I feel like I've not been in the same 'cooking' frame of mind, recently, as I have been for the last... well, year, I suppose. I didn't enjoy the second chilli con carne meal because it felt like a microwave meal, which (it turns out) I am oddly averse to. I've made simple meals, like a carbonara pasta bake, which I didn't post because I've made both carbonaras and pasta bakes in the past. Nothing special.
Last night I was thinking of doing chicken enchiladas, which we've also done before (but which I didn't write up because Tom was the main chef that night - my original enchilada recipe is here, though), when I decided that this slump must end - at least temporarily. I found this recipe from Everybody Likes Sandwiches, and read it, and all the other recipes it links to, and decided to put it with this recipe from BBC Good Food.
It was good. Not mindblowingly awesome, like so many of these recipes promised - I was disappointed that it wasn't the best chicken either of us had ever tasted, but I suppose it might work better with an entire bird (as intended) than three breasts (as I used). Tom's superior mashing skills played a major role, as always, in making the mashed vegetable mix absolutely delicious. Next time I would try properly roasting the sweet potato in peeled chunks, as suggested by the original recipe, but yesterday I simply didn't want to peel the sweet potatoes. Or cut them. I don't like dealing with raw sweet potato.
Milk Chicken with Roast Vegetable Mash
Serves 2, with extra sauce
3 chicken breasts
Seasoning
1 teaspoon butter
1 heaped teaspoon cinnamon
1 heaped teaspoon oregano
1 tablespoon lemon juice/vinegar
2 cups milk
2 large sweet potatoes
3 garlic cloves
4 potatoes
Milk
Seasoning
I pricked the sweet potatoes and put them on a baking tray with the garlic cloves with a little oil. Put them in the oven at 180 degrees (360 Fahrenheit) for twenty minutes.
Meanwhile, I sprinkled salt and ground black pepper into a bag with the chicken breasts, and rubbed the chicken through the bag until it was lightly coated in seasoning. Melted the butter on a low heat in a saucepan and fried the chicken on both sides until each breast was white. (I didn't bother draining the fat as there was barely anything to drain.) Added cinnamon, oregano, lemon juice and vinegar (the lemon juice ran out while I was pouring) and the milk, and heated through for a moment. Tipped the chicken and warmed sauce into an oven-proof dish, covered with foil, and put in the oven. By now the potatoes and garlic had been in the oven for twenty minutes - I removed the garlic, and put the chicken and potatoes on at 180 degrees (360 Fahrenheit) for thirty minutes.
I peeled the normal potatoes and cooked them in water at a fairly low heat for thirty minutes. After half an hour, the foil came off the chicken and the heat was increased to 200 degrees (390 Fahrenheit). Twenty minutes later (at which point the chicken had been cooking for 50 minutes and the sweet potatoes for 70 minutes), I removed the sweet potatoes from the oven. The chicken stayed in. Added broccoli to the boiling potato pan and cooked for ten minutes. Drained the potatoes and broccoli, and removed the broccoli on to the foil, leaving some green broccoli residue in the pan. The garlic cloves were squeezed out of their skin and added to the normal potatoes along with the flesh from the sweet potatoes, and the vegetables were mashed together with milk and seasoning.
The chicken was removed from the oven (after having been in for roughly an hour) and served.
