White Bean Chicken Chili

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This chili is one of my favorite uses for rotisserie chicken whenever the local store is having a sale on it.Even though it has a lot of ingredients, it comes together very quickly once you have everything measured out.

It’s warm, spicy, and incredibly healthy. It tastes even better the next day after all of the spices have soaked into to the beans and chicken, intensifying. You could halve this recipe to yield a smaller amount, but this can be frozen for up to 3 months in an airtight container. I like to top mine with some cheese, chia seeds, or non-fat yogurt as well as the cilantro, but you can dress it up with anything!

Slow Cooker Brown Sugar Balsamic Pork Tenderloin

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For this month’s Secret Recipe Club I got fellow Nicole from i am a honey bee. Nicole lives in Boston and has a cute daughter, boston terrier, and bunny. She also likes scrapbooking when not making delicious meals.

I recently got a slow cooker and have been trying to think what to make with it. Honestly, I leave the slow-cooking to my husband since he works from home and will be the one preparing it. He took a look at Nicole’s blog and decided right away on this barbeque-style pork tenderloin.

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We served this pork drizzled with the liquid remaining in the pot along with some spinach and curried quinoa. This pork was a tiny bit dry but adding sauce cured it immediately. The tenderloin pulled apart effortlessly and we quickly ate the leftovers on sandwiches later in the week.

It also held up great when packed for a bento lunch. Like I do with pasta and sometimes rice, I sprinkled a little water on the pork when re-heating so that it wouldn’t dry out. And of course I was sure to drizzle some extra ‘juice’ in when I was packing it up the night before.

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Check out Nicole’s blog for other great posts, including homemade cheez-its, slow cooker roast chicken, biscoff muddy buddies, s’mores chex mix, and everything bagel pretzel bites.

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Singaporean Curried Vegetable Noodles

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For this month’s Secret Recipe Club I got to take a mini trip around the world with Tara’s Multicultural Table. Tara actually has a similar background to me, including Filipino, Japanese, German, and the Southern United States. Her passion for different cultures through food is apparent through her delicious blog. Looking through her recipe index was painful — there were so many things that I wanted to make, how could I choose between Northern Thai Curry, Mango Cinnamon Basil Smoothie, Afghani Kebab with Gravy, Macarons with Vanilla Cream Cheese Filling, Yaki Udon, Cong You Bing (Scallion Pancakes), or Sichuan Wontons in Chili Sauce.

My decision was made instantly easier when I spotted her recipe for Curried Vegetable Noodles.

One of our favorite dishes to get when we order takeout or visit the local dim sum restaurant is Singaporean Curry Noodles. It has the perfect level of spiciness (flavor, not heat) and the little nuggets of meat and vegetables break up the monotony of the noodles. I was a bit lazy and used some stir fry vegetables and packaged sauce from Trader Joe’s, but I counter-acted that laziness by topping the noodles with some home-grown Thai Basil.

To make it closer to the takeout version, throw some chicken, pork, or shrimp in with the noodles. Or, as my fiancé suggested, the addition of some egg would add a nice amount of protein.

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Chicken Biryani

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For January’s Secret Recipe Club, I was paired up with Bobbi from Bobbi’s Kozy Kitchen. It was hard to pick a recipe, which is a good sign! I tend to lean towards savory recipes for Secret Recipe Club since I bake and post sweet recipes more frequently. Bobbi’s Chicken Biryani was the perfect solution — a one pot meal that satisfied my craving for Indian food. You can customize the amount of spices to your own liking (I added extra cardamom and heat).

Hop on over to Bobbi’s site and read her inspirational story (overcoming breast cancer and gastric bypass) as well as perusing her recipe stash, including: Boozy Hot Chocolate, Pumpkin Spice Cake, White Chicken Chili, Pumpkin Mac n Cheese, Fudgy Chocolate Caramel Brownies.

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Chinese Roast Pork Integrale Risotto

A few weeks ago I entered to be part of Marx Food‘s The Integrale Gauntlet. At first I was very intimidated by the title, but that’s probably because I’ve been watching a bit too much medieval-themed TV shows recently. The more I read about the “Gauntlet”, the more excited I became. This challenge is “all about rice”, one of my favorite foods!

After I entered the gauntlet, I was sent one kilo package of Italian Organic Integrale Rice — my mission was to make an original savory risotto.

Though rice is one of my favorite foods, I’ve only made brown rice a few times and risotto only once. Ashamedly, the one time I did make risotto was from one of those instant risotto packets back when I was in college. I’ve always been intimidated of risotto–the care and attention it takes, as well as the reputation it has for being so easy to “do poorly” or “just wrong.”

Luckily, Marx Foods has a good framework that broke down the process into general steps, noting when embellishments could be added. Using their steps as a guide, I formulated a recipe using some of my favorite flavors and inspired by a recent trip to a new dim sum restaurant nearby.

I chose to make a risotto with shiitake mushrooms, ginger, water chesnuts, pickled cucumbers, cilantro, scallions, and char siu (chinese roast pork). The end result was something that was creamy and rich with the taste of good memories though balanced with acidity and crunch from the vegetables.

For my first time making risotto from scratch, I was quite proud of myself. This is a great healthier version of risotto with it being organic and brown, and it has the added bonus of being a one pot meal!

This dish paired well with a deep red wine we picked up at the local store; the flavor of the wine helped cleanse between bites of the risotto since the char siu was quite fatty. I used about 2 cups (my rice cup measures 180ml) and had generous dinner and lunch portions the next day for two people.

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This recipe has been deemed a "hit at home" and is one of the tastiest recipes on Hapa-tite!