Grilled Chicken for Hunger Challenge – Day 1

What is this Hunger Challenge?? For my readers who are not familiar with the parent blog, Mirch Masala, here is something about the Hunger challenge that AJ and I are participating in.

United Way of King County is organizing a Hunger Action Week from Apr 20-24, 2009 in an effort to create awareness about hunger issues in Washington. Many food bloggers and other individuals have been challenged to provide nutritious wholesome meals to themselves or their families in under $X amount per day. The $X is the maximum food stamp benefit ( known as Basic Food Program in Washington) that is given to individuals or families. The rule for this Hunger challenge are as follows:

· Eat breakfast, lunch and dinner spending only $X a day (see below)
· Salt and pepper don’t count but all other seasonings, cooking oils, condiments, snacks, drinks, etc do.
· Don’t use food you already own.
· Don’t accept food from family, friends, coworkers and others. Not even the free samples from Costco!
· Try to include fresh produce and healthy protein each day.

How Much Can I Spend Per Day?
Individuals can spend about $7 a day for the challenge. We chose that amount because it is the maximum food benefits a single person can get on Basic Food (what Washington calls food stamps). And while Basic Food is designed to be a supplement to food budgets, the reality is that many rely solely on their benefits for food because they don’t have enough money to buy food as well as all the take care of other expenses that they have.
This table shows how much allowance you’re allowed depending on family size:

Household Size Hunger Challenge Budget
1 $7 / day
2 $12 / day
3 $18 / day
4 $22 / day
5 $26 / day
6 $32 / day
7 $35 / day
8 $45 / day

Interestingly, the $7 is generous compared to most other hunger challenges. Many places set the budget based on the average food stamp benefits: $3 a day. For this challenge, we are just trying to emphasize that many, many people are living on tight food budgets and work at the same time, so it’s tough for them to have meals that are fulfilling and healthy.

What Is The Point Of The Challenge?
The Hunger Challenge is really an exercise in empathy – to live in someone else’s shoes for one week and learn how you can help fight hunger in our community.

You will find my menu for the week and other recipes in Mirch Masala. Grilled Chicken was one of the items in the menu for Monday’s dinner.

Chicken Breast – 1 Mediterranean Spice Blend ( bought from World Market and is a blend of Oregano, Garlic granules, Lemon Peel, Dill Weed, Dill Seed, Chili Flakes, Spearmint Leaf, Cinnamon, Mace and Chervil) – 3 tsp Olive Oil – 1/2 tsp

Marinate the chicken breast with the spice blend for about a couple of hours. Put the two in a ziplock bag, shake well and refrigerate for 2 hrs. Heat oil in a griddle or stove-top grill. Grill the chicken until thoroughly cooked and brown on both sides. You can use the conventional oven for this as well. Season with salt and pepper, if required and serve.

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Shrimp and Raw Mango in a Coconut Gravy

Especially since I started this blog, AJ has been having a great time. My usual, once a week non-veg cooking has gone up just a lil bit and that too not just the plan simple chicken curry with the Eastern Chicken Masala ! LOL, the first time I made that I thought it was a beeg achievement for me and that i now know everything. I think it was just the pride of the moment. :) Ever since, my repertoire of non-veg cooking ingredients have gone up from just chicken to tilapia, cod, lamb, beef and now shrimp as well.

Last weekend we got a bag of shrimp from Costco and eventhough my plan for lunch was just a humble potato fry, i wanted to make something with shrimp. When i thought about where to look for good recipes, the first blog to pop in my mind was Mishmash! I saw this prawn with raw mango and drumstick in a coconut sauce recipe and i suddenly remembered the raw mangoes I had bought from the Indian store to make raw mango and jackfruit seeds curry, only, i never could get any jackfruit seeds and the mangoes were still sitting in my veggie crisper. I roughly followed Shn’s recipes but made my own changes to it. But basically her recipe was the background for this curry. I did have some drumsticks, so I just made a raw mango and drumstick curry for myself and skipped the drumsticks in the shrimp curry.

