Brazilian Chicken ala Ryan

I'm quickly becoming a fan of amateurgourmet.com. The author is a former law student who started cooking in his third year to stay sane. He critiques restaurants, mainly in New York, tries recipes and generally discusses all things food. Actually a similar format to this blog, but honestly, I never heard of the Amateur Gourmet until a few weeks ago when I got his book, "The Amateur Gourmet: How to Shop, Chop, and Table Hop like a Pro (Almost)" for Erin's birthday. Maybe someday one of us will have time to review the book on here.

Anyway, last night I wanted to cook dinner for JJ and Erin. I had some chicken breasts and Erin made some fresh salsa over the weekend that I wanted to try, but I didn't really have a full meal in mind. After searching around the internet, I went over to amateurgourmet.com and found this post about Brazilian Chicken with Olives: http://www.amateurgourmet.com/2005/10/if_i_were_perky.html

Here is the link to the simple recipe:
http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/106216

Now, I had to adjust for Erin's dislike of olives and what we had around the kitchen. I ditched the olives idea and added some lime zest and lime juice to makeup for the lack of orange peel. Also, we didn't have yellow rice, but a packet of Litpon's Spanish rice worked ok. Lots of garlic, cilantro, lime, and orange juice was the keys to flavoring the chicken and rice. It turned out really well. Cooking with orange juice added nice flavor throughout the rice and chicken and it was highlighted nicely with the lime and garlic. I might just use plain rice the next time so the individual flavors don't compete with the flavoring of the Spanish rice packet.

This dish creates a great base to be creative and adapt to flavors and what you have around the kitchen. We could have added capers, olives, artichokes, tomatoes, really whatever flavor combination you feel like, or have the ingredients for, could work with this garlicy and juiecy chicken and rice base.

Overall, I think it was a big success. It went nicely with the fresh salsa and really any green salad or veggie would make a good meal. I'd give the recipe an A-.