I bought a package of chicken at Jones’ Country Meats recently, on sale, and looked for a good recipe to make. I found an interesting one in Rick Bayless’ Mexican Everyday, called Chicken in Tangy Escabeche of Caramelized Onions, Carrots, and Jalapenos. It is basically a skillet dish with lots of good stuff, sounded good.
Reviewing the recipe, Rick suggests refried black beans, which we love, so I tried to find his recipe. It was not in the book, strangely, but I was able to find it online in two parts, first to cook the beans, then to make the refried beans. Kind of a pain, I will merge the recipes. I started cooking the dried beans in the afternoon, since they take two hours.
I opened up the chicken package and found connected thigh-leg parts. I thought they would be split. SO first, break out Aunt Lynn’s Cutco cleaver and hack off the back and try to find the joint in the still-frozen chicken. Complete with no lost fingers – success!
Then I started the spice rub, with pepper, allspice, oregano and salt. First a bit of olive oil, then added the rub. Smelled good. It was hot outside, and I did not want to heat the kitchen with cooking a skillet dish, so I decided to just grill it as is.
We grilled some corn on the cob from a local farmer, make a nice salad from our CSA spinach and the chicken slow grilled wonderfully. Skin not burnt, meat done well but not dry. Good Saturday project, and leftovers for lunch!