Grilled Teriyaki Chicken

I thought I would take a break from sharing my India experience and share with everyone my teriyaki chicken that I whipped up yesterday. I ended up marinading the chicken for 24 hours and then cooked it on my stove with a grill pan. Now I am in way advocating that a grill pan is an adequate substitute for a Weber Charcoal Grill but in a pinch it gets the meat cooked. Lets leave it at that.
To marinade the chicken, I used my standard home made teriyaki marinade. You can certainly skip making the marinade yourself and use a store bought version, but then again you could also just go stick a butter knife in your neck.
Teriyaki Sauce (Enough for marinading 1.5lbs of chicken):
1) Half cup soy sauce
2) 2 cloves of fresh garlic (crushed)
3) 1 inch of fresh ginger (shredded)
4) Tea spoon of ground ginger
5) Quarter cup of olive oil
6) 2 tablespoons sugar (I have used up to a quarter cup with good results)
7) Chili sauce/powder (Optional - I used a pinch of chili powder this time)
8) Splash of vinegar (Optional)

In order to really squeeze out all of the flavor I like to mortar/pestle the ginger and garlic together until it becomes a paste. You can also experiment with different levels of each ingredient. This time I bumpeded up the suger to about a quarter cup.
I used boneless, skinless, chicken breasts this. In order to get as much flavor on to each cut I ended up halving each chicken breast to make it a little thinner. I then just tossed the chicken into a bowl and poured the marinade over the meat. Make sure each piece is covered in the marinade and then marinade it for anywhere from 2-24 hours. Since I had the time, I did mine for a full 24.

As I mentioned, I used a grill pan to cook the chicken. To make sure the chicken did not stick to the pan I first sprayed it with a non-stick spray. I then made sure the pan was nice and hot before adding my chicken. All in all, it took about 15 minutes to fully cook through.

One last thing I also did was I took the remaining marinade and boiled it in a sauce pan. I then strained it and poured it over the chicken once it was plated. As you tell from the picture, I served the chicken along side some steamed broccoli and some leftover pasta/collard green creation. I will share the recipe for the pasta another time.

Fun Stuff From Qatar

This post is way-unrelated to grilling but I couldn't help myself. For my trip to India, I flew Qatar Airways from Frankfurt through Qatar to New Delhi. This was my first trip to the Persian Gulf region so a lot of what I saw was new too me. My layover in Qatar was 10 hours so I had plenty of time to walk around the airport and take shots of "strange" stuff. Granted I am easily amused!

I couldn't help buying the soft-drink above. I was expecting a carbonated beverage but was surprised when it came out more like Gatorade. Fairly tasty though.

If have to give Qatar Airways a lot of credit. Their meals were fantastic. Pictured above is a chicken curry with a nice chapati along side. Beats more of the standard airline fair.

While my trip to India was fantastic, Qatar Airways was less than stellar coming back. My flight from Qatar to Frankfurt was over 10 hours late. Some of the passengers started getting upset and tempers flaired. I was actually on the side of the Qatar Airways representative during most of this mayhem until I got yelled at for taking this shot of the melee. Jerks.

Indian Lamb Curry Presentation

I neglected to share with the final plating of my desert fire broiled lamb. I know the picture looks a little rustic, but you need to keep in mind that I was in the middle of the Tar desert less than 100km from the Pakistani border. While most people out here are vegetarians, they did however take part of the lamb and prepare a curry for us. Overall, the curry was pretty darn good. Accompanied with some rice and chapati (the flat bread looking thing) it rounded out into a fantastic desert meal.

If you are looking to do a similar camel safari in the Tar desert I highly suggest the one we took offered by Hotel Samrat. The starting point for our safari was from the desert town of Jaisalmer in western Rajastan. Jaisalmer is also known as the Golden City due to the desert sand fort/castle in the city. We stumbled apon Hotel Samrat on accident but were extremely pleased with the results.

Fire Broiled Lamb, Indian Style

Well, you are proably wondering where I have been over the past few days. For a while now I have been wanting to go to India and I finally decided to do it. While on a camel safari we were able to purchase a lamb from a local shepherd and grill it under the open desert sky. While I'll spare you the pictures of us processing the lamb I will pass along a shot of the actual cooking.

Now Google is helping me get lucky

Once again Google is helping expand my cooking horizons. Here is a fancy Crab Cake recipe.

I think I will try it out tonight with a honey of mine.

Here are the ingredients.

Ingredients:

Yields about 4 cakes

1 tbsp. butter (You may substitute olive oil.)
4 shallots, minced
¼ cup mayonnaise
1 fuji apple, peeled and grated on a cheese grater, juice reserved
1 tsp. lemon juice, fresh
2 tsp. tarragon, minced
2 tbsp. parsley, minced
1 cup Dungeness crab meat, picked free of shells
¼ cup breadcrumbs, finely ground
Tabasco sauce
kosher salt

cooking oil (rice bran, canola, vegetable, etc.)
metal heart shaped cookie cutter, large size (About 4-6 oz)

Roast Pepper Sauce:

8 oz. pimento peppers in the jar (You may substitute with Spanish piquillo peppers,
or 3 each red bell peppers roasted over an open flame, peeled and seeded), chopped into 1-inch pieces
2 tbsp. sherry vinegar (You may substitute with any vinegar)
2 tbsp. water
2 tbsp. butter (Optional)

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