Cashew Chicken Salad

Note: this is another recipe transferred from my old blog.

This is a rare recipe that is all my own creation rather than a derivative or modification of another recipe. However, I can't say that the concept of combining cashews and chicken is exactly a novel one and I'm sure that there are recipes out there like this one. There is one relatively unique ingredient though.

Cashew Chicken Salad recipe:

• 4 (half) chicken breasts (with skin is best)
• salt, pepper, onion powder (to taste)
• 1-2 tbsp. olive oil (for frying)
• 1 cup cashews
  
• 1 medium onion (diced)
• 4-6 tbsp. mayonnaise
• 1 tbsp. seasoned rice vinegar (I used Mizkan)
  
• 1-2 tbsp. garlic powder
• 1 tbsp. cinnamon

Sprinkle the chicken with salt, pepper, and onion powder. Heat a large skillet. Add the olive oil and tilt the pan to coat the bottom with oil. Place the breasts skin side down in the skillet, cover, and cook over medium heat until half done (it may help to split especially large breasts for more even cooking). Turn over and finish cooking. Be sure to keep the chicken covered at all times to keep the juices inside. When the chicken is just finished, remove it from the pan and allow it to cool enough for it to be handled comfortably. Reserve the juices in the pan.

Place the cashews in the bottom of a very large bowl and coarsely crush them (I use the bottom of a large, sturdy cup). Add the diced onion to the bowl. Remove the skin from the chicken and cut it into bite-size pieces. Add it to the bowl then sprinkle it with garlic powder and cinnamon. Pour the reserved juice over the chicken. Add the mayonnaise and stir well. The juices and mayonnaise will combine to make a savory dressing. If necessary, add more salt to taste. Serve warm or cold.

This recipe will require a bit of experimentation to meet your specific seasoning and consistency desires. Some people may prefer more or less mayonnaise and/or cashews. I like a lot of garlic and my husband actually likes a great deal of cinnamon on it. After I add the initial one tablespoon, he has me pour more over the top of his serving.

Cinnamon may seem an odd seasoning for chicken but it works very well. My sister, who is a member of the SCA, told me some time ago that cinnamon was used frequently to season various meats in the middle ages. If you're squeamish about using it, I'd recommend at least adding a teaspoon and sampling it before giving up on using it. It really does add greatly to the taste of the salad.

by Shari (Orchid64)

Whole Wheat Blueberry Muffins

There are two reasons to alter a recipe to incorporate whole wheat flour. One is that you have to for health reasons and the other is that you want to. Frankly, I want to, and it's not only for health reasons. White flour doesn't have the same flavor as whole wheat. In fact, it has little flavor at all which makes it great for cakes and cookies that are mainly bringing you their added flavors (chocolate, vanilla, etc.) plus sugar and butter.

For muffins though, and I mean standard breakfast muffins, not dressed down cupcakes, I like the flour to pull its own weight a little on the flavor front. Breakfast muffins, to me, ought to be somewhere between a cupcake and piece of whole wheat toast. Not so light as one and not as heavy as the other.

I searched for recipes that looked like they might suit my needs and came up with quite a lot of promising candidates. The one I settled on as a base for my recipe was at "Eat Better America". I didn't follow the recipe exactly because I wanted to use 100% whole wheat flour rather than a brown and white flour mix. I also didn't want to use honey because I don't like the texture it gives baked goods. I also skipped the brown sugar topping in favor of boosting the overall sweetness with some granular Splenda and added vanilla and cinnamon to the batter for more flavor.

Here was the recipe I made:

Whole Wheat Blueberry Muffins

• 1 cup low fat milk (full fat is also okay)
• 1/4 cup Canola oil
• 1/4 cup brown sugar (packed)
• 1/4 cup granular Splenda (or just use white sugar)
• 1 medium egg
• 1 tsp. cinnamon
• 1 tsp. vanilla
• 1/2 tsp. salt
• 2 cups whole wheat flour
• 3 tsp. baking powder
• 1 cup frozen blueberries (not thawed!)

Whisk the milk, egg, oil, brown sugar, Splenda (or white sugar), salt, cinnamon, and vanilla together in a large bowl. Sift or evenly spread the flour over the liquid ingredients and gently push the flour into the liquid with a spoon. Do not mix! Just try and get the flour pushed down a bit into the liquids. Withhold the baking powder at this stage. Allow the flour to rest and absorb the liquids for about an hour or so. I let mine sit for 90 minutes, but you can do it overnight in the refrigerator if you don't want to sit around looking at your watch. This resting period will contribute to a lighter muffin with a better texture despite using whole wheat flour.

After the flour has rested and absorbed some of the liquid, sprinkle the baking powder over it and gently mix until the ingredients are moistened. If you over-mix it, you'll work the gluten in the flour too much and have tough muffins. It helps to use a folding or cutting method rather than to stir.

Grease 6-9 muffin tins. Note that you'll probably get less of a rise but bigger muffins if you load all of the batter into 6 tins. I used 9 individual metal cups to bake mine. Start preheating your oven to 210 degrees C. or 410 degrees F.

After the flour and baking soda have been cut in (the batter should be a bit lumpy), gently fold in the frozen blueberries. Note that using frozen ones will prevent you from having purple muffins. Spoon the batter into your greased muffin tin. For 9, I put about 2 tablespoons of batter into each cup.

Bake for 20-30 minutes until a skewer inserted in the center comes out clean. Note that the timing really depends on a lot of factors including the type of muffin pan or tins you use, whether or not you put the tins on a baking sheet or directly on your oven rack, and what sort of blueberries you use (and how frozen they are when they go into the oven). Mine took about 35 minutes, but I had to put my tins on a ceramic baking sheet which takes a long time to heat up. I imagine that is much longer than most people will require.

The muffin I sampled and cut in half for picture-taking saw more of its blueberries fall to the bottom than some of the others.

The muffins turned out very well. The texture was light and tender, though when it was fresh the one I sampled had some of the telltale graininess that I associate with whole wheat baked goods. This is related to the fact that my whole wheat flour is not pastry flour, but rather larger grain, higher gluten whole wheat bread flour. This graininess disappears after the baked goods I make with this particular flour sit overnight and the moisture gets absorbed more thoroughly. I had half of a muffin plain and half with margarine. It was quite good both ways.

One thing that irritated me was that the original recipe said that there was enough batter for 12 regular muffins and that the tins would be full. My tins are regular size, and 9 of them were only half full. I didn't do anything that would reduce the volume of the recipe. In fact, I may have increased it a tiny amount since I added an additional quarter cup of milk, sugar, and Splenda as a substitute for the honey. The only way a dozen tins that would be filled would be if they were mini muffins. I don't know why people lie on these types of recipes, but I'm guessing it relates to keeping the calorie counts more impressive.

Speaking of calorie counts, these muffins as prepared according to my recipe and with making 9 muffins are 195 calories each. If you use sugar or whole milk (or make 6 big muffins), that'll bump up a bit per muffin.

by Shari (Orchid64)