A Little Caribbean with a little Asian...

so today i was watching the food network "Chopped" before i started cooking dinner... (i will admit it... i am a food network-aholic) so i was feeling a little adventurous in my cooking.

so i opened the fridge and saw my 97cent bag of chicken wings (i'll admit, i didn't know what to do with them when i bought them... but 8 chicken wings for 97 cents... who wouldn't buy them!) so i decided that was what i was going to cook! then samuel suggested we use our KC Masterpiece Marinade "Caribbean Jerk" (AMAZING... KC ALL THE WAY... if you've never tried it you must buy it....). so i opened my wings... but them in a bowl with 1/3 of my marinade (its only like 2 bucks for this marinade and i have used it twice now and still have plenty left) stired it up real good and put it in the fridge to soak in the jerkyness.

but now what... i can't just serve my husband chicken! so i opened our little cupboard of food... after some searching i found a box of tempura mix (i know you are going to say UNHEALTHY... but everyone needs to splurge sometime). so then i decided to mix and match... a little carribean with a little asian.

the chicken had been marinated for a while now so i looked up on the internet how to cook it... it told me 60 mins at 375... AHHH!! samuel had to go to work in 60 minutes! so i cranked it up to 390 and popped them in before it was even preheated.

i then started with my tempura mixture. grabbed a sweet potato, zuchini and carrot, peeled them and cut them. the potato into circle slivers, the zuchini into strips and the carrots... well... i should have done them in strips. lol. then i got going on my tempura batter... mixed the flour like substance with ice cold water... and i was done with that. Next challenge... cooking them in oil at 375 degrees when i dont have a thermometer.......

thanks goodness for the internet... i had samuel google it and it told me to test with with a little cube of bread. if it takes 1 min to brown the bread then it is around 375 degrees... so i tried it and it worked... who woulda thunk! so in i put my potatoes, zuchini and carrots (you can only do like 5-8 at a time depending on size, but you really dont need that many to feed just the 2 of us).

so i started cooking that away and after my 2nd round i checked the chicken... it had been in there for maybe 40 mins (obviously it didn't take me 40 mins to cut my vegies... so there was some down time)... but i cut open one of them and YAY... they were done! but of course i left them in there for another 3-5 mins just to make sure while i finished up my tempura goodness.... then out they came. I put them on a platter and grabbed my super cheap can of crushed pineapple (drained of course) and put some pineapple over my chicken... YUMMY!!!

then i called samuel into the kitchen... and he was shocked (in a good way). he could smell the chicken but didn't know i was adding pineapple and cooking tempura style. Overall it was AMAZING!!! sadly we only had like 10 minutes to eat so we didn't have lots of time to enjoy it but it was sooooooo good!!

moral of the story... if you see 97cent containers or chicken wings... grab that, some marinade and pineapple and make yourself and amazing dinner...

Love you all