good eats.

Dinner Edition
Lemon Chicken with Red Pepper

Pans make cooking incredibly easy. You can make fajitas in a pan, or toast, or marsala sauce, even stew (made a really good one using a recipe I found in a magazine but didn't document it — I will next time for sure)! Recently, I decided to make lemon chicken with red pepper. I had about a pound of boneless, skinless chicken thighs in the freezer that needed to be used before going bad, a couple of lemons my family had mailed me in a care package (I know, weird, but they were off the tree in our garden!), and and as always, a lot of spices on the ready. All I had to do was buy a red pepper, which was meant to be the "healthy" vegetable part the meal. Good thing I only used a quarter of it...

1. the marinade : I squeezed four small lemons (which turned out to be way too many; I would try three next time), then added two to three crushed garlic cloves, fresh ground pepper and rosemary to taste — all in a bowl. I then added the chicken (already defrosting through the morning) and let it marinate for twenty minutes in the refrigerator. In the meantime, I diced a quarter of a red pepper.

2. get cooking! : I heated up the pan, added olive oil, and grilled the peppers for about three minutes (well, I don't actually know, I'm making that number up). Then I added the chicken and grilled each side until it looked white all the way through. Finally, I added the marinade, put a lid/cover on the pan, and let it simmer on medium heat for at least ten minutes. Simmering the chicken in the marinade is important because it guarantees tenderness.

3. presentation : You don't have to go to a fancy restaurant to have your food served in an aesthetically pleasing arrangement. I lined up the chicken pieces on my plate, poured the remainder of the marinade from the pan onto them (although if you're really picky, I would suggest not using a blue plate; blue plate plus yellow marinade makes for a greenish tinge), then spooned the peppers on top. Voilà! And yes, I did eat it all by myself; my roommates had already had dinner and I'm basically carnivorous.