Shrimp and Raw Mango in a Coconut Gravy

4 handfuls of shrimp, i used the deveined-tailoff-cooked -frozen shrimp 1 medium sized raw mango, use sour ones, skinned and cut into thin long pieces 3-4 thai green chillies, slit half lengthwise 1/4 tsp turmeric powder 1/4 tsp red chilli powder salt to taste For grinding: 1/2 cup grated coconut 2-3 thai green chillies, chopped 1/2 tsp cumin seeds 5-6 red pearl onions 1 clove garlic 1 inch piece of ginger, sliced 1/4 tsp turmeric powder For tempering: 1/2 tsp mustard seeds 4-5 curry leaves 2 dried red chillies 1 tsp coconut oil

Grind the coconut, green chillies, cumin seeds, pearl onions, garlic, ginger and turmeric powder with a little water to form a thick paste. Meanwhile in a sauce pan, boil the raw mangoes with the shrimp, green chillies, turmeric powder and red chilli powder till cooked well. To this add the ground coconut mixture and let it cook for a little longer. In another small pan, heat the coconut oil and add the mustard seeds, curry leaves and dried red chillies and let the mustard seeds splutter. Add this to the curry and mix well. Garnish with some cilantro leaves if you want and serve hot with some rice.

For the vegetarians: Substitute the shrimp with some drumsticks and you are ready to go! If you are making the two dishes simultaneously like how i did, do the grinding part for both the curries together and just split it and add to both the saucepans.

The Meat-a-holic’s Verdict : the meat-a-holic is currently in deep sleep, probably dreaming about my tiramisu. Will post this part tomorrow morning as soon as i get it from him. I am still not sleepy, so wrote this post and once written, i just had to publish it!! :) Update: I’m not a big fan of fruit-like flavors (the mango) in my meat dishes, but it totally worked this time. Shrimp and coconut obviously are meant to be :) Love it with rice, perfect for an afternoon where the south Indian craving hits. 7/10

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Beef with Black Bean Sauce – Phat Neua Tao Jiaw Dam

This has been a long pending post and I have been a little partial to Mirch Masala that it always got the priority when it came to posting. My excuse was that the meat-a-holic had not given his verdict and i could not post without it, but then I got it yesterday and I thought I better post this today!

This recipe is from a yet another new cookbook that i got a couple of weeks ago. I have so many of them now that I have temporarily stopped buying new books till i buy a new bookshelf!! Yeah, yeah, as long as it is some kind of shopping that i do, I am a happy soul. It is this book called “The Food of Thailand” and has many Thai recipes other than the regular red/yellow/green/massaman curries and phad thai!! The best section i like about this book is the Thailand street food section. I believe, street food is that which gives out the culinary secrets of a particular country. This is something I made for AJ last week, when I already had something just for me, leftover from my lunch ( and i was selfish and didnt want to share!!). So i made this beef stir fry with some jasmine rice and AJ had a very happy tummy after this ! :D

Beef with Black Bean Sauce

This is a Chinese dish which is found very often in various forms in Thailand. As usual, I played around with the ingredients and the quantities as from the original recipe!

1/2 lb sirloin steak ( i think its about 1/2 lb – we got this small box of it from the meat and seafood aisle at the grocery store), finely sliced 1 1/2 tbsp black bean garlic sauce 2 tsp fish sauce 2 tsp oyster flavoured sauce 1/3 cup beef stock 1 tsp chilli oil 1/2 tsp sugar 1 tbsp canola oil 2-3 cloves of garlic, minced 1 small carrot, cut into fine matchstick strips 3-4 snake beans, cut into 3 inch lengths 3-4 scallions/ spring onions, cut into 1.5 inch lengths a few cilantro sprigs, to garnish

Mix the black bean garlic sauce, fish sauce, oyster sauce, beef stock, chilli oil and sugar in a small bowl and keep aside.

Heat the canola oil in a wok and stir-fry the onion over high heat. Add the meat and stir-fry over medium-high heat for 5-7 mins until cooked well.  Add the carrot, snake beans and the sauce mixture and stir-fry for a couple of minutes. Add the spring onions as well and cook for a few seconds. Garnish with chopped cilantro leaves and serve hot with jasmine rice and any Thai curry.

The Meat-a-holic's Verdict: The meat is amazingly tender! The sauce is really tasty, but might scare off the salt haters. Can stand to get a little bit more spicy. Can’t get enough of it with the rice!! 8/10.

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