Tag Archives: coconut

Jul16

Mango Chicken Lettuce Wraps

Posted on July 16, 2015 by athaidek

For all you party people out there who enjoy the likes of PF Changs, you’re in luck today! I’m going to woo you with Mango Chicken Lettuce Wraps as a way to distract you from nagging me about another blog post. Yes, I’ve been MIA and the person whose mostly losing out is my sweet grandmother, Winnie, who is about to be featured here. Grandma, my apologies for not writing this sooner!

Here’s the recap on the past two months: I went to a wedding in Sunset Beach, North Carolina where I had the most delicious mojito and danced the night away. I visited Lake Burton with my ATL crew and said farewell to friends moving to Boston. My dear friend Claire got married in Savannah where I ate the most deliciously moist lemon cake and my friend Sean broke his chair at brunch. Much to his dismay, it was the best part of the weekend. Monroe City, Missouri stole my heart with its rolling cornfields, welcoming community, and overwhelming wildflowers. Lastly, I visited Austin, TX for the first time where I was treated to the BEST food thanks to my lovely host Molly. My sister and I talked all things growing up while we gorged on tacos, amazing smoothies, kolaches, barbecue, and brunch. I am still dreaming of the mezcal drink I had with my sistahwife Molly along with many a cucumber-grapefruit-gin drink that I tried at every place we went.

Lately I’m saying many goodbyes to friends who are starting new adventures in new cities. While I’m sad to see them go, it’s exciting to see people go on their next adventure and become a little bit more of themselves. Throughout the process of saying goodbye, I got to partake in bucket list items that I might not have ventured to otherwise 🙂 This really means new people will have to learn to partake in my late-night baking activities and that I’m going to have to start trolling Yelp in the cities where my friends move. Note to all my friends out there – when I come to visit you, I will have already found the best food instagrammers in your city and will have at least one opinion about following their food recommendations.

Let me tell you about these lettuce wraps. My grandmother loves to take the girls in my family to PF Changs where we always like to get the chicken lettuce wraps. Every time I’ve had them, I never really thought they’d be easy to make at home. THEN my friend Cessie taught Christine and I how to make these really healthy chicken lettuce wraps just like the ones at the restaurant (where you wrap it up like a massive burrito and stuff it in your mouth gracefully and then everything falls out).

After trying it once, I wanted to try out these lettuce wraps from Cookie and Kate for my grandma on Mother’s Day. My grandma Winnie is such an inspiration to me and also the person who gave me a bad habit of laughing anyone’s actually said anything. She can’t start a story without laughing which has entirely rubbed off on me. We also like to sit and eat snacks and chat about love, life , family , and most importantly faith. I was blessed to have so many wonderful Indian dishes from her kitchen over the years, and it’s been a joy to me to be able to actually make something of my own for her. Serve this dish as a light meal with coconut rice like I did or as an appetizer like at PF Changs. I actually made it in advance and it warmed up nicely. I think the mango salad benefits from some extra time marinating as well.

Thai Mango Chicken Lettuce Wraps

adapted from this recipe from Cookie and Kate

Peanut sauce:

⅓ cup creamy peanut butter

2 tablespoons white wine vinegar or apple cider vinegar

2 tablespoons reduced-sodium tamari or soy sauce

2 tablespoons honey or agave nectar or maple syrup

2 teaspoons toasted sesame oil

½ lime, juiced

2 garlic cloves, pressed or minced

Mango pico

2 ripe mangos, diced

1 medium red bell pepper, chopped

½ bunch (about 4) green onions, chopped

⅓ cup packed fresh cilantro leaves, chopped

1 jalapeño, minced

½ lime, juiced

⅛ teaspoon salt

Chicken:

1 lb chicken breast, cubed

soy sauce

sriracha or chili garlic sauce

For the rest: small head of green cabbage

Coconut rice:

1 cup rice ( I used short grain brown rice)

1 cup coconut milk

1 cup water

pinch of salt

1. Boil water and coconut milk in a small pot. Add rice and salt and bring back down to a simmer, covering rice for about 25-30 minutes or until rice is tender. (you can skip this step if you just want the wraps as an appetizer)

2. In a jar or small bowl, whisk all the peanut sauce ingredients together and place in the fridge to meld flavors.

3. Mix all the mango pico ingredients in a large bowl or serving dish. I know you’re thinking there’s not much in this but I promise it taste delicious and doesn’t need much to it!

4. Cook chicken: Heat a saute pan to medium-high heat and add a few teaspoons of coconut oil or another light flavored oil. Once hot, add chicken and soy sauce. I would recommend about a tablespoon since that’s what the tofu in the original recipe is tossed in, and I added some chili garlic sauce as well. Saute chicken for about 3-4 minutes on each side and then turn off the heat. Drain sauce out and place chicken on a serving plate.

5. To serve, cut the bottom thick part of the cabbage stem off and slowly peel back the layers of the cabbage. Really get to KNOW your cabbage. I found this to be actually pretty hard, but the good thing is that the green cabbage leaves are so thick that even if they rip they can hold a good amount of food.

