In the Kitchen with A Good Appetite: 150 Recipes and Stories About the Food You Love - Melissa Clark

Review
Featured Recipe: Spiced Chipotle Honey Chicken Breasts with Sweet Potatoes from Melissa Clarks’s In the Kitchen with a Good Appetite
When it comes to chicken, I like the dark meat. I like the gristly, fatty, sinewy bits and the musky deep flavor the darker parts possess. This said, there are times when circumstances call for cooking up that stalwart of American cuisine, the boneless, skinless chicken breast. Maybe I need to whip up something speedy on a busy weeknight, or please the palate of a diehard white meat fan. And in those moments, this is the recipe I reach for. It is, hands down, my favorite way to cook white meat chicken. The breasts are seasoned with an intense paste of smoky chipotle chilies, sweet honey, garlic, and spices, and roasted over a bed of sweet potatoes. While they cook, the kitchen takes on a spicy, autumnal scent from the cinnamon, cumin, and caramelizing sweet potatoes. And the breasts themselves come out moist, juicy, and richly flavored. It’s a fuss-free, one-pan crowd-pleaser, even for the dark meat lovers in the bunch. --Melissa Clark

Serves 6

Time: 15 minutes, plus 35 to 40 minutes roasting

Ingredients

4 (10-ounces each) sweet potatoes, peeled and cut into 1-inch pieces
3 tablespoons olive oil
6 boneless, skinless chicken breasts (2 pounds), rinsed and patted dry
4 chipotle chiles in adobo sauce, minced
3 garlic cloves, minced
2 tablespoons honey
2 teaspoons cider vinegar
1 1/4 teaspoons kosher salt, plus additional to taste
1 teaspoon ground cumin
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
Chopped cilantro or basil, for garnish

Instructions

Preheat the oven to 400° F. In a medium bowl, toss the sweet potatoes in 2 tablespoons of the olive oil and scatter on the bottom a roasting pan. Roast for 15 minutes.

Meanwhile, in a small bowl, mix together the remaining olive oil, chipotles, garlic, honey, vinegar, salt, cumin, and cinnamon to make a paste. Rub the paste all over the chicken. Carefully place chicken on top of the sweet potatoes and continue to roast until the chicken is just cooked through, about 25 minutes longer. Serve garnished with cilantro or basil.

From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. Clark, a New York Times food columnist, takes readers into her home kitchen and delights them with personal stories interwoven with recipes in this engaging and scrumptious collection. Born to gourmands and exposed to a wide variety of foods from an early age, Clark possesses the uncanny ability to recreate meals from memory or invent them on the spot. Her love of breakfast results in buttery polenta with parmesan, olive oil, or fried eggs with swiss chard. Her obsession with the farmer's market inspires extra-sharp leeks vinaigrette and raw Tuscan kale salad with chilis and pecorino, and overcoming her aversion to crustaceans prompts spaghetti with spicy tomato, clams, and bacon. She shares the story behind every dish including Dahlia's fragrant chicken fingers, conjured for her chiliand bratwurst-eating one-year old's advanced palate. Italian sausages necessitate reinventing sausages with sweet pepper and onion stew, and fried croutons with chorizo and paprika. Clark creates for the home cook, making her dishes easy to replicate without special equipment and complicated preparation. Her trademark unassuming writing style, genuine love of food, and wealth of recipes, which cover chicken and meat, cheese, sandwiches, and desserts, are an incredible treat for foodies everywhere.
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