Week One Recipe - Crispy Za'atar Chicken Tenders
Quick Links:
- We LOVED it. Fabulous meal. Would definitely make it all again!
- Prep Time about 15 minutes
- Ingredients that were new to us - Za'atar seasoning, Labneh Cheese
- To buy the ingredients locally - Roughly $40 - and "locally" is a stretch, I'd have to order some of them online. (Labneh & Preserved Lemon Puree are most of the cost - without those, the ingredients come to around $12. )
- Portion Sizing - Great. I COULD have stretched this to 3-4 servings if a couple of the kids dropped in unexpectedly, by adding some fruit (there is always applesauce in the pantry), a salad, some bread...
- Week One Unboxing
- An Intro To Blue Apron
The Ingredients:
Everything but the olive oil was included. Even the tiny containers of vinegar and sugar.
I'm rounding up for math purposes here - at $40 a week, These ingredients cost $13.33 from Blue Apron.
- Chicken (already sliced for tenders) Roughly $3.39 if purchased at Aldi, & Sliced myself at home
- 2 sweet potatoes $1.56 at Wal-mart
- 2 Persian cucumbers - $2.69 for a bag of them at Aldi
- Tempura batter $2.69 At Wal-Mart
- preserved lemon puree $15.95 on Amazon (Make Your Own - But It Takes Weeks.)
- Labneh Cheese $9 at Wal-Mart (Or Make Your Own, It takes a day or two)
- Za'atar seasoning $4.49 At Wal-Mart Online (I looked at how to make your own - it's cheaper for me to order it already made than to buy all of the ingredients. We liked this so much that this is a spice I do want to have on hand!)
- Sugar & Vinegar & Olive Oil (I'm not counting them in my price totals, they are items I would always have on hand, and the recipes used very little of them)
So to buy the groceries to make this meal would have cost me $39.77. The bulk of that cost is for preserved lemon puree and Labneh cheese - so by skipping the cucumber dish, I would bring this cost down to around $12. (We loved the cucumber dish, and I'm pretty excited to have learned about these new ingredients that I can make myself here at home now...)
It's super easy to follow the recipe in the app. It even includes wine pairings, and helpful cooking videos. You can watch videos of this meal being made, step by step, if you want! But these recipes were pretty simple - a beginner cook could handle them easily I think.
Cooking the sweet potatoes took the most time in this recipe - roughly 30 minutes to cook. I am following instructions for this trial, but when I make this meal next time, I will cook the sweet potatoes in the air fryer in half the time.
It is ridiculous how much we loved these cucumbers. I didn't think the marinade could possibly do it's thing in those few minutes - but I was wrong. I'm sure that's because these are sweet, small, cucumbers. Marinate them in a sugar and vinegar mixture, then we dipped them in the labneh cheese mixed with preserved lemon puree. I didn't know what Labneh, nor preserved lemon puree was. Now I know how great they taste, and I have researched how to make my own, and I'm pretty excited!
Note- the amount of cheese included was at least double what we needed. Which is awesome, because I stopped at Aldi and bought a bag of cucumbers so we can have this again this week-end...
What is Labneh?
Labneh is sort of a cream cheese spread. Kind of. To make it you stir a teaspoon of salt into 2 cups of greek yogurt, and hang it to strain for a day or two. If you let it drain long enough, it will become the consistency of cream cheese, and you can even make a cheesecake out of it!
Or you can make this:
"One of my favorite appetizers is to take the thick labneh, form it into 1 oz. balls with a scoop, and marinate them in a jar of olive oil, za'atar, and herbs. Perfect for spreading on toasted bread or crackers with a glass of wine." - The Spruce Eats
(I will be making this this week-end!)
What Is Preserved Lemon Puree
I thought i knew what this was. I was wrong.
I didn't know "preserved lemons" meant something different than a sort of lemon jam.
Preserved lemons are lemons in salt & lemon juice, left to ferment for weeks. (Three weeks minimum) Here's a step by step:
At the end of her post are a list of things you can use it in - salad dressings, marinades, in hummus, etc. There are more here, in this step by step of how to make just the puree from the preserved lemons https://www.elinorhutton.com/blog-list/2016/10/25/preserved-lemon-puree-and-brine
We are a family who LOVES lemon. So this is pretty exciting for me.
The chicken was pretty straight forward. I followed the recipe, and my batter was not nearly as runny as shown in their photos, but it coated nicely, so I didn't worry about that.
The thin strips cooked beautifully.
And we loved the taste. Za'atar is a Mediterranean spice I look forward to using more often!
What Is Za'atar
1 tablespoon dried thyme- crushed ( or sub oregano)
1 tablespoon ground cumin ( see note)
1 tablespoon ground coriander
1 tablespoon toasted sesame seeds
1 tablespoon sumac
½ teaspoon kosher salt
¼ teaspoon or more aleppo chili flakes- optional
"My Egyptian father would make his own version of zaatar and would love to sprinkle it over hummus, baba ganoush or over pita bread drizzled with olive oil before going in the oven to toast. " https://www.feastingathome.com/zaatar-spice-recipe/
These are the types of recipes I had hoped to learn in the Mediteranean Cooking Class I took locally this spring... while I loved that class and the overall experince, I'm disappointed to not have learned about Za'ater and Labneh sooner!
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So Overall?
Oh my word we loved this.
The meal had great taste. We would have ordered this in a restaurant. (Ok, so Dan would never order sweet potato willingly, but he ate some of it, and it's good for him.. but he loved the rest of it as much as I did!)
I learned how to make two new things - Preserved Lemon Puree and Labneh. I learned about a new spice, which I expect to use on a somewhat regular basis in future meals.
This meal was pretty much worth the entire weeks cost, in amusement value alone. I feel like I took a fun cooking class, learning new recipes and trying new ingredients, right in my kitchen. I doubt all of the recipes will be this exciting, but this first recipe alone justified the cost of week one, for me.
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See the Unboxing Of Week One, and each of the recipes as I make them, here:
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