I'm Jamie G. Dougherty, health and lifestyle coach.
And today we are making six ingredients and you're set.
We are focusing on chicken with asparagus and a delicious Tahini sauce
that comes together so
quickly, only has six ingredients,
you won't even believe how quickly dinner is on the table.
Your six ingredients are: Onions, asparagus, lemon, chicken, almonds and Tahini.
If you've never worked with Tahini, it is similar to peanut butter.
It's just ground up seeds.
So just like you would grind up peanuts for peanut butter,
you grind up sesame seeds for Tahini and that's it.
You don't have to be scared or worried about it.
It is a delicious condiment that goes well with all different types of things.
You can use either a white, a red or a yellow onion.
It does not matter.
Whatever you have in the house is perfectly fine.
This is your dice.
Right?
Really easy.
A bit of olive oil.
If you didn't have olive oil, you could also use a bit of butter.
The thing about this dish, the reason why I'm giving you all the different options:
If you didn't have
onion, you could use shallot;
if you didn't have olive oil, you could use a bit of organic butter.
Because the point of this dish is for you to be in and out of the kitchen in like 15
to 20 minutes.
I mean, seriously quick and easy.
Because we all have busy nights.
And we don't want to spend our only time at home in the kitchen.
Great.
So we are going to let this caramelize a bit.
As I get an onion facial.
Okay.
We're going to do a little bit more, because I'm a big onion fan.
Cut your onion across like three or four times, down about five times, and then across again.
And what you're going to do is leave the onions in there for about ten minutes.
We want them to get kind of nice and caramelized and give the dish a lovely depth of flavor.
The thing about only having six ingredients is you have to use them really well
to make sure that everything is used to its fullest potential
and gives us all the flavor that we can get out of it.
One of my favorite things about asparagus is it is loaded with B vitamins.
B vitamins -- folic acid -- help you with energy throughout the day.
This is the perfect spring kind of vegetable, which is exactly when it's in season.
All asparagus have a tough woodsy stem that you want to get rid of
because otherwise
you'll be chewing on this for days and days
and it will never break down.
So how do you know where you should chop it?
You gently bend and there you go.
Line your one up with the rest and chop from there.
So this, toss.
Oh, these are getting really nice.
So then you just do this.
You slice your asparagus to about an inch, inch and a half,
and the tips are going to be a little bit longer than this, but that's okay.
This is Tahini.
To get the most juice out of your lemon, you want to roll it a few times.
You can also use the zest.
These are beautiful.
They're coming out perfectly.
Now, the lemon juice, interestingly enough, actually makes it thicker.
The acid thickens the Tahini.
So we're going to use a bit of water to thin it out,
a few tablespoons of water.
And again this goes back to your preference.
If you want a thicker Tahini sauce, use less water;
if you want a thinner Tahini sauce, use more water.
And it's a wonderful workout.
See that.
These guns from making Tahini sauce.
All right.
You can see that it is softening up a bit, but it definitely needs more water.
All right.
Our onions are ready.
So I'm going to turn it down a bit.
Because again we just want to bring out that caramel flavor.
We don't want to burn the onions.
That's no fun.
So this is beautiful.
Gorgeous.
Now we need a little bit of salt.
All right.
I'm going to bring the heat back up because we're going to toss in the asparagus.
I'll just use it all.
No such thing as too many vegetables.
All right.
Give a little stir, make sure that all the deliciousness of the onions
gets imparted into the asparagus.
Oh, this looks so gorgeous.
Gorgeous.
And now we're going to do a bit of a steam.
You take a few tablespoons of water, put on the lovely pot, and let it do its thing.
So now it's time for the chicken.
You have your few pieces of chicken you've cooked at 400 degrees with a few spices.
You want your meat to be just bitesize.
So toss this all in.
And I'm actually going to throw in the rest of this lemon.
Because chicken and lemon is a beautiful thing.
Yum.
So what I did here is I actually put the chicken in two minutes,
maybe three minutes before the asparagus was actually done,
because now the chicken and the asparagus will cook together for a little bit.
I'm adding a little bit more water to let that steam.
All right.
We're going to Tahini sauce it up.
So you just want to drizzle it on top.
You can always mix it in if you wanted to, if you were feeling like you wanted
something kind of rich and creamy.
Okay.
Last thing.
Your crunch.
I do not believe that you should ever cook anything without giving it a crunch.
Crunch creates satisfaction and makes things interesting
and really takes your food to the next level.
So we've got some roasted, toasted almonds.
If you wanted to, you could use pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds.
You could use walnuts, but they're not as crunchy.
I like almonds because they're super crunch.
And that's it.
Onion, asparagus, lemon, Tahini sauce, chicken and almonds.
Six ingredients and you are set.
This is a dish that's going to make everyone happy and everyone satisfied
without you putting in too much work.
Oh, we're rolling.
Great.
Welcome to the Wellness for Life Cooking Series.
I always mess this up.
Okay.
Done.
My name is Jamie Doughtery, and this is -- oh.
Okay.
Third time's a charm.
The thing about asparagus is that it's a very tempermental vegetable.
Doesn't take much for it to go from good, good, gross.
It's like industrial organics.
It's like giant onions, giant lemons.
It's very exciting.
Now, if you are a big lemon fan, of course, use as much lemon as you want.
If not, don't.
That's fine.