chicken with a twist

As I mentioned the other day, I spend more than my fair share of time looking at food on the internet. I also got giving a pile of old food magazines recently, and they aren’t all too fascinating, but a recipe will pop up every once in a while that uses a really interesting flavour or ingredient. One that caught my eye was miso paste… and that is how my miso chicken was born!

Miso is a salty paste made from fermented soybeans and has an interesting earthy and rich flavour. Because of its richness, I chose to roast aubergine and courgette with the chicken because they are both rather savoury vegetables, potatoes would also work well.

I used 6 chicken thighs for this recipe, my original intention was to marinate them in a mixture of 3 tablespoons of miso paste, the juice of a lemon some pepper and a splash of soya sauce but the paste is actually quite thick so would not have worked. Instead, spread half a tablespoon of miso paste onto each portion of chicken with a pastry brush, butterknife or spatula, covering as much of the surface area as possible before placing in a bowl with the lemon juice and soya sauce. Add crushed garlic if you fancy.

The lemon juice will add a slight acidic tang to your end product while also tenderising your chicken during the marinating process. The saltiness of the miso is enough to season the dish, and I think it is wiser to add more salt at the end than to have a dish that is too salty.

Slice an aubergine and several courgettes into wedges and season with a teaspoon of ground ginger, ground caraway seeds, ground coriander seeds and ground fennel seeds. I also used a thinly sliced onion, a carrot sliced into thick sticks and a yellow bell pepper for colour. If you would prefer, you could add the caraway, coriander and fennel seeds whole for little bursts of flavour.

Mix the chicken and vegetables together with ¼ of a cup of breadcrumbs for crisp and crunch, transfer to a large roasting dish and drizzle with olive oil. In mixing the two components together, some of the miso paste hopefully will have coated the vegetables; if it hasn’t then feel free to add a bit more to the vegetable wedges.

Bake at 180°C for 45minutes or until the chicken is cooked through. Sprinkle with chopped basil or parsley and serve straight from the roasting dish.