Garlic Marinated Chicken and Kale Pesto Pasta, and a thrift store buy!

To preface this post, it's the time of year where  a lot of university students are moving back home, including a friend of mine. She also didn't want to bring home any food with her, so earlier this week she gifted me with so many food items- cereal, salad dressings, burgers and chicken, and a lot of rice. 

Today was one of those days. You know, the rainy-day, don't-want-to-do-anything,    lazy days that make even the slightest thing seem like an enormous waste of energy. 

Naturally, to combat this I wanted to cook. But I didn't know what to make, and I barely had any energy to stand up and make a fancy meal. Then I looked into my fridge and remembered the many food items I had been given. I marinated a chicken breast in some Italian salad dressing, and put on a small pot of pasta. While cooking my pasta, I thawed the last of my kale pesto. I then baked the chicken breast, and once it was cooked I diced it up. I then threw everything together in the pot.

Delicious, quick. easy and hearty meal

This pasta was flavourful because of both the marinade from the chicken and the pesto itself. It made moving around in the kitchen totally worth it. 

I did do a few errands today before succumbing to the rainy-weather blues, and one of those errands was the thrift store. I went in to look for clothes and walked out with this instead

This was one of my favourite books growing up, because it was so cute! It's about a grandpa who makes his grandson a baby blanket, and the journeys and transformations that blanket makes as the child grows older. It's such a sweet tale.

What are your go-to easy meals/favourite children's books?

Tandoori Tilapia

Here's something you wouldn't normally expect: I'm an Indian who doesn't enjoy most Indian foods. I'm not a huge curry fan, and sometimes I just can't handle the heat and pungency of most spices used. It also could be that I don't enjoy how long some of my favourite dishes take to make because I have no patience. I have a few select dishes that I enjoy (Butter chicken, butter chicken,, wherefore art thou butter chicken?) but I can never replicate mom's recipe quite perfectly.

There is one dish that I can do perfectly, according to my mom, and that dish is tandoori chicken. Marinated in a tangy yogurt-tandoori masala and cooked at a high heat, the chicken becomes moist, an incredibly flavourful. The only thing I don't have at my disposal is a tandoor (an oven that exposes whatever is being cooked inside to a wood fire, which results in smoky, delicious meat), but I make do with an oven and a broiler. Lately though, I've been wanting to experiment with different tandoori-styled meats.

Tonight was the night that I tried something new. Tonight I substituted my beloved standby chicken for...tilapia.

I love fish and shellfish because they're very easy to prepare, and chock full of flavour. A lovely piece of salmon in a creamy dill sauce? A dozen fresh raw oysters, lemon wedges and some mignonette sauce? Shrimp tempura? Tuna sashimi? I eat it all.

Tilapia is a firm white-fleshed fish, and perfect for this recipe. Whip up the quick yogurt marinade and baked for 25 minutes, it turns into a mouth-watering dish.

Easy, delicious and doesn't take forever? I'll take it!

Tilapia covered in marinade, before baking

Tandoori Tilapia (serves 4)

Ingredients:
3/4 cup plain yogurt (2% yogurt works best)
2 tbsp tandoori masala (found at any Indian store, or Bulk Barn)
1 tsp garam masala (found at any Indian store, or Bulk Barn)
1 tbsp turmeric powder (found in any spice aisle, or Bulk Barn)
1 lb tilapia fillets, cut into large chunks

• Preheat oven to 400 degrees if wanting to bake right away
• Mix together everything but the fish in a square baking dish
• Add the fish to the baking dish, mixing to evenly coat the fish in marinade
• If not baking right away, marinate in fridge for at least a half hour, but no longer than two hours
• Bake fish for 25 minutes
• After baking, broil fish for 5 minutes
• Serve with basmati rice or roti 

Tilapia, after baking and broiling

Super-easy Spicy/Sweet Sriracha Sauced Chicken

Before I begin, I apologize that there are no actual pictures of my food yet. I quite literally ate every last bit of chicken that I made (given that I only made enough for one, it happens more often than not).

This week was a busy, and emotional one for me. A combination of school, personal problems, and a crap knee meant that my focus was thrown WAY off. I wanted to end my week with something delicious (Yes, I realized it's Saturday, but I don't work Sundays, and consider that to be my beginning-of-week rest day)
I was browsing online looking for a good buffalo chicken recipe, and was going to use this one, but I realized that a) I had no Frank's Red Hot sauce AND no Tabasco sauce and b) I didn't want to eat deep-fried chicken, not after the junk I've been eating all week. What's a girl to do when she gets that buffalo chicken craving?!

You adapt. Luckily for me, I DID have my handy-dandy, half-full bottle of Sriracha hot sauce. 'What's that?' you say. Let me show you a comic that explains all.

This recipe is so good, and though it's absolutely NOTHING like actual buffalo chicken, it satiated my cravings...for now.

Super-Easy Spicy/Sweet Sriracha Sauced Chicken(adapted from seriouseats.com, serves 4)

Ingredients:
1 lb chicken pieces
1 tbsp butter (I used margarine, I imagine butter would be tastier)
1/4 cup Sriracha hot sauce
1 tsp Worcestershire sauce (not necessary, but I love it)
2 tbsp brown sugar
1 tbsp barbeque sauce

• Preheat oven to 400 degrees F.
• Melt the butter (or margarine) in a microwaveable-safe bowl. Combine everything but the chicken in the bowl. Increase/decrease ingredients to your personal tastes.
• Add the chicken pieces to the bowl. Make sure that very bit of the chicken is covered. Marinate in bowl for 15 min (or longer, no more than upto 2 hours though). 
• Empty contents of bowl into an oven-safe dish. Bake for 40-45 minutes. 

I ate my chicken with a side of grilled corn, and steamed veggies. It was absolutely delicious, the perfect end to a busy day of work!