A truly unfortunate photo of an incredibly delicious chicken dish. Maybe one of the best things i have ever cooked. The chicken thighs were juicy, flavorful and tender and the sauce was tangy and complex, as well as a lovely orangy-rust color, perfect for Fall. I could have drunk the entire sauceboat of it by myself, without the chicken. In fact, there were but a couple of tablespoons of it left after the dinner which I hoarded and had for lunch the next day, drizzled over poached eggs on toast. Also yummy.
For the chicken:
8 boneless, skinless chicken thighs
1 tsp olive oil
1/3 tsp powdered bay
1/3 tsp smoked paprika
2 tsps olive oil
salt to taste
For the sauce:
2 serrano chiles, stemmed
2 jalapeno peppers, stemmed
3 cloves garlic, peeled
1 medium red onion, peeld and quartered
1 lb. tomatillos, husks removed, washed well and halved
1 cup roughly chopped cilantro
1 1⁄2 cups raw, unhulled pumpkin seeds
1 cup roasted unsalted almonds
1 can chopped tomatoes
1 1/2 cups chicken broth
1 Tbsp olive oil
salt to taste
Preheat oven to 375.
In a large oven proof dish, mix the chicken related spices and oil together well. Add the chicken and toss until the thighs are completely coated with the spiced oil. Set aside in the fridge to marinate while you prepare the sauce.
Put the chiles, jalapenos, garic cloves, onion and tomatillos on a baking dish and drizzle with the oil. Bake for 20-30 minutes until everything is cooked through and the pepper and tomatillo skins are starting to blister and turn dark. Remove from oven. Reduce the heat to 350.
In a large saucepan over low heat, roast the pumpkin seeds and almonds for about 5 minutes, until they have turned a nice pale golden brown. Stur VERY often so that the nuts do not burn. Add the chicken stock, coriander and tomatoes and cook for about 10 minutes, covered, stirring from time to time.
Remove the chicken thighs from the fridge.
Remove the sauce from the heat and add the tomatillo mixture to the nut one. Blend well. I find a hand held immersion blender works the best for this but a regular blender would do as well, though you would probably have to blend this in several batches.
Once the mixture is well blended, pass it through a fine sieve, pressing down on the solids to extract all the flavors. You will end up with a very thin sauce and get a bit worried. At this point you can salt it to taste.
Put the sauce in a pan over very low heat and reduce it by about half, checking and stirring often. This took me about 30 minutes to accomplish. The sauce will go from thin to glossy and thickened as it reduces.
While the sauce is reducing, place the oven safe dish with the chicken in the oven and cook your chicken thighs. Mine only took 20 minutes but everything will depend on size and thickness; you may need a bit more time.
When done, remove the chicken from the oven. Pour the juices from the chicken into the sauce and mix well.
Serve the chicken drizzled with some of the sauce and possibly with some pumpkin seeds fetchingly scatttered over the top, Make sure you serve a sauce boat of the remaining sauce on the side as people will want more. French bread for dipping might also be a nice idea.
You will want to eat this over everything. I've done chicken and eggs but I can see it with broccoli or shrimp or...so many possibilities!
Original recipe, here.