The Crabby Cook - by Jessica Harper

Tom, my picky husband, will eat little meat or fish, leaving me constantly desperate to find new chicken dishes. Luckily for me, there are a few takeout places I can go to that offer chicken dishes Tom likes.

I usually refuse to cook a dish that I can get at a good takeout place. Tom loves Chinese lemon chicken, and there’s no way I’m cooking it when that restaurant two miles away will do it for me. Chicken kabobs are another favorite, available from the local Persian restaurant, and I can get chicken teriyaki from the nearby Japanese restaurant, which happens to be called The Crazy Asian.

(I apply this principle to bread, too. Why go to the trouble of yeasting and kneading whn there’s fabulous bread to be had at every market these days? The same goes for cupcakes. And pizza? Fuggedabodit.)

But occasionally I discover a recipe that’s so easy, I have to relax my attitude. My new feeling is, if, say, it’s rush hour, so it’s going to take less time and stress to cook something than it would to drive somewhere to pick it up, I’ll cook it. This recipe is much like the chicken teriyaki Tom likes, but cooking it myself is even easier than a 5 p.m. trip to The Crazy Asian.

8 chicken thighs (or breasts if you prefer)

1/2 cup soy sauce

1/2 cup brown sugar

2 tablespoons Dijon mustard

1 tablespoon fresh grated ginger

2 cloves garlic, finely minced

¼ teaspoon ground black pepper

1. Place the chicken pieces in a bowl. Mix together the soy sauce, sugar, mustard, ginger, garlic and pepper, and pour the mixture over the chicken. Marinate the chicken in the refrigerator for at least three hours or overnight.

2. About an hour before you want to serve the chicken, preheat the oven to 350º F. Place the chicken in a baking dish or roasting pan and cook it in the oven, basting occasionally, until the chicken is brown and cooked through,  about 55-60  minutes.

Serve the chicken hot or at room temperature.

Serves 4.

Tags: Asian chicken, chicken teriyaki, easy chicken recipe, picky eater

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 26th, 2012 at 10:07 am and is filed under Chicken Lickin'. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.