The recipe: p137, "Chicken in Tomato and Mushroom Sauce"
Oh boy. My first cookery post in this series, and random.org could hardly have chosen something less inspiring - a pedestrian-sounding recipe from a deliberately basic cookbook. But hey, that's the nature of the game! And who knows, maybe my trusty old student companion How To Boil An Egg will deliver something surprisingly decent and show those celebrity chefs with their lucrative book deals a thing or two?
The prep: As you'd expect, nothing complex required here. Chicken breasts or thighs (I went with the former), onions, mushrooms, tomato purée, a bunch of store cupboard seasonings, and that's your lot. The inclusion of garlic powder is perhaps the most notable studenty throwback; I'm not sure I've owned any this side of Y2K. Worse still, Lewisham Sainsbury's was experiencing something of a shortage when I popped in yesterday, so I had to make do with garlic purée - the first Random Kitchen compromise, albeit probably also something of an improvement...
The making: The retro vibe continues. I'm no health freak, but I've never been one for pan-frying chicken - too much hassle for too little in the way of obvious gain, especially since the arrival of the Foreman Grill (and especially especially the Foreman Grill with dishwasher-friendly detachable plates. Seriously, few things in life have ever made me happier).
As I start following the recipe I'm immediately reminded of another reason I don't fry chicken, as drops of hot oil and butter proceed to fly everywhere throughout the 15-20 minutes I'm required to tend to the pan, thoroughly spattering my arms (ouch), my glasses (wah), the ENTIRE hob top and, with more than a hint of irony, the hood of the nearby Foreman grill. My poor baby. :(
Once nicely browned and done through, the chicken is set aside and covered to keep warm, then the onions, garlic and mushroom are fried up gently before tomato purée, chicken stock and herbs and seasoning are added and simmered down to a sauce-like consistency. All really very straightforward - the only challenge is remembering to double all of the quantities in Jan's modest "Serves 1" recipe. I take her advice and assemble a rudimentary bed of brown basmati rice and some buttered green beans to accompany this student feast. And then, realising this has all left me feeling thoroughly uninspired, I dispense with any notions of food presentation and simply slop it all over the rice to form a glorious heap of 1970s brown-ness.
The eating: I mean, it's fine, you know? It's meat in a simple sauce, so it's never going to be too awful. Sam points out that the chicken is rather bland compared with the marinated stuff I tend to stick on the Foreman, although the frying process does mean it's decently moist and juicy. And while there's plenty of the mushroomy sauce to smother the chicken and the rice (you can barely see them in the photo!), the tomato purée and dried herbs mean the broad flavour palate is more "Iceland pizza topping" than anything I'll be rushing to repeat or emulate.
Still, I'd have been proud enough to tuck into this in my Lawrence/Dalton Tower student kitchen (pre-demolition, natch), and it certainly wasn't an unpleasant experience, just a very solid 5/10 kind of affair - essentially exactly the kind of thing I might rustle up if I was lacking kitchen inspiration one evening after work, only less good. But also less complex, which is the entire raison d'être of a book like How To Boil An Egg, so it's hard to quibble.
Anyway, for all this chance-based 2016 challenge is about accepting the rough with the smooth, the random fairies had better come up with something a bit more interesting next time or I'll have to rename the blog The Bland-om Kitchen. (Yes, I went there. What of it?)
One-word verdict: Fine.
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