Pinboard Cooking Challenge #6: Coffee Nut Chicken
Today, I made Omnomicon’s Coffee Nut Chicken, which is the oldest bookmark on my pinboard! Like everyone else on the internet, I first discovered Aleta Meadowlark (I have to mention her name because it is truly a fantastic one) through her rainbow cake recipe. But after poking around her blog a bit longer, this chicken recipe was the one I really wanted to make. For years I was intimidated by the long list of ingredients, but I realized today that it’s almost all things I have in my pantry.
A quick note before we start; I’m switching to accessibility-style captions, so the photo captions will largely be descriptive.
Here are all the ingredients. It’s all shelf-stable except the chicken and onion!
Only a couple of substitutions here — some of my nuts were pre-roasted, I subbed regular and Mexican chili powder for ancho and chipotle (they should be pretty similar as I believe Mexican chili powder is flavored with chipotle), and as the recipe suggests I omitted the chicory because I couldn’t even find it at Whole Foods.
The first step was to mix together the spices:
Then, I toasted the pecans and poppy seeds.
The nut mix and instant coffee all got pureed together in the food processor.
All together, they made this gorgeous paste which smelled like the entire spice rack.
The next step was to sear the chicken. My skillet was a bit small for this recipe, so I had to sear in two batches.
Then, I sauteed the onions in the fond from the chicken and some more spice rub. By this point, the whole kitchen had this fantastic deep spicy aroma.
Finally, I added everything together with some chicken stock and brought it to a boil. At this point, I realized my skillet was definitely too small and I transferred everything to a stock pot. (I don’t have any photos — it did not look pretty at this stage.) Meanwhile, I boiled my noodles.
And…the final product! It really does look pretty spectacular all plated up.
So…how was it? It was pretty good! The flavor is very savory and complex, but I found the notes to all be very “dark” and in need of something to lighten it up. Maybe some creme fraiche would really elevate this to magical.
Would I make this again? Probably not. This was a very easy recipe to make, with minimal prep and almost all stuff I already had in my pantry, but the flavors are a little ‘off’. It’s not inedible by any means, but not something I’d be racing to make again.
The recipe also just made way too much food. I got five portions the size of the one above, plus at least another cup of sauce that I guess I’ll probably just end up serving over more pasta.
