Dinner In the Summer Time 07/02/2012

I didn't look for a recipe yesterday instead I looked in the kitchen. A product that has been sitting in my cupboards forever and the defrosting chicken breast gave me a great idea and it didn't include foil.

  It was a cool 90 something degrees last evening at dinner time. So I saw no reason why I shouldn't fire up the oven as well as the stove top. Heck it is already 90 something who is gonna notice 375 degrees more.Actually if your not in the kitchen in my house you really don't notice the heat from the stove, and I had no intention of being in the kitchen while dinner cooked. 
 Using Saucy Susan's Sassy sauce, chicken, rice, and broccoli I came up with a tasty well balanced, damn near healthy dinner all while staying out of the kitchen. Well almost out of the kitchen. I started with de-boning the chicken leaving the skin on. I then beat them with a meat mallet until about an inch and a half  thick . I placed them in a baking pan and coated the chicken with about 2 tablespoons of Sassy sauce put the lid on my baking dish and left them sit while I got every thing else started. I used brown rice that requires 60 mins of cooking and sitting time total. So while I bring the rice to a boil and start the oven heating up to 400 degrees I clean and break apart the broccoli putting it in the basket part of the steamer. As the rice starts to boil , the oven has heated to 400 degrees and my broccoli is ready. I put the chicken in the oven,lift the lid stir the rice put the steamer basket on top and replace the lid. Set the timer for 45 mins lower the heat on the oven to 375 and go into the nice comfortable living room and enjoy spending time with my honey. When the timer goes off 45 mins later I removed the broccoli from the pan and placed it in a deep dish with a lid I plopped 3 big dabs of butter on the  steaming vegetables along with lemon zest covered the dish with a tight fitting lid and set it near the oven vent to keep it warm. I reset the timer for the rice and reglazed the chicken with more sassy sauce and threw in a cinnamon stick for good measure,placed the chicken back in the oven with out the lid,leaving everything to cook a little longer. When the cooking time was up for the rice it needed to sit for 10 minutes more so I removed the chicken from the oven at the same time and let it sit as well. The result was a tender moist almost flaky piece of chicken.

 Every thing on our dinner plate was delicious. The sassy sauce was as the name states sassy,the hint of lemon in the broccoli worked perfectly with the flavor of the drippings left over in the baking dish,peach, apricot, cinnamon,with a hint of lemon how could it not be good. I love brown rice it has such a deep rich flavor requiring no additives what so ever and was the perfect match to this dinner. No salt, pepper or other spices where added to this dinner I served it as is so to speak and we did not miss or need them. Delicious is such an understatement.

  All total I spent 25 minutes in the kitchen preparing this awesome dinner. It could have been less if I had started the rice to boiling while I was de-boning the chicken.The total cooking time was one hour and 10 minutes and I was only in the heat of the kitchen for 1o of those minutes.That is the way I like it in the summer time. I firmly believe that if you can't take the heat....then get out of the kitchen. Even still a girls gotta eat somehow.