Monday, January 10, 2011

Finger Food

Tonight I was in the mood for kid food, except that I can't really bring myself to stomach chicken nuggets from the freezer.  So I dug around a bit in the pantry and came up with a  more grown up version, and paired them with oven roasted sweet potato fries.  My big kids cleaned their plates happily.  I didn't particularly go out of my way to make the nugget coating nutritious because I just grabbed what surfaced first, but I am quite certain you could add some ground flax seed and whole grain cracker crumbs to the mix to nudge the fiber and vitamin content up.

Oven Roasted Sweet Potato Fries

2-3 large yams or sweet potatoes
olive oil
kosher salt
freshly ground pepper

Peel the yams and slice into fries, roughly 1/2"x1/2"x4".  Drizzle with olive oil and toss to coat.  Spread out in a single layer on a 10"x15" baking sheet and sprinkle with salt and pepper.  Roast at 450 degrees for 35-45 minutes to desired doneness, stirring once in the middle.

Grown Up Chicken Strips

3 chicken breasts, sliced across the grain into 1/2" thick strips

2 eggs
1/2 cup plain yogurt
1 t. smoked paprika
2 t. garlic powder
1 t. salt
1/2 t. freshly ground pepper

1 cup panko bread crumbs
1 cup smashed Ritz crackers
1/2 cup grated parmesan cheese

Olive oil

Whisk the egg, yogurt and seasonings together until well combined.  Stir the crumbs and cheese together until well combined.  Pour each mixture into a pie plate.  Heat up a large skillet over medium heat and add 3 T. olive oil.  Dip each piece of chicken into the yogurt mixture, turning to coat evenly, then roll it in the crumb mixture.  Fry on each side for 4-5 minutes, or until the crumb coating is golden brown and juices run clear.  Remove to a paper towel on a wire rack to drain, then serve with your favorite dipping sauce.

2 comments:

Bethany said...

i wanna hear about your new blendtec! i want one and can use all the convincing there could be.

Nurse Heidi said...

It's pretty dang awesome, though not as fearless as the Will It Blend videos make it look. We've found that it sometimes takes 2-3 cycles to get it to completely pulverize something, but the end results are far smoother than anything I've ever been able to produce with a lesser blender. Alan has made some wickedly awesome virgin margaritas and daquiris, and we've had several rounds of smoothies. The last batch of smoothies he made was so thick we had to eat it with spoons, but it was totally silky smooth. Is it worth 400 bucks? I dunno. Depends on how much you use your blender. We definitely will use it more often than our older one, but I probably would have chosen a Bosch mixer over the Blendtec in terms of how often I'd use it. Obviously, I don't care quite enough about expensive kitchen gadgets to have purchased one myself - I leave those big purchases to my hubby.