Chicken with Pineapple & Cauliflower "Rice"

Today is Monday.

Ahhhh the boneless, skinless chicken breast - nature's blank canvas. It would be my most dreaded ingredient were I ever to appear on "Chopped." There are just too many ways to go with it. I chose tonight's recipe based on two features: 1) It calls for pineapple, and I happened to have a pineapple on hand that was about a day away from getting tossed and 2) It calls for cardamom and I have a cutie-mom who buys cardamom pods and grinds them up and delivers them to me in tiny, adorable jars. Notes: A) Steve hates fruit mixed with meat, but see item #1. B) My kids THINK they don't like pineapple, but I know better, and please refer back to item #1. C) They always groan over pineapple on "Chopped" and talk about how it is the one food that ruins any dish when introduced. Did that stop me? Nuh uh. See. I set up everyone to hate their dinner like the evil non-food wasting person that I am, and everyone LOVED it. FYI, the pineapple was surprisingly ripe on the inside even though it looked pretty sad on the outside. I would have tossed it if it were bad and tried the whole thing with grapefruit maybe, or something else I had on hand. This dish was so delicious and so different with the interesting ingredients. Plus Steve logged it for all of you, and one portion came out to 306 calories. Perfect because this dish felt exotic, which reminded me that one piece bathing suit season is coming.

The beauty of some breasts just can't be captured by modern cell phone photography.

This one is another gem from epicurious. 

Pineapple and Cardamom Chicken with Mint

Serves 4 I added in an extra 2 chicken breast halves to feed the 6 of us. We eat like 6 people. Have I mentioned my 8 month-old kitten is on a diet?

 Ingredients

1 tsp. ground cardamom THE most delicious spice. It's what you love about chai tea lattes. If you don't have it or don't want to shell out for it, because it is pricier, go with pepper, cinnamon and nutmeg.

3/4 tsp. salt

1 tsp. packed grated lemon zest

4 boneless, skinless chicken breast halves

4 T butter (1/2 stick), separated Or go ghee for dairy-free. Hey! This is gluten-free too!

1 small onion, chopped

1/2 large pineapple, cut into 1/2 in. cubes

1/2 cup pineapple juice It took me half a pineapple to make 1/2 cup of juice. This irritated me. I may consider buying pineapple juice next time. I was annoyed enough to take the squeezed-to-a-pulp pineapple and make it into a strawberry pineapple smoothie for the kids. Then I felt much better about the whole thing. Actually, I felt great - like I didn't waste anything, and I tricked my children who THINK they don't like pineapple.

3/4 cup chicken broth

1/2 cup fresh mint leaves

Instructions

1) Mix together the cardamom and salt and sprinkle the mix along with the lemon peel on both sides of the chicken breast halves.

2) Melt 3T. butter in a heavy skillet over medium heat. Add onions to pan until they soften, about 4 minutes, then push them to the side. Add chicken to pan and sauté 5 minutes. Flip, add pineapple chunks and sauté another 5 minutes. Funny story, I forgot to add the onions. Whoopsies. Since I had a pan going for my "rice," I just sautéed them next to the chicken, and tossed them in with the pineapple. Literally no one knew.

Ohh pretty.

3) Add pineapple juice and broth to pan and bring to a boil. Remove chicken to a platter.

4) Heat remaining 1 T. butter in pan with juices and cook, scraping bottom of the pan until sauce is reduced and thickened, about 5 minutes. Add mint, stir and pour sauce over chicken.

Goddess of the Sink wants some MEAT. And water.

Liz's Cauliflower "Rice"

Serves 6

Ingredients

1 head of cauliflower

Olive oil

Salt and pepper

Optional: chopped scallions (whites and greens separated) and zucchini rounds Basically, you're making plain, white "rice" here, so the sky is the limit with what seasonings and toppings you want to stir in. I just kept this one fairly simple since the above dish had so many complex flavors.

Instructions 

1) Chop cauliflower head into fairly equal-sized florets. Rinse. Pulse in batches in food processor until florets resemble small rice or cous cous.

2) Heat a swirl of olive oil over medium heat in a non-stick pan. If using scallions, add chopped whites to pan for a few minutes. Add cauliflower and zucchini. Season to taste with salt and pepper (I used about 1/4 tsp. of each). Cook, stirring, until you notice "rice" begins to brown. Remove from heat and serve topped with scallion greens. The sauce in the above recipe was enough to add flavor with out drenching this. If making separate from above, you may want to add a swirl of olive oil to top it off before serving. 

-OR-

1) Go to the store and buy riced cauliflower. The end.

Since Steve is my dish washer, what's another four parts of a food processor getting dirtied up to me? Organic cauliflower was the deal of the day at the Jewel, baby! 

I had to pull out a summery platter for this fruity dish.