What a day!  I’ve never claimed to be a great baker and I definitely proved it today.  It started with chocolate cupcakes that went flat on me and ended with having to cook my daring baker’s challenge a second time because it flopped the first. And when I say flopped, I mean it.  Literally.   I’m not allowed to divulge exactly what I was cooking, but let’s just say it involved enough eggs that I had to borrow a handful from a neighbor and still throw the kids in the car and go to the store and get more.  Thankfully the second time was a charm and the challenge was a success.  Needless to say, all this failed baking has put me behind on getting out Friday’s blog post.

I decided this month that I would try out a new foodie adventure called Taste and Create.  If you’ve never heard of it, it’s a website dedicated to matching up food bloggers with one another and challenging them each to make a dish from the others site and then blog about their results.  I was paired up with No Reason Needed.  She had a lot of great looking recipes on her site, but in the end I chose to try out her tandoori chicken.

I had some leftover shredded chicken from a whole bird we mexicanized for last Sunday’s dinner, so I chose to adapt it a bit and serve it with rice.  I wasn’t sure it was going to be a hit when I took the first bite, but then I took a second bite and thought, “hmm, this isn’t so bad” and then I took a third bite and couldn’t stop eating it.  My husband and kids enjoyed it as well.  Scott even took it to lunch the next day which is a sure sign it’s a winner.  So without further ado, here’s No Reason Needed’s recipe for Tandoori Chicken along with my adaptations.

Ingredients Needed:

1/4 cup lemon juice
1 cup non fat yogurt OR 1/2 cup low-fat sour cream
3 cloves garlic, crushed
1 tbsp paprika
1 tsp cumin
1 tsp turmeric
1 tsp ginger
1/4 tsp curry powder (optional)
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 tsp black pepper
4 chicken breasts (I used my shredded chicken in the picture)

In a bowl, stir together your lemon juice, yogurt/sour cream, garlic, paprika, cumin, turmeric, ginger, curry, salt and pepper.

I also added 1 tsp of garam marsala; a spice I picked up at my local Indian grocery store.

Add your chicken to the bowl and marinate, covered, in the yogurt sauce for 10-15 minutes. Once your chicken has marinated, grill it up, basting every 3-4 minutes with some of the sauce until the chicken is tender and no longer pink inside.

Now because my chicken was already cooked and shredded, I did it a touch different than the recipe above.  I threw my marinated cooked chicken into a large skillet on medium high heat and cooked it through for 5-7 minutes.

Then, because I was planning to serve it with rice I added an extra cup of milk and an extra 1/4 cup of sour cream to the heated chicken mixture.  I also threw in 3 tsp of cilantro for the fun of it.  I cooked the sauce on medium heat until it was warmed through.  Finally, I added in two cups of cooked brown rice to the pot and stirred it in.

This sauce can be served over the top of the rice as well and it would probably be a whole heck of a lot prettier.  My family however, has this issue of not leaving enough sauce to go with the rice and vice versa; we always seem to be left with too much of one and not enough of the other.  Hence, I tend to mix it all together and alleviate the problem all together.  Ugly meal, but no left out food.  Problem solved.

This turned out to be a tasty dinner.  I realize I kind of changed it from what it was supposed to be, but it still tasted great and I enjoyed the challenge of trying out another blogger’s recipes.

Tandoori Chicken

Yield: 4 Servings - 1 Breast Each

Total Time: 30 min

Ingredients:

1/4 Cup Lemon Juice
1 Cup Non-Fat Yogurt OR 1/2 Cup Low-Fat Sour Cream
3 Cloves Garlic, Minced
1 Tbsp Paprika
1 tsp Cumin
1 tsp Garam Masala
1 tsp Turmeric
1 tsp Ginger, Minced
1/4 tsp Curry Powder
1/4 tsp Salt, Minced
1/4 tsp Pepper
4 Chicken Breasts (I used shredded in the picture)

Directions:

In a bowl, stir together the lemon juice, yogurt/sour cream, garlic, paprika, cumin, Garam Masala, turmeric, ginger, curry, salt and pepper.

Add your chicken breasts to the bowl and marinate, covered, in the yogurt sauce for 10-15 minutes.

Once your chicken has marinated, grill it up, basting every 3-4 minutes with some of the sauce until the chicken is tender and no longer pink inside.

Serve over rice and sprinkle with chopped cilantro if desired.