Girls' Night Dinner

Although it may seem that I'm constantly on the go, I think that phase of my life may be drawing to a close.  As spring progresses, I am very much looking forward to spending more time at home, with the boys, a few projects and some friends.  The other night  Lisa and Yas were over and I made, if I might say so myself, an inspired spring dinner which would have  rivaled anything available in a restaurant.  Yeah, I said it - it was that damn good.

chicken skewers, grilled mango, grilled asparagus

Price Chopper was doing their 40% of chicken sale last week and a big package of boneless chicken thighs found its way to my refrigerator.   I'm never sure whether this "sale" is the real deal or if it just means that the rest of the time the chicken is just overpriced, but chicken was definitely the star of this week's menu.  For this dinner I cut 3 or 4 thighs into chunks and marinated them in a combination of red curry paste, soy sauce and kecap manis.   I prepped the asparagus by tossing them with some olive oil, sea salt and cracked pepper and then cut a fresh mango into cubes and threaded it onto skewers.

orange mustard sauce

I fired up the grill, got the skewers loaded up with tasty chicken and laid them on the medium high grill.  While they cooked, I decided that a dipping sauce would complete the meal and poked around the refrigerator to gather a couple of things. I went with orange marmalade, honey mustard and a touch of orange juice, which I simply stirred together into a sweet and mildly spicy orange taste sensation.  The dipping sauce ended up being the perfect sweet component to offset the spiciness of the chicken - I tend to have a heavy hand with curry paste.  Midway through cooking the chicken, I placed the asparagus and mango on the fire and grilled these to a beautiful state of doneness.  This meal didn't take more than a dozen ingredients, much effort or chopping, nor was it time consuming.  What it was though, was delicious, cohesive in terms of flavors, and, I imagine, fairly nutritious.  Coupled with a bottle of Samsara Syrah, and an evening of simple pleasures and good friends transcended the individual components and became a special night. Nights at home are looking like a very good option.