Sauce for Chicken ?

[mudbug]

Feeling brain dead and need your collective creativity. Here's what I have to work with:

about 3 pounds of chicken breasts (will be skinned)

jars of peanut satay, apricot preserves, ginger puree, sun-dried tomato tapenade (not a lot), vidalia onion relish

olive oil, red wine vinegar, dry vermouth, merlot

I plan on serving with carrots, green salad, and either biscuits or rice..

[crewsk]

This would take care of the apricot preserves. Other than that I'm afraid I'm just as brain dead.

1C. apricot preserves
1(8oz)bottle Catalina dressing
1pkg. onion soup mix
6-8 chicken breasts

Mix apricot preserves, dressing, & soup mix. Place chicken in a large, greased baking dish & pour apricot mixture over chicken. Bake uncovered at 325 deg. for 1 hour & 20 min. Serve over hot rice.

For a change of pace, use Russian dressing in place of the Catalina.

[mudbug]

thanks, crewsk. That's a good possibility and would taste really nice with rice.

p.s. Everyone else, I also have fresh lemon juice I could use.

[PA Baker]

Do you have any orange juice? If so, how about combining 1 c apricot preserves, 1/2 c OJ, and a Tbsp or so of the ginger puree (more or less to taste?). If you have soy sauce you could add a spash of that, too. Maybe a pinch of red pepper flakes. Stir fry the chicken, remove it from the pan, put your sauce ingredients in and simmer until it's somewhat thick. Add the chicken back in and serve over rice.

[mudbug]

PA, that would work too. Have the OJ and a couple packets of soy from the last takeout thing we did. You had a recipe on the Chicken thread that I think is very similar to this, no? That was one of the ones I was thinking of trying until I started begging here.

I was hoping someone would come up with a dish where I didn't have to cut the chicken up much (feeling brain dead AND lazy), but it's looking inevitable.

[Weeks]

Did anyone else look at those ingredients and think mandarin peanut sauce?

Take the apricot preserves and some orange zest, along with a touch of that lemon juice and add it to the peanut satay in the pan you sauteed the chicken in, after it's cooled down a little bit over medium heat. Add in about an ounce of, say, grey goose l'orange vodka, and perhaps some wasabi horseradish sauce and simmer for a little bit until you get the consistency and taste you want.

*ponders* I'd have to experiment with it, but those tastes would mesh fairly well. Apricots for sweetness, lemon juice and orange zest for the tangy bitter/sour and peanuts for body and saltiness. The vodka and wasabi would just be for the kick, so small amounts of each. More apricot than peanut, but less orange and lemon than peanuts, with small touches of the vodka and wasabi.

[mudbug]

Iiiinteresting, Weeks! have regular vodka but no oranges (altho could get some fairly fast).

No wasabi horseradish either, but I do have another jar of stuff I forgot about - apricot mango wasabi sauce. Horseradish is one of the ingredients.

Can you please continue?

[Yakuta]

You have satay sauce so why not make satay.

To add pizzaz to the sauce add a tiny bit of ginger puree and some lemon or lime zest along with juice. If you have cilantro or can easily get some that would work well as well or skip it.

Cut breasts into strips, marinate in this mixture for an hour. Thread onto skewers or if you don't have skewers just place the strips on a stovetop grill or pan and cook.

Add the reserved marinade to a seperate saucepan and boil it. Once thick and nice place in a bowl as a dipping sauce.

Prepare some stir fry rice with it. Add frozen veggies, egg some soy sauce, salt, black pepper and fresh herbs or scallions. Satay, sauce and rice would make a great Asian inspired meal. A soup would go over very well with this meal that is given you had any in your pantry.

I normally keep cans of creamed style corn and cream of chicken to whip up a fast soup.

Chop up some garlic cloves (4 or so), chop up 1 small green chilli or jalapeno. Thrown in 2 tbsp of butter in a saucepan. Add the garlic and green chilli and saute it for a few minutes. Next add the cream of chicken and creamstyle corn cans along with some water and let it all simmer for 30 minutes.

[Audeo]

Hmmm....I'd be tempted to bone those breasts, pound them to a consistent thickness, make a filling from the tapenade, onion relish and a splash each of the ginger and vermouth, then form the breasts into a roulade. Saute until browned all around in a wee bit of olive oil.

However, if you have some honey and soy sauce around, you've got the makings for classic chicken satay...marinate strips of chicken in a mixture of honey, some soy sauce (about 1 Tbsp. each), a few drops of tabasco, a clove of crushed garlic and about a big Tbsp. of your ginger...let it sit for about an hour. Then thread the strips onto water-logged bamboo skewers and slap onto a hot grill for 3-4 minutes on each side.

Make a satay souce with a good glob of the peanut satay, a tad more ginger, crushed garlic (I like alot), a tsp. of soy, a smidgeon of coriander (if it's not already in the peanut satay), some red pepper flakes....warm into a nice sauce. Remove the chicken from the skewers and onto a bed of rice and top with the satay.

[mudbug]

Yakuta and Audeo, your ideas sound equally wonderful! I will have to see how fast this chicken thaws to determine whether I have enough time to marinate as well - in order to have dinner on the table in a reasonable time.

Yakuta, I've never made fried rice from scratch before, so I think I would like to practice few times first. And I hate creamed corn, but the way you suggest using it sounds quite tasty!

Another variation I've been pondering is to basically go with PA's suggestions and add some honey roasted peanuts or toast and chop some pecans to add to the sauce.

Thanks to everyone for your input. I knew I would get some great ideas!