Balsamic Chicken with Roasted Tomatoes

I'm still on a liquid only diet, but thankfully things have been so hectic around here that I have recipes I haven't blogged about.  April and May really seemed to have flown by!  I'm sorry the blog got neglected, but hey... life happens :-)

At the end of April my surgeon told me he wanted me on a 1000 calorie a day diet to lose some weight before the surgery.  He also told me that the recurrence rate for people having to redo the surgery, in ten years, was 90%!  Outrageous!!! No way am I going through this crud again :-(   He then told me that the risk goes down to less than 10% if the person maintains at least a 25 BMI (Body mass Index).  That meant I would have to drop almost fifty pounds to keep my risk factors low.  What a great time to join WW!!!  I joined online and purchased a few cookbooks and just went for it.  Prior to the week of my 2 week liquid diet I had lost 15 pounds.  Hubby hasn't complained about any of the meals so they have husband appeal, too (An added bonus!).

I tried a chicken recipe from a magazine called "The Best of Weight Watchers; five ingredients 15 minutes.

We enjoyed it, but since I used a full chicken with skin left on (hey, its what I had on hand!) the flavor didn't absorb as much through the chicken.  I think that since I prefer to roast chicken with the skin on, I will put some of the mixture underneath the skin.  Keeping the skin on does keep the chicken moist, and yes.... I do remove the skin prior to eating.  Well, most of the time I do :-)  

Balsamic Chicken with Roasted Tomatoes

adapted from best of weight watchers; 5 ingredients 15 minutes

1 tablespoon honey

1 1/2 teaspoons olive oil

1 pint grape tomatoes

1/2 teaspoon salt, divided

3 1/2 pound chicken, butterflied

1 tablespoon grapeseed oil 

1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

1/4 cup Balsamic Vinegar

Directions
Preheat oven to 450 degrees F.
In a bowl, combine the honey, olive oil and tomatoes; mix to coat completely.  Place the tomato mixture on a foil lined baking sheet and bake for about 15 minutes, or until the tomato skins begin to burst.  Remove from oven, sprinkle with 1/4 teaspoon salt,balsamic vinegar, and set aside.

Prepare your chicken:
Make sure the chicken is thawed completely.  Cut the chicken down alongside the backbone and remove the backbone.  Pat dry with a paper towel... this is an important step since you will be putting it into a hot frying pan; This will keep the splatters to a minimum.

On your stove top, heat a large oven safe frying pan on high heat. Add the 1 tablespoon of grapeseed oil and when it becomes very hot- gently place the bird skin side down in the pan.
 Combine the remaining salt and pepper together. Season the top of the bird with the half the salt and pepper mixture. Immediately place the entire pan in oven for 10 minutes. Carefully remove hot pan from the oven, flip the bird over. Generously season the skin side with salt/pepper.                                                                         

 Return pan to oven and roast another 10 minutes. Add the tomato mixture and  resume cooking for another 15 -20 minutes, or until temperature reaches 165 degrees in the breast area.

Daring Cooks: create a recipe challenge

Blog-checking lines: Our April 2012 Daring Cooks hosts were David & Karen from Twenty-Fingered Cooking. They presented us with a very daring and unique challenge of forming our own recipes by using a set list of ingredients!
It was required that you use at least one ingredient from each of their three lists :
List 1: Parsnips, Eggplant (aubergine), Cauliflower
List 2: Balsamic Vinegar, Goat Cheese, Chipotle peppers
List 3: Maple Syrup, Instant Coffee, Bananas

Some of those just seemed wacky to me... but WOW! Have the Daring Cooks been creative!  I was a little bit more cautious.  I know, I know.  It wasn't very daring of me.  However, I did make sure not to follow any recipe.  I just relied on what I remembered about making a marinade... so that counts, doesn't it??

I ripped off the basics of the fajita and added roasted cauliflower and goat cheese.  But first I had to marinade my beef to get all the flavor I could out of it.  I was able to find chipotle peppers in adobe sauce but that wasn't what I wanted.  I couldn't find any dried chipotle peppers either.  That left me using a dried powder or trying to smoke my own jalapenos.  Sorry, I went with the dried powder.  Again, not very creative of me but Life has just been a bit chaotic lately and so I took the easiest route.

Beef Marinade
2 pounds round steak, sliced thin
1/4 cup fresh lime juice
1/4 cup maple syrup
1 tablespoon dried chipotle powder
5 cloves garlic, crushed
1/4 cup olive oil
1/4 cup water
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon cayenne powder

combine ingredients and let set for at least two hours.
When ready to cook, drain off marinade and quickly fry in a pan with a bit of oil.  I did my meat in two batches so that the meat would sear and not steam. The meat will cook quickly.

Roasted Vegetables
1 head cauliflower cut into florets
2 onions, sliced thin
3 peppers (I used red and yellow) sliced into strips
2 tablespoons olive oil

Line two cookie sheets with tin-foil and lightly spray with cooking spray.  Spread out vegetables onto trays and drizzle with olive oil; sprinkle with kosher salt.
Roast in oven at 425 degrees F., for about 25 minutes (vegetables should become nicely golden.

To assemble I just added the meat to my flour tortilla, scooped on some roasted vegetables and topped with a bit of goat cheese.

I admit, it was on the cautious side.  I will also admit that it was pretty tasty too!

Salt-Roasted Chicken

 There has been much said about the benefits of salt roasting meat but the most important thing is that it is supposed to make meat tender. I was more inclined to believe that it would make your meat taste like salt-lick... but curiosity got the best of me and I gave it a try. 

Was the meat tender??? Yes. However we did find that in order to check the temperature, of the meat, we ended up releasing a bunch of the juices. Not sure exactly how you would get around that but it didn't make much of a difference. The method does indeed work, but be aware that the technique is messy and tedious. I had a heck of a time getting my salt/egg mixture to be thick enough to stick on the chicken. Make sure your chicken is dried off before adding the salt pack around it, that helps tremendously! 

For this recipe you need:

1 3-4 pound chicken

9 cups of kosher salt (most recipes I looked at used a less amount but I found it to be too thin in texture)

12 large egg whites ( I read about dry salt packs an moist salt packs and went with the moist one)

two sprigs each of Marjoram, Tarragon, and flat leaf parsley

Directions:

Preheat oven to 400 degrees F.

Rinse and dry chicken off completely. Stuff herbs inside of chicken cavity. 

In a large bowl, mix together salt and egg whites and knead for about four minutes

Place salt and egg whites in a large bowl. Pack 1/3 of salt mixture onto bottom of pan. Place chicken on top and pack the remaining salt mixture over and around chicken to completely enclose it.

Roast the chicken until a thermometer registers 165° when inserted through the salt crust into the thickest part of the thigh, this was about 75 minutes for me. Let chicken rest for 10 minutes. Crack salt with the back of a knife or wooden spoon. Remove salt and skin from chicken; Carve and serve.