Dinner

Inspiration comes in many forms. For me, it's art in it's many forms. Photography is the closest I can come to art. I couldn't draw a stick to save my life. I used to think I was a fair photographer, and I think that's as good of an assessment that can be made of that talent.

I love to cook and a friend I work with sent me a recipe for Tequila Lime Chicken. I needed to cook tonight and that was the best idea that had presented itself at the time things needed to be defrosted, so that's what I did.

Without the gory details, here we go... The Jalapeños are from my jardin, but have been in the freezer for a few years by now. The one at the top still has a little frost . I have trimmed the stems here and they kinda look like severed finger tips, huh? Well, minus the blood:
The recipe called for coating the chicken with about two teaspoons of cumino. I used the little shaker bottle and just sprinkled it on both sides. I probably used a total of about a teaspoon. I kinda think it was to much in the end. More on that later... This is the chicken cooking in the pan:
The lines that almost look like grill lines are from the dish that was used to defrost the breasts. The dish is actually a microwave bacon cooking dish that we've had for what, 23.5 years? It works. I like it 'cause the little grease trough that goes around the sides works well to catch the juice and schmutz.

Here, I've turned the chicken:

Having followed the recipe as I read it, tomatoes, onion, cilantro, the chile's, and lime juice is in the bottom of the baking dish. I totally boofed and failed to have my wife take a picture of the tequila and triple sec flaming off. That's always fun. Anyway, I placed the chicken on top of the other ingredients and dumped the liquid out of the pan over the top of everything. Ready for the oven:

I had just figured out that I was out of the quick brown rice I was gonna make and cous cous didn't seem like an appropriate side for this. Plus, we had a bunch of veggies handy for this roasted vegetable dish we love, so that was the designated side for the night...
I chopped up a red onion, zucchini, a summer squash (in winter? - technically), one each red and green bell peppers, and about a pound of asparagus plus less than 2 tbsp of olive oil, salt, and pepper:
I thought that was really pretty. The bigger picture showed it well.

Here is the finished chicken right out of the oven. I screwed up and forgot that I needed Jack cheese, so we used the 2% milkfat "Mexican Cheese" blend we had handy (it didn't really melt as well as I would have liked - I'll use the more fatty version next time - more flavor! ;):

The veggies just out of the oven:

All plated and ready to eat:

Ya, it was good.

The changes I'll make the next time are to use less cumino. I'll only lightly sprinkle it on one side. Then, I think I'll put the chicken in the baking dish and cover it with all the other stuff first. Plus, I'm gonna add about 15 chopped garlic cloves.

When it's time to add the cheese, I'll pull the chicken up out of the ingredients and then put the cheese on and bake / brown it up.

All in all, we enjoyed it a lot. It hit the spot. Above all, I was inspired. I like being inspired. It beats being bored... Thank you David!