Month: January 2015

Grilled Peri-Peri Chicken Thighs

Posted By under Main Courses, Main Ingredient, Poultry, Recipes

In response to a reader request (Hi Jill!), this post is more recommendation than recipe. If you’re interested in the most uniquely spicy and tangy grilled chicken that you’ll likely ever eat, do yourself a favor and order a bottle of Nando’s PERi-PERi sauce. We first encountered this addictive flavor at a Nando’s restaurant in London many years ago, and we were hooked after just a few bites of flame-grilled chicken marinated and basted in their signature sauce made from African bird’s eye chiles. Although Nando’s has restaurants all over the world, none of their locations are close enough for us to get our fix as often as we’d like. So we do the next best thing and make our own version at home. All you need is chicken, your choice of Nando’s PERi-PERi sauce, and barbecue sauce to tone down the spice a bit (unless you can handle the heat from straight-up PERi-PERi – we can’t.) We promise you won’t be disappointed.

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Slow-Cooker Vegetarian Black Bean Chili

Posted By under Main Courses, Main Ingredient, Recipes, Vegetable

There’s nothing quite like a big bowl of hearty, spicy, comforting chili to warm you from the inside out on a cold winter day. Our recipe repertoire includes several different kinds of chili:  Dan’s famous, Texas-style sirloin chili that actually won an award; a healthier white chili made with ground turkey that we like to have simmering on the stove while we decorate our home and tree for Christmas; and the peculiarly delicious version that Cincinnati is known for. Since this was our first attempt at vegetarian chili, we used a recipe by the experts at America’s Test Kitchen from their book “Slow Cooker Revolution.” It was really good, with all the right chili-esque flavors and texture that you expect from a cold weather, comfort food favorite. As I usually do when trying a new recipe, at the end of the meal I asked Dan if he would do anything different with the dish. He replied, “Two things:  increase the amount of chili powder, and add about three pounds of sirloin.”

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