I love garlic!  Any dish that calls for a lot of garlic is ok by me.  Just make sure your date eats it too otherwise you are out of luck.  🙂

My lovely husband bought me “The Complete Asian Cookbook – Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos & Burma” by Charmaine Solomon.  There are some amazing recipes in this book but the tricky bit is finding ingredients for some of them.  I have absolutely no idea where to find galangal, couldn’t find tamarind in any store, but I won’t be deterred!  No sir.  That’s what the internet is for.  In the meantime I’ll either adjust where I can or use the recipes in the book that have easy to find ingredients.

And we can get garlic so that was our first choice to try.  I’ve bookmarked several I can’t wait to try but this is our starting point.  It is called Kai Yang or Garlic Chicken.

I adjusted the recipe to make two portions rather than the 4-5 it mentioned.  I didn’t back off the amount of garlic though.  🙂

In a bowl large enough to hold the chicken add 6 cloves of garlic, finely minced, 2 teaspoons of sea salt, 1 to 1 1/2 tablespoons of coarsely ground black pepper, 3/4 cup finely chopped fresh cilantro, 1 1/2 tablespoon of lemon juice, and a teaspoon of chilli powder.  Mix well.

I chose to use chicken thighs, bone in, for this dish.  Add the chicken to the bowl and make sure the chicken is coated with the garlic mixture.

Cover and place in the fridge for at least an hour.

When it is time to cook the meal preheat the oven to 400F/200C.  The book said to serve with rice and fresh tomato sprinkled with chilli powder.  I wasn’t in the mood for rice so I prepped sweet potato seasoned with the chilli powder and roasted it.  I also thought bok choi would be a great base to the chicken.

When the oven is ready roast the chicken, turning it every 5-10 minutes until it is cooked.  Take the rest of the garlic mixture that was left in the bowl and heat it up in a skillet with some olive oil.  Saute the bok choi as you take out the chicken.  You don’t want to cook the bok choi too much.

Slice a fresh tomato and season with chilli powder and a bit of sea salt.  This was a new idea for me and I love it.  I’ll be having fresh tomatoes out of the garden this summer with this.  Fabulous!

I loved this dish.  I was worried that it would be too strong with the pepper and garlic but it really worked.  I already have a few recipes from the book lined up to try.  🙂