Indian Butter Chicken & Cauliflower Rice

Indian Butter Chicken & Cauliflower Rice... Life has been pretty crazy the last few weeks, filled with excitiment and travel, and all the opportunities to stuff your face that generally come along with weekends out of town.

I've been home and recovering from a weekend in LaLa land visiting my family for 3 jam packed days of eating, a Bachelorette weekend in the swanky Hamptons town of Montauk where food and drinks were aplenty, and topped it all off with a leisurely long weekend spent in the Windy City and at "the lake" munching on summer snacks and every type of BBQ'd meat you can think of. So my recovery has been to basically eat smaller portions and reduce the carb intake. Usually if I can swing that for a week or two I'm back at fighting weight. Before I get to the main meal of the post I'll fill you in on what I ate earlier this week...

Yummy pool time bagel and lox indulgence over LDW!

More poolside treats on the healthful side

Nothing like a Family Dinner Al Fresco in the Summer!

My landlord and roomie was out of town on Monday & Tuesday nights this week so I enjoyed a protein packed chicken and black bean tortilla soup on Monday and then the most boring, but kind of simplistically perfect, tofu and broccoli soup on Tuesday. It was really stinkin easy and if you occasionally just crave simplicity this might be up your alley. I pretty much made soup in about 10 minutes with chicken stock (or bouillon & water), a handful of broccoli florets, a block of tofu diced, a handful of wheat noddles, cilantro, lime, and a dash of soy sauce. I let the broth come to a boil,, added the noodles and broccoli to cook for about 3 minutes then added the other contents and let it simmer for a minute or two before serving hot.

Without the carbs I would have been starving... so they had to be added!

Simple soup

Now for the main event...

What I used:
2 chicken breasts cut into bite sized pieces
1 yellow onion diced
1 red bell pepper diced
1 package of Indian Butter Chicken seasoning paste
1 cup water
1/2 stick butter
Juice from 1/2 lemon
1 head cauliflower

First I sauteed the veggies until golden brown, I removed them, melted the butter and then added the rest of the contents listed above (minus the cauliflower) and let it simmer until the chicken was cooked through about 15 minutes. Before serving I added the sauteed veggies back in the mix.

Simmering away

For the Cauliflower Rice, I used a whole head of cauliflower and basically just chopped it all up with a large knife until it was in rice sized pieces. You could also do this in the food processor. Once I had my "rice" I laid it on a baking sheet with a tiny olive oil, salt and pepper, and popped it in the oven at 450 degrees for 10 minutes just to get it cooked through with a slight crunch.

Post roasting, it was evenly spread out before I gave it a toss after cooking

I served the Indian Butter Chicken atop this low carb "rice" option and it was Dahlish!

YUM!