Grilled Tandoori Chicken Recipe

Summer is almost over! It’s hard to imagine, but school starts next week for the girls, so I thought I'd use the barbecue one more time before storing it until next season. I marinated chicken breasts in tandoori sauce (I removed the skin because Lulu's aunt who’s visiting doesn't like it).

A generous amount of plain yogurt is necessary to ensure that the meat is moist. The traditional spices from garam masala are also used (cumin, coriander, red chile and other spices). I grilled the chicken breasts for about 10 minutes and the meat was ready to be served. It’s actually a pretty stress-free recipe if -like me-, you have a ready-made jar of garam masala in your pantry.

Vietnamese Vegetables with Ginger (Rau Muong Xao Gung)

Vietnamese cuisine boasts many dishes that highlight fresh ingredients in a healthy manner. Rau muống xào với gừng (Vietnamese pea tendrils sautéed in ginger) is an excellent example of this.  The dish is incredibly simple; the pea tendrils are blanched and then flavored with ginger and a little turmeric for color. I made it recently for my uncle who was visiting us and is a practicing Buddhist, which is why the recipe does not call for onions, shallots or garlic. Don’t worry though; the dish is only light on calories, not flavor.

As a child, our typical Vietnamese family meals were composed of individual bowls of rice, meat, seafood or tofu, a bowl of canh (a clear broth soup), a vegetable side dish and a dipping sauce. I always looked forward to a bowl of rau muống, served with a soy sauce and ginger dipping sauce called mắm gừng. If you have trouble getting your family to eat their greens, give this dish a try. It worked on me!

French Cauliflower Salad Recipe (Salade de Chou Fleur)

Today's recipe is an easy and healthy salad called "chou-fleur vinaigrette". During my childhood in France, it was a dish that was served fairly frequently at the cafeteria of my elementary school (carottes Vichy too!). Cauliflower is boiled, then coated with vinegar and oil and sprinkled with flat-leaf parsley. That’s it! Who says French cooking has to be complicated?

I've mentioned quite a few times lately that I've been trying to eat healthier. Cauliflower is a big part of that because it's packed with fiber and vitamin C. But cauliflower salad is not a full meal by itself, so I added hard-cooked quail eggs and a piece of bread on the side. It’s a simple, quick and healthy summer meal. Rachael Ray would be proud!

Zucchini Radiatore (Vegetarian Pasta Recipe)

I love the vegetables my husband has been harvesting this season. We've had lovely zucchini so far. I've already used the zucchini flowers and stuffed them with risotto, and today I sautéed the zucchini with radiatore pasta. Lulu also pulled plenty of red Creole onions from the ground, so I used them to flavor the vegetarian pasta dish.

If you're able to plant your own vegetables, you should try zucchini. The young ones are sweet and more tender. They're fairly easy to plant, and if you take good care of them, they can be prolific.

You could pair any other pasta with the veggies in this dish, but I think the lace-shaped pasta looks very fancy. To make the dish a little healthier than my usual pasta dishes, I added very little cheese (I used Asiago for its strong flavor) and instead used enoki mushrooms, which resemble strings of cheese. It’s a great way to trick the kids, both little and big, into eating healthy!

How To Make Vietnamese Yogurt (Homemade Yogurt Recipe)

The weather is getting so much warmer in the Bay Area that I thought we all could use a cool treat. Of course, I pulled out the ice cream machine, but since we’ve been exercising lately, I decided a healthy alternative was in order. So that’s why I pulled out my yogurt jars and made our family's favorite: Vietnamese yogurt. In Vietnamese, it's called sữa chua, which literally translates to "sour milk". It's also often referred to as da ua, which is the pidgin French term for "yaourt" (Vietnamese language swallows the consonant sounds from the French term).

Making Vietnamese yogurt is very easy and doesn’t even require a yogurt maker. The main ingredient is of course milk (sữa bò); to this are added condensed milk (hộp sữa đặc), warm water (nước sôi) and a ready-made-made yogurt (starter) to start the fermentation. You can find this starter, called hủ da ua cái, in Asian stores for $1.50 to $2.00 a jar.

Vietnamese yogurt is soft and tastes sour, sweet and a little tart. Once you try it, you'll be just as addicted as my family is!