roasted chicken/tomato recipe

[pmathus]

So i made a dish last night from "How to Cook Everything" by Bittman, and it came out sort of blah.

The dish goes a little something like this:

2-4 chicken breasts, bone and skinless

1/4 cup parsley

a garlic clove (i used 4!)

coriander

cumin

cayenne

s&p

oil

2 cups diced tomatoes, drained

preheat oven to 450, rub chicken with chopped parsley/garlic/spice mix, put half the tomatoes in the bottom of a roasting pan, put chicken on top of tomatoes, put other half of tomatoes on top, bake at 450 for 20 minutes.

I served over rice.

The chicken came out nice and juicy, but overall, the dish was really ho-hum. Chicken with watery cooked tomatoes, with a slightly herbaceous tang, is how I would describe it.

What could I do to make this recipe better? I was thinking maybe it needed some chicken stock or butter to give it a little more fat content? It certainly needs something.

thanks,

-paul

[SethG]

Just a couple ideas.

You could use thighs.

You could rub the chicken, then let it sit in the fridge for a few hours or overnight. And if your marinade included yogurt, too, that would add flavor and tenderize the meat, and would be a classic addition to the spices in the dish.

[fredbram]

I think I might try to make it a pan-roasted kind of thing--saute the chicken to brown, add the tomato, cook for a minute, toss in the oven to finish, and then see if the tomato mixture needs finishing with either wine or a little butter or lemon juice or??? And, IMHO, leave the skin on the poor bird.

[Lawen]

Perhaps you could try bone-in/skin-on breasts and stuff the herb mixture between the skin and meat. Possibly pan-fry/sear it before putting it in the oven to roast?

There was a roasted chicken with tomatoes and tarragon recipe floating around epicurious' constant comment section for a while that went that route and was quite good and simple, if I recall.

[Mudpuppie]

Ooh, ooh! Use tomato confit instead! Bathe the thing in the tomatoes' olive oil and the tomatoes -- bet that would be really yummy.

I can provide the tomato confit recipe, if you need one.

[fifi]

There aren't a lot of chicken dishes in tomato sauces that send me over the moon. I usually get what you did. Eh. As I think of it, there is only one that I make that gets requested.

Briefly saute chicken pieces (breasts or thighs, no skin). Pour a good picante sauce over them. (Just use your favorite.) Cover and cook until the chicken is done. If the sauce is too thin, remove the chicken pieces and cook the sauce down. Arrange the chicken pieces back in the pan and cover each piece with whatever kind of melting cheese you like. (I have used cheddar or jack.) If you grate the cheese you can remove the whole thing from the heat and cover. In a few minutes the cheese will melt.

[essvee]

This is an adaptation of a Michele Scicolone recipe.

4-6 leg quarters

as much garlic as you want

a lotta chopped parsley--sometimes I'll use basil or tarragon or thyme or something, but its really good with just parsley

a lotta cherry tomatoes, halved, or a few big ripe tomatoes, or a can of San Marzanos, drained and crushed

Combine garlic and parsley in the bottom of a baking pan. Season chix well and roll it in the mix to cover. Make sure it ends up skin side down. Throw the tomatoes on top. Bake at 350 for 40 minutes. Flip chix over. Bake another 40 minutes.

This dish is so much more than the sum of its parts. The chix skin gets wicked savory and kind of crisp. The tomatoes and garlic kind of dissolve into the chix juice. Serve with risotto rice boiled in a lot of water like pasta and buttered. Awesome.

[curlywurlyfi]

My version of this loses the initial parsley, then I toss the tomatoes + spices in olive oil, add a couple of bay leaves, several whole unpeeled garlic cloves and quite a lot of dried red chilli flakes. then put a WHOLE chicken on top (longer roasting time + more fat runs out so much more melty + reduced tomatoes). Chop parsley or coriander over before serving. Dead easy weeknight supper.

[Rachel Perlow]

Just a simple suggestion based on reading the original recipe, but did you really drain the diced tomato? Instead of just draining, I suggest making concasse, peeling and seeding the tomato and not using any of the gelatinous seed sacs at all. The way it just says "2 cups diced tomatoes, drained" it almost sounds like the intention is to use canned tomatoes. If that is the case, remember they are already partially cooked -- and usually have salt added. That would go a long way in reducing the liquidiness and uping the flavor.

Also, you just say "S&P" -- how much salt are you using? I tend to cut way back even if a recipe specifies the amount of salt, a habit developed from growing up and learning to cook for a father on salt-restriction. But, of course, salt definately could be that "certain... something."

[pmathus]

These are all good suggestions.

I agree that this dish would probably be better if I used thighs, or bone-in skin-on breasts, or really any part of a chicken or whole chicken that isn't a boneless skinless breast. I'm partial to thighs myself and use them a fair amount.

However, i'm looking for a quick and easy weekday recipe out of this, and the wife likes skinless better, so i'm probably going to stick with the breasts. They come out suprisingly juicy anyway, not dry like they can be when cooked other ways.

The yogurt sounds good, i may try that.

What's tomato confit?