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Over and under

Since I was going to be heading out of town for the weekend, I wanted to use up some veggies before so they wouldn't go to waste. I also had a chicken breast thawed that needed to be cooked, so dinner was going to be a good time.

I went with some radish, carrot, radicchio, endive, baby bella mushrooms, parsley, and, of course, garlic tonight. 

Red bowl: chopped radicchio, diced parsley, and sliced mushroom
Blue bowl: halved endive
Left clear bowl: diced carrot and diced radish
Right clear bowl: crushed and sliced garlic

For my veggies, I started off by melting some butter over medium heat. I added in the garlic and some crushed red pepper flakes and let that cook for a little bit before adding in the endive. Once the endive had browned some, I flipped it and browned the other side, then moved it to a bowl and poured the garlic chili butter over it. Unfortunately, I burned a bit of the garlic, so that neither smelled nor tasted spectacular, but the endive was good.

Since I'd burned the garlic, I had to deglaze the pan. I was going to use a malbec I'd bought, but the cork split while I was opening it, so I used my open bottle of white wine instead. I'll fix the malbec later. Once the wine was simmer, I added a little butter and let it melt, then I dumped in the radish and carrot. Once they started to soften, I dumped in the red bowl, too. My pan was a little small, so it took a while for the radicchio to cook down, and I had to keep stirring and flipping to make sure nothing else burned and everything got cooked thoroughly.

For the chicken breast, I rubbed it in extra virgin olive oil and used the M9 seasoning again because holy fuck it tastes good. I decided to try something different this time, though: I wrapped the breast in foil and placed it on my cookie sheet in the oven to cook while I was doing the veggies on the stove.

After about 20 minutes, the chicken breast was still not cooked, which meant my veggies ended up cold by mealtime. I put a piece of foil on the pan in the oven and dropped the breast on there for about 10 minutes, flipping it after about 5 or 6 minutes. That turned out better.

Despite the overcooked garlic and temporarily undercooked chicken, I decided to have some fun with the plate. I started out with a curvy drizzle of balsamic vinegar that didn't go *quite* well, but was good enough. Then, I ran a line of Jamaican Scotch Bonnet hot sauce diagonally across the plate and through the vinegar.

I laid half of the endive diagonally at one end of the hot sauce, then spooned some of the other veggies into the vinegar on the other side of the plate.

Finally, I halved the chicken breast, then sliced it and laid it down the line of hot sauce. The vinegar and hot sauce ended up mixing some while I ate, which was a pretty delightful flavor combination, especially when added to the red pepper spiced endive. Definitely making this shit again.

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