Secret Ingredient: Chicken Thighs

Tonight was almost an Iron Chef night. It was nights like this that inspired me to do Iron Chef Mom... last-minute dinner ideas based on what's on hand and needs to be eaten.

We got back from our Thanksgiving trip late Sunday... and it was a doozy of a trip. Monday was spent doing mountains of laundry after spending half the day at the doctor, confirming a miscarriage. Tuesday was more laundry, and lots of cat hair removal. Apparently they molt when the humans are away. Yesterday the Grill Geek flew out to be the grand marshal of his hometown parade. To summarize, I haven't been at the top of my menu-planning game.

I grabbed several things out of the deep freeze, to keep us fed, and left it at that.

Tonight the chicken thighs were due for a turn... but I thought I wasn't in the mood to get creative. I googled recipes, and came across this one. But what to feed the child who hates chicken? Hmmm... perhaps pasta. Perhaps pasta tossed in the extra saucy bits from the chicken! Only 4 chicken thighs, but do the full recipe of sauce, so there's extra.

And maybe add half a sliced onion... red...

And maybe a few sliced mushrooms...

Cooked up in a little of that melted garlic butter.

Mmmmmm...

The picture to the right is the Fairy Child's debut into blog photography. My hands were all chickeny before I realized I wanted a picture of the veggies. So she took this shot for me!

And here it all is, before it went in the oven. I poured the saucey stuff on top... baked it at 400 degrees for 35 minutes. Probably should have done 45. Hope I don't die.

Next time I would cut the butter by half (yikes, am I really saying that?)

I cooked up some rice pasta and tossed a salad while the chicken baked. Once it was done, I poured some of the saucey stuff with some of the noodles. Next time I would toss them with about a tablespoon of soy sauce (tamari) first, so they could suck up that flavor before being coated in greasy goodness. And goodness, there was a lot of grease. That's why I recommend reducing the amount of butter. But it really needed a LOT more garlic, especially to earn the right to have "garlic" in the recipe name. Some green onions at the end would have been nice, too.


And, yeah... that was a rather epic mound of pasta. And really teeny chicken thighs.