CHICKEN WITH CRANBERRY SAUCE

Remember when I said I was going to try to do a juicer’s springboard on an old chicken recipe with wine and cranberry sauce recipe last night? Here’s what I did:

I got two chicken breasts—no bone, no skin, but I could just as easily have had both—and I prepared a mix of the following ingredients:

2 - tablespoons granulated garlic (powdered garlic is not the same thing!)
2 - teaspoons ground pepper
2 - tablespoons Chinese 5 spice powder (cinnamon, clove, ginger, licorice, fennel)
½ - tablespoon curry powder.

I spooned these dry ingredients over the top and bottom of the chicken breasts and let them sit in the refrigerator for 2 hours.

Next, I juiced 2 lemons and 2 limes (always remove the skin before juicing ANY citrus fruit!). I took the juice from the juicer and poured into a small saucepan and applied a low medium heat to the saucepan. (Regarding the leftover pulp, there’s nothing worth saving there. Throw it out.)

While I was waiting for the juice to boil, I dissolved 2 tablespoons of corn starch in 1/3 cup of water, and I slowly added this perfectly dissolved mixture of powder and water to the sauce pan, stirring continuously while adding it. Then, as the mixture came to a boil, the mixture got thicker instantly (but I kept on adding the corn starch and water until all of it was added to the saucepan).

After 2 hours had elapsed, I took the chicken out of the refrigerator and put it in an oven that was preheated to 350 degrees, and I kept it in there for a minimum of 1 and ½ hours.

Then, to the mixture of thickened juices, I added the contents from ½ can of whole berry cranberry sauce, stirring only enough to break up the large cranberry sauce clumps so that the mixture was not reconstituted in one color, but actually bled from cranberry red to citrus yellow somewhat, with cranberry red being the dominant color. You know you’ve got it right when the sauce starts to look like something you might want to spoon over bread pudding.

After that, I plopped the chicken breast onto the plate, spooned the sauce over it and added some rice to the plate. I used white rice, but it probably would have been healthier to add brown rice or wild rice.

The results? I soon discovered that the taste of this dish was superior to the original chicken in wine and cranberry sauce recipe. Try it! You’ll like it!

Oh. I notice our comments have all vanished, which is a shame because I really want your feedback. So if you have a comment, go ahead and email it to me: thejuicedavenger@gmail.com and I will see that it gets published. And don’t let that keep you from checking the next exciting episode of THE JUICED AVENGER!