Second recipe from Essential New York Times Cookbook: Braised Ligurian Chicken, which I swear was in one of my Jamie Oliver cookbooks.  Maybe Jamie’s Kitchen, which I swapped away due to lack of use?  Maybe there was a good reason for that.

The chicken looks like hummus in this picture, right?  I don’t think it was supposed to look like that.  Granted, this is half of one breast, sliced in half again to make sure it was cooked again.  But honestly, I might have preferred two scoops of hummus, a couple of olives, and some tomatoes to the amount of effort required to produce this dish.

The chicken, thawed all day on the counter yesterday, was still partially frozen, and I had a hell of a time breaking it down – to the point that I gave up on separating the wings and just dumped the entirety of the remaining carcass into the stock pot.  I used our 5 quart cast iron enamel pot, but there wasn’t enough room to brown the chicken and also fry the garlic.  The liquid would not reduce.  It absolutely would not.

In the end, dinner was good – satisfying – but not great.  The sauce was packed with flavor, and I ate all of the olives, but the chicken was unremarkable.  I suppose that’s OK, as we’re going to eat the leftovers with Smitten Kitchen’s tomato sauce with onion and butter tomorrow, and I’d rather let the sauce be the star.

Recipe:
Braised Ligurian Chicken from The Essential New York Times Cookbook