Beef Chili Colorado

Beef Chili Colorado
Cook five or six hours until tender.

Monday, October 4, 2010

Mediterranean Chicken

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Serves 4 hungry adults; I like to serve hunks of Italian Bread on the side with this dish.

Mediterranean Chicken is a dish very low in fat while it is nutrient dense because you have six vegetables combined with the noodles (grain) as well as chicken meat, which is complete whole protein.

I use noodles made from wheat; there are stores where you can purchase noodles made from rice, which do not contain gluten.

The amino acids in the vegetables in this recipe combine with the amino acids in the grain, either wheat or rice to form complete protein.

Mediterranean Chicken starts off as a Marinara Sauce with fresh sliced mushrooms, 8 or 9 pieces of fresh, chopped garlic, a whole sliced and chopped green pepper, a half of a medium to large sweet or yellow onion sliced and chopped into bits, and two chopped up medium zucchinis.

The chicken in this recipe consists of four boneless, skinless chicken breasts, and two skinless, boneless chicken thighs that I cut off the bone into pieces. You can use only skinless, boneless chicken breast meat just add another breast to the recipe.

The chicken is added raw to the sauce in this recipe; cooking the sauce until the chicken is completely cooked through, and the vegetables are cooked into the sauce.

Ingredients:
Three tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil
Six or seven fresh tomatoes chopped into bits
Six or sever large white mushrooms washed, sliced or a dozen medium mushrooms washed, sliced
One whole green bell pepper sliced and cut into bite sized pieces
One half of a medium sweet or yellow onion cut into bits
Garlic: 8 or 9 pieces fresh chopped or use as much as you want to use
Zucchinis, two, sliced length wise and cut into pieces
One 15 or 16 ounce can of plain canned tomato sauce
One 15 or 15 ounce can of ‘no salt’ plain canned tomato bits or 4 to 6 large, fresh tomatoes cut into pieces.
One (1) can of black olives, drained.
A dozen green olives, the ones stuffed with pimento, drained and cut in half.

Chicken: four or five, boneless, skinless chicken breasts; chicken thigh meat can also be added to this recipe for the flavor that chicken thighs impart to a dish.

Fettuccini noodles, one half pound, cooked in a large pot of boiling water to which you add a ‘dash’ of salt, cook until noodles are ‘a dente’ meaning the noodles are still firm but can be easily broken with a fork. Once the noodles are in the sauce the moisture of the sauce will soak into the noodles. This is why you want to do noodles ‘a dente’ so they will not become mushy after they are in the sauce. You should be able to bite into the noodle easily when it is cooked ‘a dente’.

Method:
In a large skillet or a pan like the ‘wok, large chicken fryer’ you see me using in my recipe blog, you add the three tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil. Bring to a medium heat and add the chopped onion, bite-sized pieces of green bell pepper, sliced mushrooms, chopped zucchini. Cook for several minutes and add the chopped, fresh garlic. Cook for several minutes more. Add the raw chicken that you have cut up into hunks or you can leave the chicken breast whole; it’s up to you what you want to do. Cook until the chicken appears to turn color. If using breast meat the color will be white. Thigh meat will retain a light brown color. Add tomatoes to this mix. Cook several more minutes stirring and watch this mix so it does not dry out and burn on the bottom of the pan. Add canned tomato sauce and stir…keep cooking so the chicken will be cooked thoroughly.
If at any time it appears that the sauce is boiling then turn down the heat so the sauce simmers. If the sauce boils it will splash all over your stove top, and make a mess! It takes over an hour to an hour and a half to cook this sauce on a low medium heat, and chicken so the meat is cooked thoroughly, and the vegetables cook down into the sauce.

Add the cooked, drained Fettuccini noodles. Gently stir the noodles into the sauce. Drain a can of black olives. Cut each olive into two or three slices, and add as a garnish to the finished Mediterranean Chicken dish. Cut up the green olives and also add them to this dish as a garnish.
This dish will serve 4 hungry adults.
I like to serve Italian Bread slices with this dish.

REASON WHY…
The reason I recommend that you use canned tomato bits that do NOT contain salt is to cut down on the sodium content of this dish. The tomato sauce, and the olives both contain salt, and salt contains sodium. Too much of a ‘salty’ taste ruins any dish, and using the tomatoes without salt or using fresh tomatoes cut up helps to cut down on the salt in this recipe.

The mushrooms in this dish contain Potassium.
Four medium, white mushrooms have as much Potassium as a medium sized banana yet the banana contains one hundred calories and the mushrooms contain only a few calories. So mushrooms are nutrient dense, and have very few calories.

Potassium in your diet is important because Potassium facilitates the transport of nutrients in your body to your muscles, and then transports out the waste products from your muscles. If you do not have enough Potassium in your diet or if you have an imbalance where you have too much Sodium in your diet you may suffer from muscle cramps.
Potassium also supports the health of your heart…remember that your heart is a muscle!

Get all of your Potassium from the food you eat, and washed, fresh, mushrooms added to dishes you cook are an excellent source of Potassium.


Copyright © 2010 by Carol Garnier Dutra
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