Simple, succulent, healthy. That's it!
It doesn't get much simpler than this. The dressing can be anything you fancy: just lemon juice (a bit tart, perhaps?); olive oil and salt; white wine; garlic and some water... the list goes on. Serve it with mashed or boiled potatoes; rice; bulgur what; I like couscous with it. Or - and call me crazy - poach it, slice it and shove it between slices of toasted bread. Or just plain bread. If you're on some weird 'look-at-my-abs-I'll-die-in-cold-weather' regime and steamed chicken is all you're allowed, this is that (don't use the oil if that's a devil's food), but with little effort and maximum taste and moistness.
INGREDIENTS
chicken breast
lemon
garlic
olive oil
salt
Sumac - OR - cayenne, chilli, pepper, whatevva
tinfoil
Watch the video
METHOD
Preheat the oven to 180ºC
Juice the lemon
Peel the garlic, and chop it up really fine
Drizzle a bit of olive oil onto it, and a sprinkle of salt, and mix them all through
With the edge of your knife, drag along the garlic, pressing down as you drag. You'll drag a pile of garlic with you, so keep lifting the knife and putting it back at the start, dragging again. Every so often, wipe the garlic from the knife onto the board, and scrape it all back into a pile
Keep going till you have a rough paste
Put about 1/4 cup of olive oil in a bowl
Add the lemon juice and whisk to an emulsion. An emulsion is just when the two liquids combine and it gets cloudy and smooth
Add the garlic paste and whisk that through
I added Sumac, but you can leave it as it is, or add cayenne, pepper or something else you fancy. See if it works
Lay the breasts on a large square of tinfoil, and fold up the edges of the foil to make a bowl, a bucket, a boat - call it what you will, just don't let it leak
Spoon your emulsion over the chicken and pour the excess over it to gather in the foil
Fold up the foil and seal the edges with some deft and classy twisting/crimping
In the oven it goes for 40 minutes
Serve it with whatever you like; I like couscous
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