Grilled chicken mango salad with herbal rice

It has been a while

Writer was on maternity leave. Yup, just delivered a bouncy baby girl. Trying to get back in shape and regrow my herb garden which was destroyed and unattended during confinement. Well, i did asked my husband to tend to it but it proven to be such a chore for him. Ho hum.

                                                        We lit some candles, just for fun

Now, am embarking on a strict diet. No, not that atkinson kind. Just need to revise my whole menu and diet plan so that i can detox myself and give me more energy instead of feeling sluggish. Come January 2011 will be working at a gym and in this shape, I know i cant be physically active. So i got myself a new cookbook called Eat Well Stay Well and produced by Reader's Digest. My dad bought this book but i found it stored at the library unread. So i picked it up and found that most of the recipes are actually cookable (being a lazy cook, it helps)

There are more that 250 recipes inside and some nutritional guide as accordance with the type of the ingredients and bonus plus, it also provides information on the foods that fights illnesses.

To tell you the truth, not all 250 recipes can be catered to my culture especially those that involve the usage of wines. I cant honestly tell you whether wine is actually permissible in our cooking as being muslim we are prohibit to consume wine; although the alcohol in the wine will evaporate in high heat, but let us not touch that subject. If there are 10 recipes that contain wine, I can surely skip that and try the remaining 240 recipes, cant I? Let's be positive.

Today i cooked herbal rice or green rice. It is pretty easy to make. The  ingredients are:

3 teaspoon olive oil
4 spring onions, sliced
2 cloves of garlic, crushed
1 cup of rice
Salt
1/2 cup fresh coriander or flat leaf parsley (I add up 1/2 cup of fresh basil)
1 cup of fried anchovies

1. Heat the oil in medium saucepan over moderate heat. Add the spring onions and garlic, cook until soft
2. Add the rice, 2 1/4 water and a pinch of salt. Cook until the rice is tender. Once the rice is cooked, mix in the coriander and basil. As an alternative I put in some anchovies to give it that salty taste that my husband loves so much. Not to much salt though, else will defeat the whole purpose.

I paired the rice with grilled chicken with mango salad which i will share the recipe in the next post. Meanwhile, happy trying!

To get the book, you can click at the following link available below.