Month 9: day 18: Braised chicken and kale

Today I made:
Chard Kale with Red Sauce, Every Day with Rachael Ray October 2011
One-Pot Braised Chicken and Pear, Every Day with Rachael Ray October 2011

Today we rented a car and drove out to Walden Pond to get our fill of crisp autumn air and fall colors. We ate ice cream twice (once in Lexington and once at Shake Shack) and shared a burger and fries at Shake Shack too (G says it's overrated and said the burger was what he would expect to get at McDonalds), so cooking tonight was more for the purpose of having leftovers to carry us through a couple of busy evenings early this week. Both recipes had some initial chopping/browning, and then just cooked for 25 minutes. Since I put the chicken in before starting the kale, it stayed in the oven a while longer than 25 and the kale was deemed finished after more like 10-15, but the chicken was juicy and good and the kale seemed as tender as kale gets, so it seemed fine.

When I opened up the Dutch oven, I was greeted by this beauty:

There's just a bit of added fat (EVOO), but after browning the chicken there was considerably more in the pot, and after braising the broth was just full of fatty gold disks of. It tasted so rich and buttery that G drank some after eating and declared that he would drink it for dessert (it was a tad sweet from the pears). This was such a straightforward dish too, because I just used thighs instead of cutting up a whole chicken (since the whole chickens at our store are ridiculously large), making this a great weeknight dish that tastes like it took much longer to make. It would be good over egg noodles or rice or something to sop up the broth. 

The vegetable side was also very soupy and needed some bread or something. It could be used as a pasta sauce and become a complete meal. G said it seemed really healthy, but he didn't realize it was cooked in bacon grease. I think he found the tomatoes a bit too overpowering. I agree that it a 14-oz can would probably have been perfect. I liked it though. I used kale instead of chard because we had a lot left over from the stratas, but I am kind of curious how it would be with the intended chard.