I have to confess that once in a while I have a disastrous cooking day. Usually I take pictures of several meals and post the best looking ones, since there are some things that might be delicious but are not terribly photogenic. This weekend I had several cooking mishaps due to a really bad recipe and a screw up on my part so I went through the pictures that I had not posted and found this recipe. This comes from Martha Stewart’s “Dinner at Home” which I got from my Mom at Christmas (thanks Mom!). I couldn’t find the recipe online but this is really one of those meals that doesn’t require precise measurements.
You start off with hoisin sauce, minced garlic, minced ginger and diced chillies. I like heat so I left the seeds in.
I also added some fresh cilantro.
Everything mixed up together.
I decided to use chicken breasts, which is my favourite cut of chicken since I hate fighting with bones and skin.
I slathered my chicken in the sauce and put it in the oven since I didn’t have enough time to let it marinade.
To accompany my chicken I made marinated cucumbers and green onions. I simply cut my cucumbers in long strips and cut the green onions in roughly the same length. Since I can't get enough chilli, I decided to add some in here as well.
I then covered them completely in rice wine vinegar. They sell several flavours in the supermarket but I always get the plain flavour. The longer you marinade the veggies the more “cooked” they are. Eventually the cucumbers soften a bit but the green onions also have less of an acrid bite.
To make sure that my chicken is not overcooked, since chicken breasts can dry out easily, I usually put in an oven thermometer.
To accompany the veggies and chicken I made rice. This was a really easy and quick meal. The actual meal prep took around 10 minutes and the chicken took around 45 minutes to cook. If you want your chicken to cook faster you can just cut it into smaller pieces. This was really good. The chicken had just the right mixture of heat and savoury flavour from the ginger, garlic and cilantro. Rice wine vinegar is a lot milder than regular vinegar so the veggies had a pleasant crunch without being too acidic. I had some very tasty leftovers for my lunch the next day.
