A sudden urge yesterday grabbed me and I was inspired to tackle another cookbook lottery. It has been a while since I did one, and I was pleasantly surprised to find myself quite excited. This one would be a little different as I didn't have time to pop out and do any shopping so I would choose a recipe where I had most of the ingredients in our cupboards and I'd improvise for the rest. Using my random number generator, I chose a cookbook and then chose a page number.
The chosen book was
Jamie's America and I had chosen pg 191. This opened up on a picture page, so according to my rules I turned the page right until the first available recipe. Redondo Mackerel Wraps... Mmm... reading the ingredient list showed my cupboards were sorely lacking, So I continued to turn pages to the first recipe where I did have the majority of ingredients.
The winner was, on pg 213, Chicken on Chickpeas.
I needed:
Chicken breast - check
Chicken thighs - will drumsticks and wings do? Yup!
Basil leaves - nope!
Marinade
Garlic - check
Parsley - growing in a pot outside the back door; check
Zest and juice of a lemon - bottled lemon juice will have to suffice
Olive Oil - check
Salt and pepper - check
Chickpea stew
More olive oil and garlic
Onion - check
Paprika - check
Chargrilled peppers - peppers in the fridge, so I can chargrill my own
Tomatoes - will tinned do? Of course they will!
Chickpeas - check
White or red wine vinegar - ran out of white last week, so balsamic it will have to be
Fresh green chillies - check!
Right, I was ready to go...
To start off with, I peeled all the garlic and put two large cloves into boiling water and allowed these to cook for 10 minutes or so. This was for the marinade. Whilst this was going on, I grabbed my torch and charred the two yellow peppers. This can also be done in a very hot oven, under a grill or over an open flame if you have a gas stove. Alternatively, you can buy a jar as the recipe suggests.
I grabbed the parsley from our garden and washed this off, then finely chopped it and placed it into a bowl. To this I added the boiled garlic cloves, about 20ml of lemon juice and a good dollop of olive oil, probably about 60ml. Using a fork, I mashed up the garlic and mixed everything together in the bowl.
To this I added the chicken and gave it all a good rubbing to get the marinade all over the chicken. I peeled the skin back and massaged the marinade all over the flesh before 'clothing' the chicken legs again. I covered the bowl and let it marinade for about 30 minutes. The recipe said 1 hour, but hey, we were hungry! Anyway, the oven needed time to warm up to the required 200C.
Next step was to cook the chicken with bones in to colour the skin and crisp it up a little. After a few minutes on each side and the chicken showing a nice golden colour, they went into the oven for an initial 10 minutes or so. I would be cooking the breast later.
I now started the sauce. The onion and garlic was peeled and finely chopped. The chilli was deseeded and finely chopped and the pepper was deseeded and roughly chopped.
Placing a pan over a medium heat, I added a little olive oil and when hot, I added the onion, garlic and a teaspoon of paprika. This all got a good stir and then I left it to cook for about 8 minutes, stirring occasionally.
Once the onion was translucent, I added the chopped pepper, drained chickpeas, tinned tomato, about 30ml of balsamic vinegar and the green chilli. It all got a good stir, a little seasoning and another stir. I brought the pot to the boil and immediately turned down to a low heat and left it to reduce over the next 20 minutes or so.
I quickly browned the chicken breast in a pan on the stove and then added this to the rest of the chicken in the oven for a further 15-20 minutes to cook fully. I cooked the breast and boned chicken separately as I didn't want the breast to be too dry and overcooked.
All that was left now was to plate up. The sauce had thickened nicely and tasted great. The chicken breast was perfectly cooked, just over 70C using my thermometer so I knew it would be nice and moist still. A couple of spoonfuls of the sauce graced the middle of each plate and on top of this I placed the sliced breast. I placed the drumstick and the wing next to the sauce and breast and added a little parsley as garnish. The recipes asked for basil as garnish, but beggars can't be choosers.
Lovely... dinner done in less than an hour, including marinading time. And it tasted good, really morish. I loved the garlic, olive oil and lemon juice marinade around the chicken. I think that maybe my addition of balsamic vinegar instead of white or red vinegar in the chickpea stew added to the dish. There was now a sweet element that would have been missing if I had used normal vinegar. Nice contrasting sweet sour flavours with a touch of heat and differing textures in the chickpeas and crispy chicken wing made this dish for me.
Yep, I'll make this dish again. Quick, easy and very tasty.
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