Always on the lookout for a new taste experience, while checking out favorite blogs and  websites, I found a recipe that I just had to try:  chicken braised in milk from Jamie Oliver’s website.  I’ve made pork braised in milk (a recipe from one of Marcella Hazan’s cookbooks) and it was scrumptious!  Reading the recipe for “Chicken in Milk” I was intrigued by the seasoning–sage, garlic, cinnamon, and lemon.  Not a combination that I had thought, but considering the source I thought it worth a try.  Not wanting a whole chicken, I decided to try it with my favorite chicken parts–thighs.  It seemed like another great dish to test out the petit brasier.  I even found a friend willing to test the results with me.

Since I had about half the weight in thighs of the chicken called for in the recipe, I went halves on the seasonings as well.  What I learned was that chicken parts were okay, but maybe not the way to go with this recipe, and that halves on the seasoning was too big a cut.  The flavor combination was a success–it was somewhat earthy, and “round” and balanced, but I think I need to try it again with more than half the amounts of seasoning. We both felt that it could have been more highly seasoned, but it was a recipe that definitely goes into my “keepers” file.  Work on modifying it as a one-person meal is going to continue.

This was one of the times that I broke a rule that I usually follow:  make the recipe just “as is” before you try modifying it; so it’s back to the kitchen with this one–probably going to have to invite friends and do a whole chicken before I try cutting it down again;  I need  to know  what it would be like as intended so that I know how to modify the seasoning.  It’s not always easy to modify a recipe for single-serving cooking, but it’s a worthwhile endeavor.

Now that the holidays are past and things are settling down a bit, I think I’ll give it another try–my friends are used to me having a “food crisis”–and usually willing to participate.  I think it would be a good time to check out a bottle of good white Burgundy wine as well.    Since I’ve been considering this, I nabbed a couple of Cornish game hens on one of my trips through the grocery store, thinking that this might work as a single serving adaptation.  You can expect updates on this to follow–the full recipe and adaptations for one or two servings. If you need (or want) to serve four, it’s a recipe worth making!