The coconut milk in Slow-Cooked Green Chicken Masala cools the fire of the serrano pepper while the spices add balance and aroma to the flavor. Poured over chicken thighs this sauce creates a healthy and flavorful weeknight dinner. It is perfect for my slow cooker, where dinner simmers gently until my family is home for dinner.

Slow-Cooked Green Chicken Masala is served over rice and garnished with a mint leaf.

The Gatekeeper

Are you a Healthy Cook? Would you call yourself a “nutritional gatekeeper”? A New York Times article by Tara Parker-Pope suggests that those who buy and prepare the food in our home strongly influence the eating habits of those around them. That’s good news if your nutritional gatekeeper makes healthy choices and is well-informed. If, instead, that person has weak nutritional habits and tends toward poor food choices that is also likely to bear consequences on the health and nutrition of the entire family. What an awesome responsibility we bear in the kitchen!

The article included a discussion of how the size and shape of serving dishes affects the amount we serve, and then eat. It was thought provoking. I bought new dishes several years ago when I remodeled my kitchen. In the process I noticed that my new plates are at least an inch wider than my old plates, encouraging larger serving sizes to make the plate look full. Because of this discovery I now try to be more mindful of portion sizes. Now we frequently serve weeknight dinners on the slightly smaller luncheon plates from the same set of dishes.

Cooking Personality

The article also links to a quiz from “Mindless Eating” by Brian Wansink. This quiz will help you discover your own cooking personality. I took the quiz but I must confess, I found it difficult to identify my own Cooking Personality. In fact it seems that I am something of a Sybil in the kitchen. At times it might appear that I am “giving,” making nostalgic recipes, especially baked goods that I share with friends. On the “methodical” side I tend to rely heavily on recipes. And, while I do experiment with health-conscious recipes that are rich in fresh produce and herbs, suggesting that I can be a “healthy” cook, I can also be “competitive” and I definitely have a perfectionist streak that can get me into trouble.

I hope I am at least a somewhat “innovative” cook. I like to think I am creative, though I doubt I would ever be called trend-setting. While I use recipes, I like to change them around. I frequently adapt them to the culture of my own kitchen and what I have on hand. This recipe for Green Chicken Masala is an example.

Green Chicken Masala

I first saw this dish at Eat. Drink. Think. It caught my eye because of the amazing color of the sauce and because I had just made a similar sauce that went with Cauliflower Pakoras. Most of the sauce I made for the Pakoras remained unused, probably because the serrano pepper made it very spicy.

To make this dish I used the leftover Cilantro Mint Sauce as a starting point and added onion, garlic and more spices along with the coconut milk from the Green Chicken Masala recipe at Eat. Drink. Think. The coconut milk cooled down the fire of the serrano pepper and the spices added balance and aroma to the flavor. Then I poured the sauce over chicken thighs in my slow cooker where they simmered until my family was home for dinner. The result was a synthesis of recipes and techniques. Along the way I used ingredients I had on hand to produce a healthy and flavorful weeknight dinner.