My twenty-first recipe with Wednesday with Donna Hay is Baked Chicken, Lemon, and Pea Risotto found in her cookbook Off the Shelf: Cooking from the Pantry,
p. 42.
I tried to get a good photo of this, really I did, but no matter what I did it just looks like a pile of rice, peas, and chicken in a sort of loose sauce. Since that is basically what it is, good enough.
The ingredient list: chicken breast, arborio rice, chicken stock, leeks, lemon zest, peas, Parmesan cheese, mint, salt, and pepper.
The recipe is easy, cooked in the oven, and would be best if you pull it out about 5 minutes before I did (I followed her cooking times) as I got the chicken just a tad bit drier than I would have liked. That said, it was tasty and I enjoyed it, the lemon and mint gave a nice new twist to this sort of dish and it worked well. Mark had it cheerfully for dinner but declined taking leftovers for lunches (he is not that fond of chicken breast, so no surprise there, and definitely not a negative critique of the recipe at all).
The recipe makes a lot, I made a fourth of the recipe and with generous portions, we still had leftovers, plan ahead. Would I make this again? Probably not...I did enjoy it but these kinds of recipes are generally too many ingredients touching at once and I would prefer to try other recipes of hers than to revisit this one, especially since I would just be eating it myself. Wonder what the others thought? Gaye's post on this is here, Margaret's post is here, Chaya's post is here.
Next week my pick: Thai Caramelized Pork Salad, p. 120 in Off the Shelf, if you would like to cook along, send us your link if you post it, we'd love to see what you made.
