Asian Chicken and Vegetables

Well I must say that this week has been a confidence-shaker, as far as my cooking abilities go. First the snafu with the dip on Friday, and then last night at Bible Study nobody ate my peanut butter bars. I brought a whole plate of them, and maybe like 2 were gone. I brought the rest home and told Steve I'm going to hang up my apron, because things are going down hill. I don't even wear an apron, but I think you see what I'm saying. I do have a couple aprons in a drawer but I never wear them. Anyway...

Last night we had this recipe, from the BH&G 5 Ingredient Faves cookbook. It was pretty good. Steve liked it, the kids all ate it (they are getting better about eating real chicken--well Sam was always good about it, but Emma and Nathan are getting better about it).

Asian Chicken and Vegetables
8 chicken drumsticks and/or thighs
1 tbsp cooking oil
1 1/2 tsp five-spice powder (this cost $6.85 at Hannaford--yikes! But it seems like a lot of the recipes in this book use it so I decided to go for it--if you want to borrow 1 1/2 tsp of it from me, you can--for $1.00--hee hee)
1/3 cup bottled plum sauce or sweet and sour sauce
1 14-16 oz bag frozen stir fry vegetables

Skin chicken. Arrange chicken in a 13x9 baking dish. Brush with oil; sprinkle with 1 tsp of the five-spice powder. Bake, uncovered, @ 400 for 25 minutes. Meanwhile, in a large bowl, combine the remaining 1/2 tsp five-spice powder and the sweet and sour sauce. Add frozen vegetables; toss to coat. Push chicken to one side of the baking pan. Add vegetable mixture to the other side of the pan. Bake, uncovered, for 15-20 minutes longer or until chicken is tender and no longer pink (180 degrees), stirring vegetables once during baking. Using a slotted spoon, transfer chicken and vegetables to serving platter.

So one thing I like about all the recipes in this cookbook so far is that they are pretty simple to make. This took basically no effort at all to make. I don't think it tasted particularly Asian, really, in spite of the expensive spice, but maybe this is what real Asian food tastes like, as opposed to the Chinese buffet stuff that I am used to. So this was okay, but I don't think good enough to save. Because I have lots and lots of chicken recipes that are so so good. So this was a good change I guess but doesn't make the cut for a keeper. But if you want to try it, you can, and borrow some spice, at the previously mentioned terms. =o)