Roasted Lime Chicken with Sweet Potatoes

This recipe is based heavily on one in an Indian cookbook I got for Christmas (India's 500 Best Recipes, ISBN 0-681-37575-2). However, I did some fudging due to some unavailable ingredients (like fresh turmeric) and some personal preferences.

I'm going to describe how we proceeded as opposed to telling you how to do this right. In some places it's clearly not ideal. There was a lot going on in my kitchen at the same time so things got a little confusing. I'm not sure what the proper procedure would be for the same effect.

Ingredients:

1 handful	Cilantro (with stems)
4 cloves	Garlic
2 tsp	Salt
4 tsp	Ground Turmeric
4 half	Limes
1 cup	Broth
5 small	Sweet Potatoes
2 lbs	Chicken Strips
	Black Pepper

Procedure:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees for something that you cooked earlier.



Mince garlic, salt, cilantro, and turmeric; squeeze just enough lime to make a paste, about one half. Cover the bottom of a nine by thirteen pan with a single layer of chicken. Rub with the paste. Squeeze two more lime halves over the rubbed chicken. Throw the squeezed limes in there and cover the pan with foil.



Turn off the oven. Wait five minutes then put the chicken in the oven.

Cut sweet potatoes into wedges after peeling them. Boil them for ten to fifteen minutes until they begin to soften. Remove the chicken (which has now been in a cooling oven for 20 minutes and it starting to cook around the edges) and peel back the foil. Put all those potatoes on there. Squeeze the last lime half over the potatoes and throw the rind in too. Replace foil and return to oven for 20 minutes.



Notice that the oven is off. Turn it back up to 350. Give the chicken 20 more minutes then remove it from the oven. Pour the broth over your potatoes. Sprinkle generously with black pepper. The pan was probably pretty wet even before the broth, so now there's a lot of fluid in there. Return to oven without foil for 25-30 minutes. See if you can boil off some of that liquid as the chicken finishes cooking.



The potatoes should be soft all the way through. And after so much time in the oven the chicken will be quite tender.

Serves... four? We had seven but also a shepherd's pie and a handful of side dishes.

I would repeat this recipe. It was delicious. But next time I will change a few things. I'll use four potatoes instead of 5. And I think the roasting should go something like 20 minutes, add potatoes, 20 minutes, add broth, 20 minutes (all at 350F of course). I'll also decrease the amount of broth to perhaps 3/4 cup or 1/2 cup; there was no shortage of moisture.

The original recipe asks for fresh turmeric which I did not see at the grocery. I arbitrarily substituted 3 tsp ground for 2 inches of minced fresh. I'll bet the fresh turmeric would make it even better (or fresh ginger could perhaps be substituted).