Saturday 8 December 2012

Man pleasing chicken


I'm pretty sure the overwhelming majority of recipes in the Pinterest Food and Drink section are for oven baked chicken. Chicken parmesan, chicken with mozzarella, chicken smothered in cream, sesame seed chicken, lemon chicken, chicken with cream, mozzarella, parmesan, sesame seeds and lemon... all of them claim to be something along the lines of "best chicken ever" or "better than x, y or z chicken". I still keep lying to myself that I'm trying to eat healthily, so I never pin any of these recipes, thinking if at some point I really want to make unhealthy chicken, I will always just run across them as they seem to pop up time and time again. 

What irony was it that when I really needed to find some yummy chicken recipe really quickly, I couldn't find any. I was having Y chromosome carrier over for dinner, and wanted to cook something he would like. Which inevitably would involve chicken. Thankfully I happened across this recipe for "Man pleasing chicken" from Witty in the City which I thought sounded pretty much like something I wanted. To enhance the man pleasing aspects of the recipe, I decided to stuff the chicken fillets with parmesan and bacon. What could be more man pleasing?

Man-pleasing chicken (serves 4):
4 chicken breast fillets
4 rashers of bacon
a chunk of parmesan 
ground black pepper
100 g of dijon mustard
3 tbsp golden syrup
1 tbsp apple cider vinegar
3 tbsp white wine

The howto:
Preheat the oven to 200 degrees C. Cut four pieces of parmesan and wrap them in bacon. Cut a pocket in the chicken fillets and stuff the bacon wrapped parmesan into the fillets. Place in an oven proof tin and grind black pepper on both sides of the fillets. Mix mustard, syrup, vinegar and wine, and pour on top of the fillets. Bake for 30-40 minutes, depending on how big your fillets are.

The verdict:
Let me just tell you, this dish certainly lived up to its name! Y chromosome carrier seemed very happy with it. And so was this double X carrier as well. The chicken was juicy and moist and soft, and the sauce was nice with lots of flavour. I am not a big fan of mustard, so I was afraid I wouldn't like this recipe very much, but apparently the syrup nicely softens out the sting from the mustard. And then you work your way to the nice core of the fillet with the smoky bacon and the strong flavour from the parmesan. It all just came together perfectly. If you are in a hurry, you can always skip stuffing the fillets, and just smother the chicken in the sauce and into the oven it goes. Talk about fast food. If you have a bit more time, wrap the chicken in bacon, and then smother in sauce. Super quick, super easy and super good.  





















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