Tuesday 21 August 2012

Grilled Chicken with Garden Pea Skordalia

I'm always slightly nervous when I cook chicken.  I never know when it's cooked through, and unlike beef, I can't just have it medium-rare.  There's a funny story involving chicken with orange sauce, but I'll get to that next time.  Let's just first say that I've served people raw chicken before.

So how do you tell if a piece of chicken is cooked through?  Now, you could use a meat thermometer, I forget and I'm too lazy to search up the right temperature of a piece of cooked chicken.  Or you cut through it --  juices should run clear, and, well, look at it, it shouldn't be pink anymore.  If you don't own a meat thermometer and you don't want to poke holes and slice it up, touch it with your finger.  Press it, it should be firm to the touch and should spring back.  I suppose it's more of a thing with experience, so with your first few times of cooking chicken, serve it up like this, sliced up, so you can see. I've had more than one raw-chicken-to-guests episode, so..I try to just cook chicken for myself.
This is a healthy weeknight dinner recipe from Bon Appetit.  I love Bon Appetit.  If I lived in the US I'd definitely subscribe to it.  In the UK last year I subscribed to Jamie's magazine and it was oh so exciting receiving his beautiful booklet in the mail every month (or two months).  It made my day.  Last time it even got redirected to Rome!  My landlady, bless her, had all my mail in the last month sent to my address in Rome.

The original recipe asked for edamame, I love edamame but I couldn't find frozen edamame so I got just normal garden peas instead. Enjoy.

Recipe adapted from Bon Appetit
Ingredients
100g frozen peas
1/4 cup chopped basil
1 large garlic clove
3 tbsp parmesan
1 tbsp fresh lemon juice
2 tbsp olive oil
1 chicken breast

Method
Cook the peas in a pot of boiling water for a few minutes until tender.  Drain and put the peas in a food processor along with the basil, garlic, parmesan, lemon juice and olive oil.  Taste to see if you need to add more lemon juice or garlic or something.  Season.
Rub the chicken breast with olive oil, salt and pepper.  Have the grill heated to medium-high and grill the chicken, about 6 minutes per side.
Serve with pea skordalia.  

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