Tuesday, April 15, 2008

Try it Tuesday

Lemon and Garlic Chicken with Roasted Veggies and Yogurt Sauce
This has a Greek name, but I dare not type it for fear of horrible misspelling! My recipe is a modification of a recipe I found in Cooking Light magazine many years ago. It's a staple in our house.

Ingredients
Chicken Tenders
Veggies for roasting - whatever you like. We use zucchini, summer squash, mushroom, red peppers and onions.
3 Lemons
1 Cucumber
1 Head of garlic
Olive Oil
Oregano
Salt and Pepper
1 Large container plain fat free yogurt.

At least the day before:
Strain your yogurt in a cheese cloth over a colander and bowl (to catch the drippings). I like to leave a good 24 hours for straining. If you don't have cheese cloth, you can use coffee filters or even a thick paper towel. Save the yogurt container in the refrigerator to mix and store the sauce the following day.
If you have Greek Yogurt available, you can skip this whole step and just use that. It's much thicker and will stand up to the ingredients that make the sauce.

Day of meal
Sauce Chop whole head of garlic for marinade and yogurt sauce. I do this in a mini food processor to make my job a little easier. Reserve 3 teaspoons of chopped garlic for yogurt sauce. Add three teaspoons of chopped garlic to saved yogurt container. Put remaining garlic in marinade. Peel and seed the cucumber. Chop the cucumber finely (I coarsely chop it and add it to my food processor. Add this finely chopped cucumber to the yogurt container. Zest one lemon and add it to the yogurt container. Squeeze the zested lemon into the container, then add the strained yogurt. Add a dash of salt. Do this the morning of the meal, if time allows. It will give the sauce more time to develop its flavors.

Marinate the Chicken.
In a food storage bag, squeeze two whole lemons and toss in the lemon halves. Add all but 3 teaspoons of chopped garlic, a few tablespoons of olive oil, a dash of salt and fresh ground pepper to the bag. Add water to the marinade to make it go further. Then add the chicken tenders. You should marinate for at least 4 hours.
When ready to cook, pull chicken out of marinade and discard marinade.
Add a small amount of olive oil to a skillet. Brown both sides of chicken, then cook thoroughly.

Roast Veggies
Chop veggies into large chunks. Spread evenly on a cookie sheet. Sprinkle with olive oil, salt and pepper. Roast in a 400 degree oven for about 30 minutes. Turning once.





Plate and serve with rice or pita bread. Delish!

In the warmer months, or for those of you blessed enough to live in warm climates, this can be done as kebobs on the grill. If you do it on the grill, add tomatoes - yum!

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