The recipe (perhaps due to translation, perhaps due to culture differences, I don't know) felt a bit like a series of suggestions to me. Nonetheless, I really enjoyed interpreting what I was supposed to do, just going with what felt "right" at the time. The recipe calls for "1 or 2 Chicken". Since my family consists of 2.5 people who actually eat meat, and my kitchen isn't even big enough to hula-hoop in, I chose the 1 Chicken.
Purists will say that I cheated with this recipe since it calls for cutting the chicken into parts and I bought an already cut-into-parts chicken (this exists, I had no idea!). In my defense, the cut up chicken was for some reason several dollars cheaper. The recipe specifically calls for using the legs, drumstick, and breasts. I included the thighs because, hey, I like thighs. And, they are technically legs, right? Plus, what am I going to do later with two thighs? I saved the bony back portion of the chicken, thinking I will someday soon follow Carl Weathers' advice and get a stew going.
Then I diced the ham and decided that "bake the ham into the butter" (note: butter was not on the ingredient list) meant I should cut up "enough" butter into pats, put ham on top of the pats in a glass baking dish, and stick it in the oven at 350°C. (When all else fails, set your oven at 350°C.) While the ham was baking, I cut up the onion. By the time the onion was sliced (I only used one - I always cut down the onion, not sure why Wil Research employees universally love onion so much), the ham was not exactly brown but I was beginning to get nervous about the time, so I popped the chicken into the pan and pondered what the recipe could mean by "roast these but leave the meat white". I decided this meant I should roast the meat until I was ready for the next step. I washed the mushrooms (more cheating, they were already cut into "slides") and parsley, and chopped up garlic, then decided the chicken was roasted "enough" and added all these ingredients to the pan along with chicken stock.
By this time the pan was quite full and it occurred to me that the recipe was probably intended for an actual roasting pan. I suppose this should have occurred to me sooner since the recipe called for 1 to 2 chicken, but I persevered and arranged everything very carefully in the pan and continued. Next, for the first time ever, I peeled tomatoes and removed their seeds. Thank goodness for the internet, where I found directions for the task of peeling tomatoes (I chose her least favorite method, I guess because I'm contrary) and removing the seeds. This took forever and left me with a pile of skins and seeds that seemed rather wasteful. Thirty minutes had passed so I added in the tomatoes. Upon opening the oven I saw that the parsley had burned, so I replaced that and covered the whole thing with foil to hold in the juices better. Then I spent time cleaning the kitchen and eating tomato peels/drinking seeds while I waited for quite a bit longer than the suggested 10 minutes for the chicken to cook completely. Perhaps that "roast but leave the chicken white" step really meant to cook the things a lot longer! Even so, overall I felt very zen while cooking this dish. It was a very enjoyable experience and made our house smell heavenly. Here is a picture of it when it came out of the oven (aren't my tomatoes peeled and seeded excellently?):
I served it with baked potatoes, as the recipe suggested. The chicken and vegetables were absolutely delicious. The mushrooms were so good, I found myself being grateful that no one in my house would eat them (more for me). As for the chicken -- well, at this point, if you're not sitting down, I think you should.
Are you sitting down?
My son Grant ate the chicken.
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