Fancy Chicken (Couldn't come up with a better name yet)

So I visited home this past weekend and cooked dinner Sunday night, thought I’d give the fam a break from my mother’s cooking. They’re all pretty picky and you never know at which point who’s not eating this or that, who went vegetarian, who went total carnivore, craziness. So chicken is the usual safety net. I’ve been into thighs for a long time now. I always preferred dark meat to white, it has way more flavor and it doesn’t dry out; (it’s actually good a little dry, I don’t like a slimy leg). I kind of made this one up on the fly, I had attempted something similar a couple weeks ago and it wasn’t nearly as good. I had a lot of fun with it trying to make it look super gourmet. It’s a lot of prep work but once it’s all in the oven, it’s in. The flavors all blend together and it’s just delicious. I’m not sure what to title this one yet, but it definitely makes the Hit list.

Ingredients:

-Boneless chicken thighs

-1 White onion

-Grape tomatoes

-Shitake mushrooms

-Maple bacon

-Asparagus

-Garlic

-Kale

-Salt & pepper

-Ginger (powder)

-Cheddar Cheese

Directions:

Start out washing your chicken, lay them all out flat on a large pan bottoms up (unroll them, boneless thighs come kind of folded up). Season them with the salt, pepper and ginger and rub it in nicely. Dice the onion and lay out a good amount over each piece of chicken, don’t go overboard because you need to fold them back up eventually (you should have left over onion, we’ll be using that with the kale later). Then slice the mushroom into about half an inch pieces and add with the onion. Next take your grape tomatoes and slice them into 4’s so each piece can be laid flat, add those to the chicken as well.

The next part takes a helper: Take the chicken thigh from the top and bottom end and attempt to fold it up over the stuffing. Then your helper needs to come around and wrap a piece of maple bacon round it to hold it all together. Repeat the process for each. Place in the oven covered at 400 degrees for 1 hour, remove cover for the last 20 minutes to brown the bacon, add another 10 minutes or so if needed to further brown bacon and add crunch.

While this is in the oven we can get the side vegetables going. In a large pan throw in whatever bacon was left over (cut into small pieces first), after those have started to brown toss in the leftover onion to begin caramelizing. Add the garlic shortly after (diced). Lastly add the kale, bit by bit if necessary (before cooking it looks huge but it will shrink down to nothing). Watch closely, you don’t want to burn or wilt the kale badly, stir often.

Lastly comes the asparagus, lay it out on a baking tray and drizzle with olive oil. Pepper very lightly and grate some cheddar cheese over them (as much as you’d like) Pop them in the oven for the last 20 minutes or so on the timer to bake.

If you wanna go all out and make it look fancy, set each plate. Lay down your kale in the center, flatten it out some. Place one chicken in the center and balance the asparagus against it. Whalahhh! Enjoy!