If I haven’t mentioned it before, here it is, I love Bon Appetit Magazine. They have such great recipes and articles. Their cover pictures always make my mouth drool! Of course I sure that is the goal and to get you to buy their magazines. I lucked out and got the subscription on Amazon while they were running a special, $5 for the year – total steal!!
This past week I actually made 3 recipes from Bon Appetit. One was for Valentine’s Day when I made their yummy Brown Butter Brownies from the February issue. The second was from their January issue and was the cover recipe – Saigon Chicken Salad. I thought it was a little weird to have such a light and fresh salad on the cover for January when most of the country was digging out of snow and the last thing I would want if I lived in the snow is a cold salad. I guess they were going for the whole “New Years Resolution” thing and thought people would be wanted to eat healthier.
Well, it totally worked for me. The picture on the cover sold me. It looked so light and fresh. It was perfect for me here in San Diego where the weather the week prior was sunny and warm (now it’s raining).
The January issue had several recipes dedicated to Chicken. The cover story was about taking chicken from drab to fab. The other recipe I tried later in the week was the Coriander Chicken Tostadas with Refried Beans and Grilled Fennel.
Here are my comments about what I did differently from the recipes as wells as my pros & cons:
1. Pro – It sure was tasty & lived up to the pretty cover picture 🙂
2. Recipe has a long list of ingredients and not all are available at your “everyday” grocery store – Con.
3. Because of Con #1, I either omitted or substituted a few ingredients: Didn’t have lemongrass. Looked up online how to substitute lemongrass and came up with a combination of lemon zest and lemon juice.
- Kaffir lime leaves – used the substitute that Bon Appetit provided at end of recipe.
- Used brown sugar in lieu of palm sugar.
- Used Serrano in lieu of Thai Chilies
- Used green beans in lieu of Chinese long beans
- Used red radishes in lieu of daikon
- Used English cucumber in lieu of Persian
Comments: Fish Sauce Smells really, really bad, BUT it truly makes the dressing.
I like heat, so I used the veins and seeds of the serrano chilies. It was spicy, so be careful.
Because of the long list of ingredients, it did take time to prep and make this dish. Not a 30 minute meal for sure.
Coriander Chicken Tostada with Refried Beans and Grilled Fennel:
I didn’t use canned beans. I bought dried pinto and black beans. Soaked them over night, then cooked them for 60-90 minutes with an onion, bay leaf & 3 garlic gloves. Then followed the recipes directions for the Refried Beans. I truly believe that making your own beans makes a huge difference. I first did this with garbanzo beans for a salad. They just taste better in my opinion.
My grocery store didn’t have whole coriander seeds, but ground. It worked okay. I think the whole seeds would have been better.
I didn’t use a tostada shell. Just omitted it completely and I still think the dish was quite tasty.
