Um, this recipe actually turned out really tasty. I pulled it out of a 1968 Family Circle Great Chicken Recipes book, see?

Yeah, that one. I had originally wanted to do a recipe from a recent Food & Wine issue. But after nodding off while reading the list of ingredients I decided this book would do just fine for a Saturday evening. Come see, the pictures are quit tastee.

Man, this recipe sucked. Just because you take onion, tomato and a green bell pepper doesn’t make it fricken ‘creole’, you ass. Plus, the directions mention adding the tarragon at the #4 step. Okay, but there’s no tarragon listed in the ingredients. Oh, and the addition of MSG isn’t making you any friends here pally boy. Then, adding the paprika before you brown the chicken? Hellloooo, paprika brown and then burn, duh.
You know what though? After making a few dozen changes & additions to the recipe, it totally didn’t suck. In fact, it was really good. So good in fact, I believe I’ll be making this again soon. The simmer time was about an hour or two (read: 2) and easy to prep, I’m sold. Here’s what you’ll need:
Whole chicken cut up in pieces
1 medium white onion
1 medium green bell pepper
2 large celery stalks
1 can diced maters (16 oz.)
2 large jalapeno chile peppers
6 cloves of smooshed garlic
1 heaping teaspoonful of dried thyme
1 heaping teaspoonful of paprika
1 cup chicken broth
3 tablespoons butter
A pour of extra virgin
s&p to taste
Start all this with your large French or Dutch oven, enamel coated please. Get the butter all foamy, drizzle in extra virgin, and lay your dry chicken pieces skin side down.
Brown that chick-ken, brown that chick-ken. Everybody loves my chick-ken.

Once browned, remove chicken to a deserted area. Add your diced everything and brown a bit in the butter.

mmmMmMm, buttery chicken smells with chile peppers!
Add it all to the pot, right now!

Yeah, just like that and bring to simmer. I did an hour with the lid a skew a bit and then an hour with the lid off. Sure it was done in an hour, but it just didn’t look or feel like I wanted. The tomatoes needed some time to mellow, the liquid to waft away and the chicken to soften just a bit more. I suggest the 2 hour method for supreme goodness.

If you read their recipe, it recommends serving this over hot cooked rice. Am thinking to myself they must have run across someone who served this over uncooked rice and wanted to know why they didn’t tell them to cook the rice first, then serve it over. Ah well, what in the hell did ‘they’ know about cooking in 1968?
xo, Biggles