Chicken with Chili Jam

I have my master's thesis a little over 50% complete!  I'm pretty excited to be done soon and have little time to spend doing anything else these days.  Hence the general lack of blog posts...  My cousin, L.A., who lives in England made dinner for her family the other day and offered to write about on my blog.  She has guest posted for me once before; we did a little Tale of Two Whoopies which proved to be quite of fun way to connect with someone who lives so far away.  This recipe sounds delicious and I hope to be able to make it myself soon.  (Maybe from my new tiny kitchen in Boston...more about that another time...)

"Loved this recipe I was put off at first by the fact you have to make the jam and then the chicken. Mainly because even though I do enjoy cooking having two little ones under 3 doesn't give me a whole lot of time to cook. I usually need meals in 30 minutes or less, but this actually didn't take as long as I thought. I also made the jam the night before in prep just to save on time of the actual cook. So over all I was very happy with this recipe and will be using it again!

The side salad was just little gem lettuce, cucumber, feta cheese, and sugar snap peas covered in the homemade dressing recipe listed here! It was good! I like my salads to be one colour I know some people like them to be multiple colours, but I like a nice green salad! Yum!"

                                                                                            ~L.A.

Chicken with Chili Jam

---Ingredients-----------------------------------------------------------

4 boneless, skinless chicken breasts, about 125g (4oz) each
Coriander leaves, to garnish
Cooked rice noodles, to serve

Chili Jam
125g (4oz) fresh chilies, deseeded and chopped (I used only 100g and wear gloves if you have them chili juice stays on your hands for days and can burn)
1 garlic clove, crushed
1 onion, chopped
5 cm (2 inch) piece of fresh root ginger, peeled and chopped
125 ml (4fl oz) white vinegar
500g (1 lb) sugar

---Preparation-----------------------------------------------------------

First, to make the chili jam, put all the ingredients into a small saucepan. Bring to a boil, then reduce the heat and simmer for 15 minutes. The mixture should be thick, sticky and jam-like, and will become more so as it cools. (I found that it didn’t start to get thick until after it started to cool. I ended up heating for a bit longer as it didn’t thicken in the pan)

Meanwhile, heat a griddle pan. Put the chicken breasts on the griddle, and cook for 10 minutes, then turn them over and cook for a further 10 minutes. (I just cooked my chicken on the grill, I don’t really think it matters as long as the chicken is cooked and hot*)

Serve the chicken on a bed of rice noodles; with the chili jam poured over the top, garnished with coriander.

Store any remaining chili jam in the refrigerator, covered, for up to 1 week, and use it as an accompaniment to spice up other griddled or grilled meats.

*I made my chili jam the night before so I needed my chicken to be really hot when I put the jam over it. Once it does it melts all over the chicken and makes a glaze over the chicken. It was very very yummy. I have lots of jam left over as I was only making dinner for me and my husband, even though my daughter who is 3 likes spicy things, this was way too hot for her. It does have a kick and the rice noodles help keep it from being too hot.

Low Calorie French dressing:

---Ingredients-----------------------------------------------------------

6 tbsp olive oil
2 tbsp wine vinegar (I used white)
½ tsp mustard
¼ tbsp sugar
½ small onion, grated
A little ground coriander (I used fresh, frozen)
3 tbsp chopped parsley
Salt and pepper

---Preparation-----------------------------------------------------------

Put everything in a bowl and whisk until thickened.


Both recipes are taken from the Hamlyn All Colour Healthy cookbook. All recipes are low fat, low GI or low carb. Both recipes were very yummy and I am trying to decide what to do with the rest of my chili jam!
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Thanks L.A. for this great post!  I love you ;)