Thursday, July 21, 2011

French Friday with Dorie: Coconut Lemongrass-Braised Pork (Chicken)

FAMILY SIZE COCONUT LEMON-BRAISED CHICKEN
 It is too hot for a hot meal here in Phoenix.  I stepped outside this afternoon at 5:00 and it was still 110^.  The photo for Dorie's recipe is beautiful, but not tempting with this heat...it looks like a hot stew over lovely noodles.  

But Dorie does suggest that other meats work well with this recipe method; I chose to use chicken breasts for my meat.  Potatoes, carrots, and onion were cut up and steamed.  For seasonings I used fresh squeezed lemon juice, salt, pepper, ...and when read through the recipe and got the the "coriander seeds", which are often used with curry, I decided to use instead, fresh coriander with is cilantro, and to also add fresh tomatoes and zucchini to the mix.  I also left out the curry with my new mixture.

THESE ARE THE UNUSUAL "STEW" INGREDIENTS I USED
I found wide lemon pepper noodles at Trader Joe's and they are delicious...went well with the fresh squeezed lemon in this dish.  I had coconut milk beverage in my pantry, and read the ingredients which are coconut milk and water...so I just deleted the water from my add-ins.  The fresh cilantro and tomatoes made this dish very summery, and when added along with the zucchini without being pre-cooked, these veges helped make a more summery dish.

 I could have browned the chicken a little more, but did not want it to be tough. 

This recipe pleased the men who were home today...they all went for 2nds,  and I really enjoyed it too.  Fun to try new flavors and food mixtures.  And with the extra veges, this dish was a great summer meal.

MY SERVING WHICH WAS VERY TASTY

Dorie inspired my "stew" and this was a fun dish to rework to suit my family....if I could have found some wild boar in my freezer like Dorie's friend, or maybe an AZ javelina, I'm sure that would have made everyone really happy...ha ha ha!  I've seen many of these "wild boars" running around our desert, and people really do hunt and eat them.

I'm interested to see what you all did with this dish.   Hope you all have a great week.

9 comments:

  1. What a wonderful summertime version! Your dish looks delicious.

    Sadly this one did not work out for me, not entirely sure what I did wrong but it just refused to come together.

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  2. I like what you did with this dish, it looks delicious and perfect for a hot weather dinner. You can never go wrong with a ton of veggies, in my opinion;-)
    Those boars are scary looking!

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  3. Your last photo have me imagining a coconut lemongrass boar stew! LOL. I loved that you added raw vegetables to this dish to lighten it up, and replacing coriander seeds with cilantro...now why didn't I think of that?

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  4. You made some great changes in concession to the weather. It's nice to see what everyone does to make these recipes work for their own particular circumstances. That boar looks enormous! You'd have to be a good hunter to bring down one of those...

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  5. Love all those veggies! It is way too hot - we even hit 99F out our way - which to us cold Yankees is like 120F in Southern heat :-)

    Stay cool

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  6. Wow, Kris - I think your version sounds wonderful! Thank you for all your support! It means so much to me. I just found this website: http://www.cookingandme.com/2006/07/food-photography-for-food-bloggers.html

    that is specifically for food photography.
    Have a wonderful weekend!

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  7. It looks lovely, refreshing, and tempting.

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  8. What good ideas you had to make this recipe work for your family!

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  9. I love the fresh take on the recipe! Those lemony noodles must have been amazing with the coconut and cilantro.

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