Sesame Chicken, etc...

Sesame Chicken - sounds Asian, but actually, it didn't have anything else around it to make it Asian cuisine, so it really wasn't. BUT, it totally could be if you wanted it to be (put it in a stirfry, or on a salad with asian dressing and mandarin oranges). Anyhow, it was good. I saw "The Take Home Chef" do it once and although it's not on his website, I did find some people talking about it on another site and they seemed to have gotten ahold of the recipe. I put this chicken on a salad and it was totally yummy. Here's the recipe...


Sesame Encrusted Chicken

4 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil (actually ALL of these amounts are totally irrelevant. Basically, just have some olive oil for the "drizzling", season as many chicken tenders as you feel like making, and have enough sesame seeds to "encrust" the chicken.)

Salt and freshly ground black pepper

12 chicken tenders (or however many you want to make)

1 tablespoon sesame seeds (I saw this recipe being made on TV, so I know how the chicken was supposed to look. It's really a solid single layer of sesame seeds covering the entire chicken tender, and I can tell you that 1 tablespoon is WAY not enough. I used 3 or 4 tablespoons for just 3 chicken tenders).

Season the chicken tenders with salt and pepper and coat evenly with the sesame seeds (no need to shake off excess, like a lot of recipes tell you to do when you're breading something. Whatever sticks on there is fine). Drizzle with 2 tablespoons of olive oil. Place a non-stick pan over medium to high heat and place chicken tenders into the pan. Cook for 2-3 min on each side. (I made 3 tenders over high heat and it took about double that time on each side. You can let the seeds get nice and golden brown. I was using a very NON-stick pan, so I'm not sure what will happen if you're using a ... NON non-stick pan).

EXCITING NOTE ABOUT THE SESAME SEEDS...I bought some really small jars at IKEA (they're 4 for $2.99) and they're the perfect size to store seeds. And, they have screw tops, so they're really airtight, which is good to keep them fresh.

Incidentally, I made turkey meatballs the other day...YUMMM. More on that next time.