Chicken, Plums and Soy.

I am a bit of a fan of Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall. The River Cottage books are superb from the River Cottage Cookbook to the encyclopedic tomes of Fish and Meat to the ever excellent Veg Everyday. The recent offering from Sir Hugh is Three Good Things of which a small sample of the recipes was given out in a newspaper a while back. Fellow blogger Clare at Feast and Glory tried out a sample of the recipes from this in her quest to use all her cookbooks. You can read her post here.

The first dish in her post appealed straight away, a strange but weirdly nice sounding concoction of Chicken thighs, Plums and Soy Sauce. So having nothing better planned for my dinner, I had a wander to the local butcher and picked up 4 fat whole legs, (thigh and drumstick) for the bargain price of £2.40.

Another reason the recipe appealed is because I'm quite a lazy cook and if something can go into one pan then that's all good with me and all this requires is the occasional removal of the roasting tray from the oven to add a few more ingredients.

The end result is amazing. Crispy juicy chicken, a nice little battle between the salty soy and the sweet roasted plums alongside chilli heat with an undercurrent of garlic. The recipe states to serve with plain rice or noodles, I opted instead for buttery polenta which worked extremely well and offset the main flavours very nicely.

This I am definitely going to be making again.


Ingredients (for two)

4 bone-in, skin-on, free-range chicken thighs
1 tbsp sunflower oil
1–4 red, mild-to-medium-hot chillies, to taste
4 garlic cloves, sliced
A thumb-sized piece of ginger, peeled and coarsely grated
4 plums, halved and stoned
3 tbsp soy sauce
A small bunch of coriander, leaves only, chopped (optional)
Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper

400ml water, salted
100g fine polenta
20g butter

Method
Place the thighs on a roasting tray, drizzle with the oil and season well.Place in a preheated oven at 200C for 30 minutes, turn occasionally.
Remove the tray from the oven and add the chilli, ginger and garlic, roast for a further 15 minutes.
Remove from the oven and add the plums and drizzle the soy sauce over the plums.
Roast for a further 10-15 minutes until the plums are soft.
Remove from he oven and rest for 10 minutes.
Bring the water to a boil in a saucepan.
slowly pour the polenta into the water whilst whisking constantly. cook on a low heat until all the water is absorbed, whisk in the butter and some ground pepper.

Serve and Enjoy.