I’ve mentioned adapting recipes before, particularly in my post about Evolving Traditions, where I mentioned modifying Dad’s omelet recipe and Mom’s stuffed mushroom one. Those are tried and true recipes that I grew up with, and I know how they’re supposed to taste, much like switching from boiling to steaming artichokes. If I find a recipe in a cookbook or online, I usually try it as written first. There are, of course, exceptions, like the Coconut Almond Cranberry Chicken recipe I cooked this week.
To be clear, there’s nothing wrong with the original recipe. But one of the reasons I went looking for a recipe was a bag of fresh cranberries lingering in my fridge. So I was already replacing the dried cranberries with fresh cranberry sauce (2 cups of cranberries, 1/2 cup of water, 1/2 brown sugar) made earlier in the day. (If you’ve never made your own cranberry sauce, the most important tip is to keep the lid most of the way on the pot – this reduces the bright red spots that splatter all over your stovetop as the cranberries pop.)
I prefer chicken thighs to breasts, and I enjoy eating the skin, which makes chopping it into bite-sized pieces… impractical. It’s hard to find boneless chicken still with the skin on. And it’s easier to cook large pieces of chicken in the oven than on the stove. The move to the oven, and a decent amount of liquid in the recipe, meant cooking in my cast iron Dutch oven.
I’m a fan of crispy skin, so I started by heating a small amount (maybe a tablespoon) of olive oil in the pan on the stove, then placing the chicken thighs facedown for a few minutes, just to brown them. Since I bought a family size pack of chicken, I did this in two waves, while preheating the oven to 350 degrees.
Once all the thighs were lightly browned, I returned all of them to the pan in a ring, stacked on the chunks of red potatoes I added, and on each other, then topped them with chopped ginger and almonds, followed by the coconut milk and cranberries. The extra liquid in the cranberry sauce made up for the fact that I could only find 13.5 or 13.66 ounce cans, rather than the 15 ounce can the recipe calls for. I dashed the cinnamon on top of everything. (OK, I forgot the cinnamon and noticed the container on the counter as I was putting the pan into the oven.)
After 40 minutes, I increased the heat to 400 degrees, and left the chicken in for another 20 minutes. Spinach doesn’t need to be cooked very long, so I waited until I pulled the pan out of the oven to mix it in. This is the ideal time (I realized in hindsight) to shove the chicken into another dish and crisp up the skin for about 10 minutes in the oven, which will make it easier to stir the spinach into the liquid. The other option is to shift a couple pieces of chicken, stir in some spinach, then shift a couple other pieces. They both work… but crispy skin… yum.
Overall, the result was delicious. Among other things, the almonds stayed delightfully crunchy. The flavor is presumably fairly close to the original recipe, with a slightly different presentation.