6. Eat your rice on the side or make a big mound of lettuce wrap and put chicken, mango pico, and rice in your wrap. You can either pour sauce into the wrap or dip the wrap into it.

If you’re like me, you’ll ask your grandmother a gazillion questions about growing up, how to know what God’s calling you to do next, why men are from Mars, what her favorite thing about Grandpa is, and oh yea please pass the vino. Dear Grandma, sorry this post is so late but I’m so glad you like the meal! (and I hope you read this)

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❤

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Jan25

Nutty Coconut Cardamom Granola

Posted on January 25, 2014 by athaidek

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I didn’t quite believe thefauxmartha when she dubbed this recipe “The Last Granola Recipe” but I think this woman’s on to something. I am not at the stage yet where I’ve totally found my staples and to be honest, it feels a little dramatic to say this is THE ABSOLUTE LAST granola recipe I should ever try. But you know I’m really LEARNING a lot these days.

Cardamom. Usually sneaks itself into chai spice, but here it’s really only with cinnamon. The shining star, it counters the sweetness of the maple syrup and mixes well with the coconut and nuts. I’m a fan of you cardamom! I ate this granola atop yogurt, mixed with another cereal in milk, and actually used them to make these Magical Marvelous cookies from Food52. Thanks for being reliable, granola. You’re there for my mornings, my extra-secret-magical-cookie ingredient, and those mid-day snacks when I want to pick out some dried fruit or the nuts.

What are you loving these days besides your favorite granola recipe? I’m loving NeedtoBreathe, a certain special chapel, new skinny jeans, and wearing my Grandpa’s old scarf everywhere as if he’s with me.

Let’s begin…I made half of the recipe FYI.

Here goes cardamom, oats, salt, and cinnamon. Give it a lil swish with the whisk.

Olive oil, maple syrup, and vanilla mixin it up together

Mix up the oats and the sweet coating, reserving a few tablespoons of the oil mixture. Spread everything out on a parchment-paper lined baking sheet.

I like my granola more like cereal so I try and spread it out as flat as possible, but if you like it clumpy, keep it a bit more tightly packed. Into the oven! 350 for 20 mins

Meanwhile, I chop up whatever nuts I’ve got on hand! Literally every kind, cashews, peanuts, walnuts, and pecans

Mix them together with some leftover syrup-oil mix and the dried coconut. I have the thin strips not those thick flakes here.

After 20 minutes mix in the nuts etc into your granola and bake off for another 5-7 minutos.

When I serve mine I like some dried fruit so I added chopped apricots and raisins after the granola cooled!

Aug4

BeetsMe goes Bananas for Pie

Posted on August 4, 2013 by athaidek

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Perfect Saturday afternoon bake-out. Sometimes I think cloudy skies are a call to bakers everywhere, saying, “YES! It is okay for you to stay inside and spend the time getting that pie crust right!” Well, in our case it was a vanilla wafer crust, so I mean, didn’t totally take that much to get it right. Which of course means we spent less time trying to perfect and messed up a few of the steps :). Head over to JoytheBaker’s cookbook for this Banana Coconut Cream Pie recipe.

At 5 pm this made a good pre-dinner dessert and was the perfect welcome home present for my Grandma who recently returned from a trip to see my cousins. After a fun dinner catching up on our family and her travels, I felt comfortable taking her home knowing she had a cup of decaf and a slice of pie to decompress. Tomorrow morning, I can’t wait to have another slice for breakfast!!

Watching Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants and baking pie with Cessie? What more could I ask for. THANKFUL ❤ CAS.

Mixing the ingredients for the crust. We made the mistake of adding ALL the coconut to the nilla wafers and sugar, wooops. So to fix it, we sifted the coconut to get out the sugar and nilla wafers. Then we crushed up some more wafers to add. Everything turned out ok wheww. See above for the crust pressed into the pan…saw this tip on a blog I think…take the bottom of a glass and use to smooth out a crumb-based pie crust!

This is the weird egg-yolk sugar, cornstarch, salt mix that goes into the custard. Another tip I can’t believe I never tried was separating egg yolks and whites using your hands instead of the shell. WORKS LIKE MAGIC I don’t know why I’ve been using the shell for so long, but it’s seriously foolproof.

Mixing the custard is by far the hardest part. Tempering eggs always makes me nervous (when you add some of the hot cream in the eggs to make sure they don’t curdle when you add into the pan) but it really went okay. This is why it is definitely better to have two people, at least, when you’re working on time-constrained recipes. The only thing that really stinks about this part is the smell of warm milk, no thank you.

Ta-da! Custard cooled in the fridge for a few hours. Folded in bananas and some more of the salvaged toasted coconut.

Home-made cool HHHWHIP

Some more sprinkled coconut on top. PS I used a mix of unsweetened and sweetened coconut and it turned out well.

Pie!