Sauteed Chicken in a Subtle Mustard Marinade

Surely I have offended the gods of Academia, because I am in the midst of perpetual smighting on the workload front. This means that I am not only pillaging my refrigerator of all leftovers and barely cooking, trying to salvage as much possible study time as I can, but this blog and all of my recipe websites that I try to follow have been severely neglected. I am sorry for that. I will try to be a little bit better, but can't really make any promises with next week looming ahead of me. Graduating is tough work!

Eons ago, however, I created a chicken recipe that turned out exceptionally well! I even wrote down the measurements for you folks, so that I'm not standing here stammering about how I haphazardly threw 5 random ingredients into a bowl and came out with something that you absolutely have to try - if only you could figure out what my poor excuse for a recipe means. What I did not do, though, is write any description for how it tasted. I just remember that it tasted good, and the mustard wasn't too powerful, and I liked it paired with some microwave-zapped kale and this other very delicious but completely unoriginal recipe for sweet potato-apple casserole/gratin-without-cheese/baked dish type of thing. Which I will post about later, but you can ogle at it in the stunning picture above.

Mustard Chicken
Yield: 2 servings
The Ingredients
1 chicken breast, approx. 1/2lb.
1/4 tsp. garlic powder
1/4 tsp. minced garlic
1/2 tsp. coarse mustard
coarse ground pepper
2 tsp. olive oil, for sauteeing
The Method
1. Combine garlic (minced and powder) and mustard in a small bowl and set aside.
2. Season the chicken with some pepper, and then pour the mustard mixture over it on both sides to coat. You can halve/butterfly the chicken before this so that it cooks faster and looks prettier as 2 servings, but I just did it whole and then butterflied it partway through the cooking process.
3. Allow to marinate for at least 10 minutes.
4. Place the chicken and the oil in a medium saute pan over medium heat, and cook each side until done. Very technical, right? I only wrote down the ingredients, not any notes on actually cooking the chicken, so I can only guesstimate this one. If I'm not mistaken, a general rule of thumb for chicken cooking is 8-10 minutes per side, less if it's been butterflied. I got nervous so I took my whole chicken breast and butterflied it so that I could make sure the center got cooked after I flipped it. This means that one side of each breast won't have the marinade on it, but I didn't have a problem with that. You could also use a meat thermometer like a more sophisticated cook, but if you're like me and you're convinced that your meat thermometer has a mind of its own, this trick comes in handy.

The chicken was a very good, basic recipe for chicken. The mustard flavor is there but it's more of a, "hmm, this is a very nice flavor...is that a hint of mustard I detect?" rather than a knock-your-socks-off deal. This means that it can pair well with many different dishes. I will definitely make this again (and come back with a less pathetic description of how to saute the chicken). It's been one of my more successful "original" recipes so far.

The star of the meal, however, was that apple-sweet potato gratin up there. But I'm long winded enough when I put one recipe in an entry. I'll spare you, and tease you with a promise to bring you that gratin recipe real soon...assuming the aforementioned gods of Academia spare me and let me see another semester.