap pea ends.

In a large pan, heat some olive oil or a little butter and coat the base of the pan well. Add sugar snap peas and let cook for a few minutes on medium heat. Add chili, peas and pasta; mix well. Turn heat down to low; add butter pats to pasta and continue stirring to ensure pasta is thoroughly coated with butter. Mix in lemon juice and zest.

Remove pan from stove. Spoon pasta into serving bowls. Top with mozzarella cubes and garnish with herbs. Enjoy!

NB: meat eaters, you can also add some salami to the pasta if you wish!

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Reflection Pool

Creating Schedules to Best Maximise Your Time

April 9, 2014 2:37 am LEAVE A COMMENT MarilynChin

The cold that’s been going around and which I caught last week never went away, but ended up developing into the flu over the weekend. It was disappointing having to spend the entire weekend and the first part of the week feeling like crap (I hate falling sick on the weekends because that means you miss out on all the fun stuff!) and I’m still bummed over the time wasted being sick.

So now I’m feeling a ton better, I decided I could not afford to waste the rest of my week.

I don’t know about you, but I am a huge procrastinator. The kind of girl who has a ton of ideas, but rarely gets around to putting them into action because she’s, well, procrastinating. Type A person, I am not. I tend to waste more time fretting about how I don’t have enough time to accomplish all the great things I’m supposed to have done by now than I actually do trying to get these things done. And you can imagine, after wasting four days being sick, I’ve been fretting about even more time wasted lately.

That was when J showed me the infrograph above inspired by Mason Currey’s book, Daily Rituals, which looks at the daily routines of of over a hundred creative minds, including Charles Darwin, Maya Angelou and Sigmund Freud. READ MORE

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Kitchen

Roasted sweet potato and carrot salad

April 4, 2014 10:17 am 2 Comments MarilynChin

Sometimes coming up with a salad can be as easy as mixing up all the ingredients you enjoy in a big bowl and chowing down.

I used to think of salads as something that always required a bed of greens to start with – spinach, rocket, basil or lettuce. But I haven’t been in the mood for greens lately so I started thinking of what else I could add on. READ MORE

2 COMMENTS

Reading Room

Beautiful Keepsake Books

April 3, 2014 8:55 am LEAVE A COMMENT MarilynChin

{Pic Source}

I’ve written previously on this blog about how I used to be really wary of electronic readers. Then one day my boyfriend gifted me with a pretty pink Kindle reader and I fell in love all over again. The best things about the Kindle? You can carry your entire library around with you and you can purchase a book anytime you want – plus the price of books are fairly reasonable on the Kindle compared to their real cost in hard copy form. However, I do miss the feel and touch and smell of real books, the excitement of purchasing a new book and flipping through its pages (Kindle, for all its amazing-ness, still needs to work on its ability to flip through pages and pick out pages at random).

And when it comes to illustrated books, the Kindle still has nothing on the real deal. Sometimes, there’s an incredibly beautiful, well-designed, gorgeously illustrated book that you just have to buy in hard copy form. Sometimes it comes with a cover that you can run your fingers over and feel the raised patterns of the illustrations or the soft, fuzzy cloth-like texture, like that of Susanna Clarke’s The Ladies of Grace Adieu. Sometimes it’s the beautiful gold and silver leaf lining the edge of your pages or the crinkle feel of the page itself, like an ancient manuscript from another civilization. Sometimes, it might not even be classically beautiful. Sometimes it’s the intriguing notations in the margins, designed to look as if someone had owned this book before and their story on the margins is a story you’re following as well. Whatever it is, it’s just a book you have to have, to touch and gloat over and leave on your coffee table for your visitors to flip through and enjoy as well. READ MORE

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Library

The Haunted Runner

April 2, 2014 12:40 pm LEAVE A COMMENT MarilynChin

This is a short sort-of-ghost story I came up with while running a little while back and watching a fellow runner ahead of me, constantly vanishing around the trail’s curves and bends. Dusk was falling and the trail, framed by these pale skeletal trees, had gotten pretty dark and spooky, and I immediately thought, what if this trail was haunted? By a… ghost runner??

I felt a thrill come on and pretty much spent the rest of my run coming up with the bones of the story.

Running is a great way to think out new plot lines; conversely thinking up new story ideas is a great way of overcoming the mental challenge of running and making a run seem a lot shorter than usual. My favourite character in this story is Mrs Maccona – I hope you like her too! READ MORE

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Gymnasium

Half-Marathon Training (Week 12) (not such a great week)

April 1, 2014 9:20 am LEAVE A COMMENT MarilynChin

A little late in reporting last week’s training, which hasn’t been too exciting (other than that fantastic pink sunset I caught on Tuesday’s run). READ MORE

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Travel Journal

Travel Journal: Cusco, Peru

March 29, 2014 7:50 am LEAVE A COMMENT MarilynChin

Cusco, Peru is such a fantastic place. I’ve wanted all my life to visit Machu Picchu and I was really excited about including this as part of my trip to South America. Unfortunately, something happened to sour the trip a little, but I can still remember the magic and beauty of the place.

We arrived in Cusco in the afternoon and immediately noticed the difference between Cusco and Buenos Aires, where we were last. Cusco is much quieter, a smaller city with far older buildings, and surrounded by mountains. The mountains! I couldn’t get over marveling at those beautiful serene mountains that you could see every which way you turned in the city. And there was something completely different about them as well too, different from all the other mountains I’ve ever seen.

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Kitchen

Recipe: Cauliflower Rice

March 28, 2014 10:20 am LEAVE A COMMENT MarilynChin

I’ve always been intrigued by the idea of cauliflower rice and decided one day to finally try making some. The only problem was I didn’t have a food processor in which to pulse the cauliflower but I decided to give it a go with my trusty hand blender instead. And it worked! READ MORE

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