Healthy Crispy Chicken

Healthy, crispy, juicy chicken! Yum! This recipe is great for making your own chicken fingers with thin strips of chicken, or a healthy version of "oven-fried" chicken with bone-in chicken breasts and thighs. This recipe makes a lot of great substitutions to decrease the level of fat and calories, without compromising too much on flavor. The outside of these strips stays nice and crunchy with a subtle kick of spice from cayenne pepper and mustard, while the yogurt mixture helps keep the chicken tender and juicy. Serve with your favorite dipping sauces, like barbecue or honey-mustard.

Zwiebelkuchen (German Onion Pie)

I actually made this "Onion Pie" a couple weeks ago, but wanted to post it this week while I'm actually in Germany! My co-worker, a native of the Black Forest region of Germany (in the southwest), told me about this dish in September after his sister reminded him that it was "Zwiebelkuchen season." Apparently every year, around late September, these onion pies pop up in every German bakery and kitchen. They are traditionally served with early-harvest wine, which is a barely fermented wine -- and often even just served with grape juice. I didn't eat my slice with a light wine, but I can see how it would be a good pairing since the pie has such a rich taste. The pie filling is made by sauteing over 3 pounds of onions with bacon for almost an hour, really caramelizing the onions and condensing them to nice sweet (and bacon-salty) flavor. This mixture cools down a little before adding sour cream and egg, and then is poured into it's pie shell (in this case, a yeast-dough galette). The filling here is very similar to the traditional dish (although sometimes made with cream instead of sour cream). The crust is traditionally more of a flaky pie crust, rather than the yeast dough used here.

My German friend gave it two thumbs up! So I did something right...

Stuffed Peppers

Stuffed peppers: how cute! Each one is a perfectly assembled personal meal! I got the recipe for these stuffed peppers from a health magazine last spring. It's a nice quick and easy (and healthy) recipe to have on hand for a weeknight meal, especially if you have leftover rice or couscous. I personally love green olives, so I welcomed the salty, sweet, and spicy flavor combination of olives, raisins, and cumin. Cayenne or red pepper would be a nice addition of you want to increase the heat. Leftovers also make a nice packable lunch. Toss the whole pepper in the microwave for 1-2 minutes for an instant hot meal.

Experiment with the filling. Obviously any combination of precooked rice, couscous, etc. combined with some veggies and seasonings (and meat if you want) can be spooned into the peppers, but it really makes a nice display of the dish compared with a standard stir-fry type meal. Plus the whole pepper adds more veggies to each plate!