Sweet and Sour chicken

Dinner last night was a hit. We had my father-in-law over, and he really enjoyed it. The last two times, I tried new things, and they were just this side of poison. The first time, I had cooked some mystery fish filets, and forgotten to take the giant broiler sheet out of the oven. It took so long to cook that R left before he could eat anything. The second time, I cooked a cut of meat I THOUGHT was pork tenderloin. It came in the same kind of packaging, with a picture of a dancing pig on it, and seemed to be the same cut. The striations looked a little off to me after it cooked, and after five minutes of thinking it was the worst, toughest pork tenderloin in the world, we all realized it was roast beef. By then the slices had been cut too thick, so we couldn't really eat it. I also made the mistake of using my immersion blender to try and make mashed potatos. Did you know you could make industrial adhesive out of potatos? Becasue apparently that's what happens when you immersion blend it to death, like I did.

So last night, Jamie Oliver's Sweet and Sour Chicken from his book, Happy Days With The Naked Chef.

Take some bell peppers, two each of red, orange and yellow, two red onions, and chop them into quarters, the onion into eighths. Throw in a giant bowl with a chunked pineapple, three good chunks of ginger, grated with the skin on, garlic cloves peeled but not chopped, and olive oil and sea or kosher salt. Swirl all the veg together to marinate while you prep the chicken. Do the usual chicken stuff, wash, pat dry and rub with a bit of olive oil and salt. Dump the veg into a big, deep oven-safe pot. At home I use my 7.5 quart LeCruset orange dutch oven, which I probably use 4 times a week. Worth every penny.Put the chiken on toop of the veg, and roast at 375 according to weight of the chicken. Baste if you want to. Since I put mine in breast side down, if I forget to baste it's not that big a deal. If you have it breast side up, I'd def. reccommend basting. I tend to throw some white wine in the pot too, to make basting easier.

After it's cooked, you can serve half of the roasted vegetables, and then process, not puree, the rest, minus any liquid which might be in the pan, with two tablespoons of sugar and 6 tablespoons balsalmic vinegar. I process all the vegetables, then freeze the leftovers in three quart containers so I can just roast a chicken and have the sauce already made. It's so good, I eat it on toast. This is one of my favorite Naked Chef recipes. There are other good ones too, so you should buy his book.

A few notes.
When I say olive oil, I am referring to extra virgen olive oil. I prefer Spanish for cooking and Greek for salad dressings and such.

As always, fresh is better than canned, but chopping a pineapple can be a hassle, and the taste isn't really affected.

Last night, due to lack of resources and a smaller pan, I only chopped one red and one yellow pepper, and used two small white onions instead of red. It was still delicious. You can get red onions here, but the one we had was molded all the way through, so hey, subsitution time!