Coconut-Pecan Chicken with Red Pepper Mango Salsa

This was such a yummy dinner! I think I need to improve on my presentation and photographs. But, right now I feel lucky to even put this on this blog! Try it maybe with some coconut rice or something. I was going for a pina colada feel with the coconut, pineapple, mango and banana bread!

2 chicken breasts, sliced into strips

1/2 cup (or more) shredded unsweetened coconut

1/2 cup pecan pieces

1/2 tsp sea salt

1 egg with 1 tsp water, beaten

3 T canola oil

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. In a food processor, blend the coconut, salt, and the pecans together. Place in a shallow bowl. Beat the egg and water together and place in a shallow bowl.  Dip the chicken strips in the egg and coat with the coconut pecan. Heat the oil in a frying pan. Place coated chicken strips in the frying pan, brown on both sides and transfer to a glass baking dish and to the oven for approximately 12 minutes.

 1-1/2 cup chopped mango (fresh, frozen, or canned)
1/2 cup chopped red bell pepper
1/3 cup chopped red onion
2 T chopped cilantro (fresh)
1 T vinegar (rice vinegar or apple cider vinegar)
1 T honey
1 T lime
1/2 tsp salt

Combine and serve over chicken.

I paired this with fresh pineapple and some banana bread that I had in the freezer.  A couple of other notes:  1) the unsweetened coconut was hard to find. There's plenty of sweetened coconut around. You have to look in the specialty isles.  2) If you don't want to make your own salsa, Costco sells a mango salsa that I think I actually liked better than this one.

Lemon Chicken

Here's the recipe I made for dinner last night. It was SO YUMMY!!!
Footnotes as to what I would do differently to follow:

1 cup lemon curd
1/3 cup rice vinegar
1/2 tsp salt (I left this out of the curd mixture)
Vegetable oil, for deep-frying
1 pound skinless, boneless chicken thighs, cut into 1-inch pieces (you could use firm tofu)
1 large red bell pepper, cut into matchsticks
2 bunches scallions, cut into 2-inch pieces

Batter:

1 cup water

3/4 cup GF flour (I used Pamela's)

2 T GF flour

1/2 cup cornstarch

1 T baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. In medium bowl, whisk together the lemon curd and vinegar and salt. In a medium bowl, whisk together water, 3/4 cup flour, cornstarch, baking powder and 1/4 tsp salt. In another bowl, toss chicken pieces with 2 T flour and 1/4 tsp salt. Coat the chicken in the batter and deep-fry in about 2-inches of heated oil for approximately 5 minutes, or until golden brown. (I ended up just dumping the chicken into the batter and mixing it around and then pulling out each piece with tongs and placing it into the oil. It took about 3 batches and I had to turn the pieces over midway through the cooking process.) After the chicken is cooked, add the pepper and scallions to the oil and fry until crisp-tender. Add the veggies to the curd sauce. Arrange the chicken on a platter and pour the lemon sauce over the chicken.  Serve with rice and maybe a side of sugar snap peas sauteed in butter and garlic!

Okay, now, what I would do differently. I  would GRILL the chicken and veggies. I didn't really like the veggies deep-fried. I would prefer them roasted.  I also thought the deep-frying added WAY to many calories and grease to the dish. For a healthier version - go for the grill. Another thing you could do is just dust the chicken in cornstarch and fry it. That would eliminate a few more calories with the batter and still give you the crispy texture.