Weblog Entry - 10/02/2004: "honey-balsamic glazed chicken with mushrooms, and lime-roasted squash"

10/02/2004 Entry: honey-balsamic glazed chicken with mushrooms, and lime-roasted squash

Back when I still ate meat, my favorite easy dish to make for dinner was: buy one whole cut-up chicken. Throw into a pyrex baking pan along with an assortment of hardy vegetables. Pour over one bottle of salad dressing, preferably creamy italian. Bake at 350 for one hour.

Variety was easy -- there were any number of combinations of different vegetables and different salad dressing. I generally served it with pasta, though sometimes I served it with bread or rice.

Recently I realized it's been nearly ten years since I made that dish. I'm a better cook now -- shouldn't I be able to make this dish even better, now? I had a meat-eating friend coming over for dinner. We had been intending on eating out, but I've had my fill of eating away from home for awhile -- I wanted to make dinner myself. So, I saw that as a fine chance to find out if a decade of experience of vegetarian cooking would be applicable to my old standard chicken dish. As it turns out, yes, I can still cook chicken. :) And the good results continued on through the roasted acorn squash, too.

I liked the inventions enough to write them down. Read on for the recipes!

honey-balsamic glazed chicken and/or mushrooms

Serves 4ish.

2 chicken breasts
1/3 lb crimini mushrooms
2 lb baby red potatoes
4 shallots
8 oz honey-balsamic salad dressing (buy a bottle, or mix honey, balsamic, dijon mustard, vegetable oil, and spices to taste)
1/2 cup balsamic vinegar
3 tablespoons olive oil (optional)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

You can start with one 10x13" baking dish, or two somewhat smaller ones. I used a 9x9 -and a 9x11. I put all the mushrooms in the 9x9, all the chicken in the 9x11, and distributed the rest of the ingredients between the two dishes.

Wash mushrooms and cut off woody parts of stems.

Cut chicken breasts into halves or thirds. (they're making chickens bigger now than they were ten years ago, I think.)

If the potatoes are larger than about 1-1/2" in diameter, cut them in half.

Cut the shallots into half-inch chunks, leaving the layers intact.

Arrange chicken and vegetables in baking dish(es). If the mushrooms are going into a separate dish than the chicken, drizzle the mushrooms with olive oil.

Pour the salad dressing and extra balsamic vinegar over the ingredients. Make sure everything gets well-coated.

Bake for about 1/2 hour, until potatoes are soft and chicken breasts are no longer pink inside.
...

Alongside the main dish I served some fusilli in olive oil and garlic, and a dish of roasted acorn squash. I wasn't too sure about my guest's fondness for squash, and I know that *I* prefer my squash to taste well-seasoned. This is frequently a problem for acorn squash; people like to cut it in half, hollow out the center, and use it as a bowl -- which means that the flesh of the squash just tastes like squash. I find this boring. My solution is to cut the squash into smaller pieces and bake it with lots of liquid. (as it turned out, my guest was in fact normally suspicious of untasted vegetables, but liked this enough to eat it enthusiastically. We all agreed that the trick was to season the vegetables sufficiently that they can stand up to red wine.)

Lime-roasted squash

Serves 8 as a side dish or 4 as a main dish

one acorn squash, cut into 16 half-wedges (cut into quarters, remove seeds, then slice each quarter once lengthwise, once widthwise.)
one large sweet onion
one green bell pepper
1/2 cup olive oil
1/2 cup white wine
1/4 cup lime juice
2 tsp honey
2 tablespoons cajun seasoning (I mix my own and it's different every time; there's usually lots of paprika along with chili powder, garlic powder, black pepper, cayenne, oregano, and thyme.)
salt as needed

Preheat oven to 400.

Arrange squash pieces in baking dish, skin side down.

Cut onion and bell pepper into large-ish strips, 2 inches long and 1/2 inch wide. Do not separate onion layers. Scatter onion and pepper around squash pieces; try to keep all the vegetables in one layer.

Whisk together remaining ingredients in small bowl. Pour into baking dish, ensuring that all the squash gets at least wet.

Cover dish with aluminum foil; bake for 30 minutes. Remove foil. Knock each piece of squash over onto its side. Baste all contents with cooking liquid. Bake uncovered for 30 minutes longer.

Posted by sev @ 07:24 PM PST |

insert witty comment here