Mama's House

If you'll recall, I promised myself to learn how to cook one new dish each week of 2008. Last night was the first occasion to do so. To help keep myself honest I'm going to post each recipe I try.

So the first thing I tried to make comes from Not Your Mother's Slow Cooker Cookbook. The dish is called Mexican Style Lime and Cilantro Poached Chicken or something like that - too lazy to look it up in the book. Despite the lengthy name it's given - or that I've given it - it's a real easy dish to cook that requires very few ingredients and little preparation. So give it a try.

Ingredients:

• 1 whole chicken 3-4 lbs.
  
• 4 or so sprigs of Cilantro
  
• 1 lime
  
• 3 cloves of garlic peeled
  
• salt and pepper

Instructions:

• Wash and dry chicken
  
• Season chicken inside with salt and pepper
  
• Place chicken in slow cooker and squeeze the juice of the lime all over chicken
  
• Stuff chicken with the used lime, cilantro, and garlic
  
• Season chicken on the outside with salt and pepper
  
• Cook on low for about 6 to 8 hours
  
• Remove chicken from slow cooker and save the drippings and place in fridge
  
• When chicken is cool enough, remove the skin

That's pretty much it. The important thing here is to save the drippings because that's where most of the flavor is and you'll be able to use it as a sauce. You can either skim off the fatty part of the liquid or you could place the drippings in the fridge and later skim off the fat, of course that takes more time.

Serving Suggestions:

• Place drippings in a pot and heat up a little to further reduce to use as a sauce
  
• You can then either eat the chicken carved up with rice and beans, or
  
• You can pick the meat off the bones and use it to make chicken tacos, or
  
• Use the chicken meat in any mexican dish like tostada, quesadilla, or nachos
  
• Be sure to cover the chicken with the sauce though or otherwise the chicken may be a little too bland

How did mine come out? Well I tried to make soft chicken tacos but the tortillas we had weren't the best for that purpose and because I was feeling a bit rushed I decided to save the drippings instead of using it to sauce the chicken so it was a little bland. The chicken was also a little cold after I was finished prepping it for tacos so it may have been a good idea to have reheated the shredded chicken in the pan with the drippings.

Anyway, lessons learned and I've got leftover chicken and the drippings to try new things. By the way, do those new things count towards my new dish for each week? Or do I have to come up with something completely different for next week? Well one down, fifty-one more to go.