Recipe Review

At the bottom of my last post, I wrote about new recipes I was going to try out for dinner that I got from May's Southern Living. Both were out-of-this-world in the delicious category, and I am so glad I tried them. It was quite the convoluted culinary experience though, involving many non-staple items and lots of dicing and chopping. Patrick went on and on about how delectable everything tasted, and I had to break the news that the harsh reality was that they were once-a-summer type dishes. (Good thing we have leftovers for tonight!) The first dish I made was this: (Click on title for a link to the recipe.)

Black Beans and Coconut Lime Rice:
This is categorized as a main dish, but I made it as a side to the coconut chicken.

Favorite Parts:
Mangoes, Mangoes, Mangoes... The recipe suggests topping the dish with chopped radishes and jalepeno peppers, diced mangoes, and lime wedges. Since there was a poblano pepper in the bean mixture and yellow and green onions as well, I opted for the mangoes option, and they did not disappoint.

Least Favorite Parts:
ALL the prep work

• zesting the lime
• toasting the coconut
• chopping cilantro
• chopping poblano pepper
• chopping the small yellow onion and 2 small green onions

(Probably this was even more of a nuisance to me because my William Sonoma usually AWESOME vegetable chopper kept getting jammed...)

Was the taste of the end product worth it??? TOTALLY. But I recommend saving it for a special night.

For our main dish I made Coconut Chicken. This involved dirtying up 3 prep bowls, but the rest of the steps and ingredients were simple. Serving it with honey mustard sauce made it even more yummy, and this would be an easy one to do more regularly. Happy cooking and eating!

At the bottom of my last post, I wrote about new recipes I was going to try out for dinner that I got from May's Southern Living. Both were out-of-this-world in the delicious category, and I am so glad I tried them. It was quite the convoluted culinary experience though, involving many non-staple items and lots of dicing and chopping. Patrick went on and on about how delectable everything tasted, and I had to break the news that the harsh reality was that they were once-a-summer type dishes. (Good thing we have leftovers for tonight!) The first dish I made was this: (Click on title for a link to the recipe.)

Black Beans and Coconut Lime Rice:
This is categorized as a main dish, but I made it as a side to the coconut chicken.

Favorite Parts:
Mangoes, Mangoes, Mangoes... The recipe suggests topping the dish with chopped radishes and jalepeno peppers, diced mangoes, and lime wedges. Since there was a poblano pepper in the bean mixture and yellow and green onions as well, I opted for the mangoes option, and they did not disappoint.

Least Favorite Parts:
ALL the prep work

• zesting the lime
• toasting the coconut
• chopping cilantro
• chopping poblano pepper
• chopping the small yellow onion and 2 small green onions

(Probably this was even more of a nuisance to me because my William Sonoma usually AWESOME vegetable chopper kept getting jammed...)

Was the taste of the end product worth it??? TOTALLY. But I recommend saving it for a special night.

For our main dish I made Coconut Chicken. This involved dirtying up 3 prep bowls, but the rest of the steps and ingredients were simple. Serving it with honey mustard sauce made it even more yummy, and this would be an easy one to do more regularly. Happy cooking and eating!