Test Kitchen

I've been experimenting a lot this month with new recipes. I've been stuck in the Italian rut for a while now and I've tried to get out of it. I'm also trying to eat more balanced and for me, that means eating in a way that doesn't set off my insulin-resistance. (Another of my health discoveries of 2010!!)

If you are unfamiliar with insulin resistance, basically, anytime you eat carbs, your blood sugar spikes. So to fix it, you either severely reduce/eliminate your carb intake OR you make sure that every time you eat you get some veggies AND have 1/2 the grams of protein as you do the carbs without overdoing how much you eat. Therefore, I've been trying a lot of protein-packed recipes to add to my routine.

My latest attempt was a pad thai dish. I got the recipe from Food & Wine magazine. I had originally planned on making a Thai Basil chicken dish but couldn't figure out where I had seen the recipe (okay, I had found it at work during lunch on a website but couldn't remember which one. I knew when the recipe called for fish sauce I was probably not going to like it. But I walked to the grocery store anyway, got all my missing ingredients, including the fish sauce and came home to cook.

The Pad Thai looked great but now that I can smell, I knew I probably wouldn't eat it, even after 1/2 hour of prep and cooking. But I kept going and piled a few noodles and chicken and tofu and veg on my plate and took a bite. Nope, too fishy. Waste of money!

The experiment from 2 weeks ago was to replicate the chicken they serve at Chipotle. I had found a website with reliable intel that the recipe really was from Chipotle. A few people who worked at the restaurant confirmed it and despite that being pretty illegal, I forged ahead. First, I attempted making the cilantro-lime rice. PERFECTO! It tasted exactly like the Chipotle rice, although I did overdo the lime just a tad. But on the plus side I got to use my rice cooker again, which I'd been neglecting since this whole insulin-resistance business.

So if the rice worked out, surely the chicken would! I compiled a large list of ingredients (including a whopping 3 cups of Worcester sauce) and marinated the chicken for 24 hours. I then pulled out my cast-iron stove-top grill pan (anything with that many hyphens must be bound for trouble, right?) and kicked on the stove. I put the chicken on the pan. It smelled great and even remembered to turn on the exhaust fan above the stove. The recipe called for high heat so I had the stove cranked up to 7 or 8. I never cook with it that high!

Sure enough, the smoke detectors started blaring about 12 minutes into the grilling process. So in the dead of winter, I cracked open all my windows and my front door and began flapping my hand towel at the nearest smoke detector to get it to turn off. I can only imagine what the neighbors were thinking!

If you recall, this post is about the disappointments in my test kitchen this month. Well, hate to say it but the chicken did NOT live up to the bar that the rice recipe had set. It was good, so long as the taste you were looking for was akin to A-1 steak sauce smothered over chicken. I couldn't taste the lime or the cilantro or the garlic at all.

I went back to basics this week. Not my norm but still, my comfort zone - Italian. So far it's been pizza, italian sausage with bell peppers and onions (classic!) with a pinch of red pepper flake AND what is apparently a staple in the region of Italy where my family is from, ravioli stuffed with ricotta cheese and spinach. YUM! Hello leftovers tomorrow. It's not exactly up to protein-carb balance but I'm close. I've been getting my veggies in (add them to the pizza before it goes in the oven - so good!) and inching closer to the balance point. January is still "recovery month" and for now, I'm still working out the kinks. But all in all feeling a WORLD better than I have in years.

Baby steps, people. Small steps will keep you moving forward. So long as you keep doing that, you can reach the goals. What is yours?

KB