Chicken Stir-Fried with Lemongrass and Chili

We're back!  These past few months have been pretty crazy with traveling.  First we were in Austin, Texas and then we went skiing in Colorado for a week.  And in another week I will be down in North Carolina.  Lots of travel means few(er) blog posts.  Sorry guys.  I have a few prepped and ready to go that I will get up over the course of the next week or so, but it's not going to be a big February on the blog.  Here's hoping March will be a bit quieter.

I know we have made a dish that sounds (and in reality is) shockingly similar to this one about a year ago.  It was called Caramelized Chicken with Lemongrass and Chili from The Asian Grandmothers Cookbook: Home Cooking from Asian American Kitchens.  The key differences between these two recipes - coconut milk, red bell pepper, Madras curry powder and much less lemongrass in this particular rendition.  This recipe also contains a lot less sugar than the other version (I guess that's what happens when you aren't trying to caramelize your chicken), but the coconut milk will lend its own sweetness.  Otherwise, the ingredients are strikingly similar.  To be perfectly honest, I can't decide whether I preferred the flavors of the Caramelized Chicken with Lemongrass and Chili or the flavors of this dish.  As I said, they are very similar.  The dishes were equally flavorful and both had a really good amount of spice, balanced against the sweetness of the coconut milk sauce in this dish and the caramel sauce in the other dish.  The Caramelized Chicken with Lemongrass and Chili was fresher and brighter (with a lot more spicy, floral lemongrass flavor), but this dish was warmer and richer.  I really enjoyed the warmth of the curry powder - even though Madras curry powder isn't exactly a Vietnamese flavor.  I could take or leave the red bell peppers in this dish, but I always feel that way about cooked bell peppers.  In the end, if I was only able to make one of these two dishes again, I would probably pick the other dish by a hair.

Recipe after the jump!

Lemongrass Bars with Coconut Shortbread Crust

It's not often that I obsess over a dessert recipe, but I am mildly obsessed over this one.  Usually when I bake something, I have a few pieces and then happily bring the rest into work for my coworkers.  I might actually eat my way through these lemongrass bars because they are so good.  And Alex might actually go toe-to-toe with me for the last piece, which has literally never happened before.  The filling is creamy and lemony (it reminds me of a more floral/aromatic version of a lemon curd due to the addition of the lemongrass) - a little sweet and a little tart.  I don't usually like lemon bars because I find the filling to be overly sweet and goey, but this one is great.  It tastes fresh and bright, and not at all syrupy.  Not only is the filling good, but the crust is wonderfully buttery and crumbly.  I have never made a shortbread crust for a bar cookie before, but it's totally genius.  I also love the mild coconut flavor in the crust.  When we took the pan out of the oven and I really got a whiff of the fully baked dessert I knew I was in for a treat.  I knew they would be good, but I didn't realize they would be this good.

Recipe after the jump!

Caramelized Chicken with Lemongrass and Chilis (Ga Xao Sa Ot Cay)

This is another recipe that Alex and I have been holding on to for some time now.  Make that, a recipe that I have been holding on to.  I don't think that Alex even knew the recipe existed.  But I tend to spend a lot more time pouring over our cookbooks in search of new recipes than he does.  Alex only tends to go through the cookbooks when I hand him one (or tell him to go get one) and ask him to figure out what we should cook for dinner.  Anyway, the biggest deterrent to our ever making this recipe was the amount of lemongrass required.  At any given time we tend to have no more than about two stalks of lemongrass in the apartment.  But last night we hit Fairway and picked up 6 stalks, specifically so we could make this recipe.  We didn't have chicken thighs, but we figured that boneless, skinless chicken breasts would work just fine.  And the recipe actually cautions you against using chicken breasts, or removing the skin, but we made do with what we had.

In the future, I would definitely recommend using skin-on chicken thighs for this recipe.  Like the recipe promised, chicken thighs would just give the dish that extra boost of flavor.  But with that said, even without chicken thighs this dish was really really good.  Alex and I always play this game trying to decide what we would change while we eat our meal.  Generally the first thing that Alex says is that he wishes the dish were spicier.  It's his favorite comment and he uses it quite often.  Sometimes he wants more salt, but usually it's more spice.  This was one of the few times where neither of us had anything we would change (except of course for using chicken thighs rather than breasts).  This dish is super flavorful and the onions sauteed in the caramel sauce with the lemongrass are amazing.  The lemongrass gives the dish a nice floral quality, which contrasts nicely with the sweetness of the caramel sauce, the heat from the chilis and the savoriness of the fish sauce.  Using a caramel sauce, rather than just adding some sugar to the dish, gives it a really nice depth of flavor in addition to the sweetness.  This is one of my favorite dishes that we have prepared recently, and is definitely my favorite dish from the last week or two.

Recipe after the jump!