Spicy Sweet Chicken and Greens

Blogger inspiration strikes again! After reading Michelle’s post for sticky chicken thighs, I had the combination of brown sugar and habanero peppers stuck in my head. Last night when I wanted to make something really fantastic, I pulled up Michelle’s post and used what I had to whip up an amazing meal.

Ingredients:

6 boneless, skinless chicken thighs – I actually wanted them bone in, but I grabbed these in a hurry and didn’t realize until I got home.

3 habaneros, finely chopped

1/4 cup chicken stock

4 tablespoons

splash white vinegar

3/4 cup dark brown sugar

2 heaping teaspoons of grated ginger

Cooking up the chicken was as easy as mixing all of the sauce ingredients and pouring them over the chicken. I cooked at 375 for about 30 minutes, checked and then increased the heat to 420 for the last 5 minutes. Apparently I put in way too much liquid, because where I hoped it would boil down into a nice sticky sauce, the end result was liquid-y. But so incredibly flavorful!

While the chicken was cooking, I zested and juiced two meyer lemons. There were bags of meyer lemons at Shaw’s, and they said “Buy me”, so I did.

I washed and steamed up an entire bag of spinach. It amazes me how spinach cooks down to just about nothing. We easily polished off one bag ourselves.

Once the spinach was cooked, I added in the lemon zest and juice, plus a drizzle of blood orange olive oil.

I plated the chicken and spinach up with some of the sauce from the chicken, and then dove in. My husband couldn’t stop talking about how awesome the chicken was, and luckily there were a few pieces for me to send with him for lunch, along with salad. I love leftovers for his lunch; for some reason coming up with lunches totally stumps me. And since he is at his office for up to 13 hours a day, I kind of like it to be something more than a sandwich.

On another note, while I loved this dinner, I am ready to fling open the windows and to eat raw salads and other summery meals. I am tired of big red wines and slow cooked dishes. I just want to eat a giant caprese salad with fresh local tomatoes.

It looks like that is going to have to wait.

If you had to pick a favorite ingredient right now, what would it be? Mine is definitely ginger.