Simple "Two Ingredient" Chicken Dish

A couple of years ago I went on this odd medically-supervised diet where I ate next to nothing.  I had two low-calorie meals per day where I couldn't eat much at all.  Cooking was problematic because basically I had two ingredients to work with and a couple of approved spices.

There were a few meals that I liked though and one was a tomato and chicken/turkey cutlet that Carolyn and I both liked.  She just got to eat more of it and whatever else she wanted.

I was at the grocery store the other day and decided to pick up both ingredients, but the cutlets and big tomatoes were really expensive.  They did have reasonably priced chicken thighs and roma tomatoes were on sale......


Since I didn't have to weigh out my meat for consumption I just bought a whole package and got a couple of roma tomatoes per what I guessed was the thigh count in the package.  Originally I used one large tomato per poultry cutlet.  If you didn't already know I'm über-scientific when it comes to precisely measuring things out.  After rough cutting the tomatoes I threw them in my food processor (you don't want to do this by hand) along with three cloves of garlic and a generous pour of <insert appropriate favorite spices here>.  Normally I use fresh garlic,
which was allowed on my diet, but I found out I didn't have any left because the stuff I had was all dried and nasty.  Oh well, I just opened up a jar of picked garlic I had and figured, why not?

Give everything a good blend/processing and you have some odd soup mixture.  I put all of my chicken in my 8 cup glass measuring cup and dump the tomato "soup" over the lot.  I used the measuring bowl because it has a lid and is easy to handle.  After a good stir and cover, the bowl goes into the refrigerator for a few hours.

Does this need to marinate?  I don't know.  I just figured since the thighs are much tougher than breast cutlets they could use a little marinating time.  Über-scientific....remember?

I ended up letting the chicken marinate for 3-4 hours because that's
how long it was between getting this ready and when my wife wanted to eat.  After heating up a little coconut oil in a big pan on the stove (medium-high), I simply dumped the chicken & tomatoes in and let them heat up.

At this point "cooking" is really just stirring the mixture occasionally. The water will pull out of the tomato mix and start to pool before boiling off.  I flip the chicken occasionally as well.  Cooking time is as scientific as I can get it, which is basically when the water has been boiled off.  It can take a while, I'd say 20-30 minutes.  While you could speed things up with a hotter stove, I'm looking to simmer the chicken until it is cooked, not burn it.

When done, the tomatoes are little solid bits of matter sticking together and to the chicken.  You'll probably not end up cooking off all the water, so you'll just have to eyeball it when you've cooked off enough, which for me is pretty much when you don't see a bunch of little spitting holes in your tomatoes.  That is as scientific as I can get it.

Plate and enjoy.

I often like to add a little hot sauce to my chicken just before eating, just enough to add a little heat.  This go around I was completely blown away by the substitution of pickled garlic over regular garlic, enough that the pickled garlic will be the new standard.  It added just a subtle hint of sweetness that was perfect.  If I can find my recipe for those I'll make sure to post it.

Shared 2013.05.06