Baked Chicken With Grilled Feta and Caramelized Onions

Samuel Holden's Note:

This is a mixture of several recipes I've seen on this website, thanks to all the chefs who posted chicken recipes. The caramelized onions are and adaptation on someone else's onions, but I can't remember who right now (do tell if you know who you are).

• Total Time: 50 mins
• Prep Time: 10 mins
• Cook Time: 40 mins

Ingredients:

Servings: 2

• 1 small onion
• 3 chicken breast fillets
• ½ cup feta cheese , drained and crumbled
• 2 tablespoons flour
• 4 tablespoons dried rosemary (or 2 fresh if you are lucky enough to have it fresh)
• 2 teaspoons salt
• 15 black peppercorns
• 10 white peppercorns
• 50 g butter
• 4 tablespoons olive oil
• 1 cup very hot water
• 1 chicken stock cube (or use vegetable stock if you have it)
• 2 dashes Tabasco sauce
• 1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
• 1 teaspoon soy sauce
• 1 teaspoon sherry wine vinegar (or red wine vinegar)
• 1 teaspoon brown sugar

Directions:

1. Wash chicken breast fillets and pat dry, cut in half.
2. In a small pan heat butter and oil till liquid, set aside.
3. Take a large, heavy based, frying pan, heat and add 2 tbsp fat.
4. Fry chicken on a high heat until it has turned from its original rosy colour to white on both sides, remove from pan immediately, conserve the fat.
5. With a mortar and pestle take the rosemary, the salt, both types of peppercorns and the flour and crush everything together so you have a fine powder with a few sprigs of rosemary remaining, set aside.
6. Take the hot water and add the stock cube (use stock if you have any left from another day), add Tabasco, Worcestershire sauce, soy sauce, vinager and sugar set aside.
7. Heat oven to 350°F and place the remaining fat in an earthenware dish in the oven on a high shelf.
8. Re-heat the fat in the frying pan and when hot fry the onions on a medium heat until they "relax".
9. Turn the heat up to high and add 1/4 of the liquid, reduce until there is no liquid left, add another 1/4 of the liquid and repeat the process, finally add the remaining liquid and reduce again until all the liquid has evaporated, leave on a low heat for another 5 minutes, cover and set aside.
10. Take fried chicken and sprinkle with the flour mixture on one side.
11. Take the earthenware dish out of the oven and place the dusted side down in the fat, sprinkle the remaining mixture over the chicken.
12. Bake for 15 minutes (turn halfway).
13. Take crumbled feta cheese and crumble over the chicken.
14. Grill until the feta cheese has "set", so that its dry and slightly golden (feta does NOT melt, so don't sit around waiting for it to melt 'cus you'll get a very dry chicken).
15. To serve: re-heat the onions that have been steeping in their juices, and set up 3 pieces of chicken each with a"dollop" of onions in the centre.
16. Garnish with a sprig of rosemary (if you must garnish things).

Reviews

[Miss Erin]

We made this for our Valentines Dinner. It was excellent! I forgot to add the sugar to the onions and they still came out really good, I've always used sugar when caramelizing my onions, but I don't think this really needed it. Rave reviews from our house. I also used balsamic vinegar instead of the sherry vinegar.

[Michael Dahlquist]

Watch that you don't grill it too long on the last step - I burnt the feta. Still, this was delicious, looked classy, etc. It's even fun to cook!

[Samuel Holden]

The onions are from this recipe (found it!!): Low-Fat Chicken with Caramelized Onions by chef Dancer^ I thought I'd rate my recipe 'cos I like it... so there! LOL :))