This oven-baked balsamic chicken is a terrific recipe to have in your back pocket, down your alley, up your street, and within your wheelhouse. It will float your boat, and bring home the bacon, even if it’s not your usual cup of tea. It’s a piece of cake to make, very much the low-hanging fruit of chicken recipes.
In a nutshell:
It’s a moist, tender chicken breast, flavoured with sweetness and tartiness, atop a marshmallow-y slice of eggplant.
Also:
A) Donna Hay.
B) Oven baked balsamic chicken is a foolproof winter/summer anytime dish. Great with steamed greens, great with salads, great with crusty bread. Easy, no thinking, no problems. The only possible issue is to overcook the chicken, but honestly, the topping helps keep the breast moist.
C) Eggplant. Even the grizzliest, grumpiest eggplant-hater will surely not object to the soft mushiness of it here. It sits so nicely under the texture of the chicken, like one of those king-sized mattresses you only get to sleep on in rich hotels.
Donna has a similar recipe here, but I first stumbled across this recipe in the cookbook (pictured). As with all these types of recipes, you adapt over the years. I found I preferred a more generous sprinkling of the olive oil, balsamic, tomatoes and sugar to create more sauce, and sometimes extra sliced cherry tomatoes on top.
“Very well, I will marry you if you promise not to make me eat eggplant.”
-Gabriel Garcia Márquez, Love In The Time of Cholera
Donna Hay’s Oven-Baked Balsamic Chicken
Ingredients
- 4 chicken breasts, trimmed of fat, pounded slightly to be of even thickness (Donna doesn’t specify this, but I find that breasts tend to be larger these days and need it)
- 4 thick slices eggplant
- 1 x400g tin of whole peeled tomatoes, drained and quartered. (I don’t bother to drain & just chopped a bit is fine)
- 2 tbsp salted capers, rinsed
- 1 tbsp olive oil (more doesn’t hurt, throw it in)
- ¼ cup balsamic vinegar (more doesn’t hurt, throw it in)
- 2 tbsp brown sugar
- ¼ cup basil leaves (honestly any herb will do)
- salt, pepper
Instructions
- The great thing about this is you can prepare everything in advance, leave the baking dish in the fridge until you’re ready to eat, and just throw in the oven half an hour before your lucky diners sit down.
- Salt the sliced aubergine. Leave for half an hour. Rinse off. (Donna doesn’t do this in her recipe but I’ve been doing it forever with eggplant).
- Preheat oven to 200℃/400℉.
- Put sliced eggplant on the bottom of a baking dish, or a tray lined with baking paper. Put a chicken breast on top of the eggplant.
- Combine tomatoes, oil, balsamic, sugar capers and put over chicken breast, ensuring each breast is nicely covered with tomato and topping.
- Cook for approx 25 minutes or until cooked through. Sprinkle with salt, pepper and herbs.
- Serve with lots of the sauce. Serve with steamed greens or potato, salad, or crusty bread.
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