Sweet 'n' sticky chicken.

I got a new recipe box for Christmas and whilst I was transferring some recipes over I came across this one which inspired me to make it for dinner the other night. I am so pleased to have a new recipe box, my old recipe book is completely falling apart, but it has character, and looks used. I actually like opening the pancake page and having to prise the neighbouring page away because they got stuck together the last time I made pancakes and dripped batter everywhere! And the little grains of sugar that are stuck here and there, trails of egg whites, splashes of oil and colourful smudges all over the place. Now when I open my new box it is all pristine and looks like I never use it. Pathetic I know, I'll get over it. Or I'll work hard to 'sully' my new recipe cards asap! I still have a lot of 'transferring' to do to be honest because my actual recipe book didn't have a huge amount of recipes in it, but the pockets in each section were heavily laden with cut outs, and rip outs and all sorts of versions of recipes I have collected along the way (many of which are scribbled onto the nearest piece of 'paper' I could find) and stuffed into it! No wonder the poor pockets are ripped and falling apart. I now have to copy out all these cuttings etc onto neat little recipe cards even though I have the urge to stuff them into the appropriate section just as they are! I know it won't be long before my poor recipe box would burst at the seams too, so neat, legible, copying it is. Anyway, I digress, sweet 'n' sticky chicken. 

This recipe was down in my book as Mexican chicken and I believe it was one of my late Granny's recipes, however, I am not too sure why it is called that, so I am re-naming it. You start by rolling pieces of chicken in butter and laying them in a baking dish and then covering them in black pepper. You then pour over the sauce and bake until done, about an hr at 400degrees. You may want to scrape the edges of the pan from time to time because this sauce is likely to catch and burn. So, the sauce, is comprised of tomato paste (which I had left over in the fridge and when I discovered this the choice of meal was sealed!), tomato ketchup, Worcestershire sauce, brown sugar, chutney (which I ran out of and used apricot jam as a substitute), garlic and curry powder. It has heat and sweet in a very bold sauce. I tried soaking my brown rice before cooking to see if it would reduce the amount of time it took to cook and it didn't make a huge difference, though the rice was very fluffy after I cooked it the same time as I would un-soaked rice. I use a microwave rice cooker, from The Pampered Chef, and there is not a lot I wouldn't do to keep hold of this fantastic kitchen 'gadget'! For 1 cup of rice you need 2 cups of water, then you cook it on full power for 5minutes and half power for 10minutes and you get perfect rice every time! With brown rice I do everything the same but I cook it on half power for 15minutes instead. Perfect brown rice every time now! We had our sweet 'n' sticky chicken with fluffy brown rice and steamed broccoli and green beans. I am a fan of using as few pots and pans as possible so the beans and broccoli were cooked in the same pot! You can do this with any vegetables really, just put the ones that need the longest time to cook in first and drop the rest in as and when. I often cook carrots until they are almost done and then throw something on top like beans, broccoli, peas etc that don't take long to cook and then it all finishes at the same time. When I was a student I used to cook cabbage and spinach on the top of my rice, it would steam in the last few minutes the rice was taking to cook. This was pre microwave rice cooker time. You can afford to have plainly steamed vegetables and rice with this dish because the sauce is so bold.