Tandoori Grilled Chicken and Indian Spiced Green Beans

Dinner tonight was so delicious!   I made Tandoori Grilled Chicken and Indian Spiced Green Beans.    I made the same meal back on March 17 which was the first time I used this recipe.  I think the chicken breasts turned out better this time than the first time I attempted this dish and they were so good, that in the future I am going to make this recipe with boneless, skinless chicken breasts only.

 Photo: Romulo Yanes; Food Styling: Simon Andrews; Prop Styling: Helen Crowther

I was curious this time to see how much of the thick yogurt based marinade remained on the chicken.   I marinated the chicken for about 5 hours in the refrigerator in two zip lock bags.   I measured the weight of the bags before I put the chicken in and after I removed the chicken and about 1/3 of the marinade remained on the chicken.

The marinade is mostly yogurt and some spices and salt.     Each bag had about 7oz of 2% yogurt (the Cooking Light recipe calls for non-fat yogurt) and 1/2 teaspoon of salt (the Cooking Light recipe calls for 3/4 teaspoon).   I had three chicken breasts in one of the zip lock bags, so I estimated that each chicken breast came out of the bag with 1/6th of the marinade or a little over 1oz of yogurt and about 1/16th of a teaspoon of salt.

As I mentioned in my previous post about this meal, the Indian Spiced Green Bean recipe is based on a Cooking Light recipe for Indian Spiced Okra.    I steam the green beans first, then toast the mustard seeds, and then saute the green beans for a couple of minutes with the curry powder, tablespoon of olive oil, and 1/4 teaspoon of salt.   About a pound of green beans (after snapping the ends off), yields about 4 servings, so each servings includes 4oz (raw) of green beans, 1/4 tablespoon of olive oil, and 1/16th of a teaspoon of salt.   Like the last time I tried this, the beans were delicious.

The Cooking Light recipe for the chicken also includes Raita, which is a yogurt, mint, and cucumber sauce.   I made the Raita because my wife really likes it, but I don't really care that much for Raita, so I didn't eat it.

We also made some plain basmati rice to go along with the chicken and green beans and I ate about 3/4 of a cup of rice with dinner.   One my favorite things about going to an Indian restaurant for dinner is Naan, the Indian flat bread.   My wife went out and picked up an order of Naan to go from a local Indian restaurant to go with our dinner and I ate a 1/4 of a piece of bread. 

So, the nutritional breakdown for this healthy, light dinner are as follows:

	Calories	Fat	Carbs	Protiein	Sodium
4oz Boneless Skinless Chicken Breast	118	2.7g	0	25g	194mg
Marinade	18	0.5g	1g	2.4g	150mg
Green Beans	60	4g	6.5g	1.5g	160mg
Rice	181	0	40g	3.3g	0
Naan	80	2.1g	11.5g	3.4g	200mg
Total	377	9.3g	59g	35.6g	700mg

A little high in sodium for dinner, but I was still under 1500mg for the day.