Chicken chop with mixed veggies and yummy mashed potato!

• 4 chicken thighs (deboned and skin removed)
• 1 broccoli
• 1 small carrot
• 1 clove of garlic
• 2 potatoes
• 1 tablespoon heap of unsalted butter

Marinate chicken with (I use the method of guess-timation when I cook so figures stated here are all estimates):

• 1-2 tablespoons Lee Kum Kee Chicken Marinade
• 2 tsp sugar
• 2 tsp cornflour
• 1/2 tablespoon oyster sauce
• a dash of sesame oil
• 1/2-3/4 tablespoon crushed black peppercorns
• a dash of ground black pepper

Method:

Preparation:

• Clean chicken thighs and remove tendons and fats.
• Marinate the chicken thighs with the above seasonings and let sit for at least 30minutes. The longer you marinate it, the nicer they are.
• Cut broccoli into bite-size pieces (I used only the florets) and slice the carrot. Rinse.
• Mince garlic.
• Scrub potatoes clean and put them to boil till they are soft (poke a chopstick through and if it goes through easily and comes out of the potato with ease, you can remove them from the water).

Cook:

Vegetables

• Steam the broccoli and carrot for 5 minutes. You may wish to parboil them but I prefer to steam them as steaming retains more nutrients.
• Fry the garlic till fragrant then add in the veggies and briefly saute them and add in your favourite sauce. This is optional – you may serve the steamed veggies as they are for a healthier version.

Chicken

• Preheat the oven to 200degC.
• Bake the chicken thighs at 200degC for 15min – they’d be cooked thoroughly but still nice and tender.
• Reserve any extra marinade for mashed potatoes (optional).

Mashed potato

• Peel off the skin of the cooked potatoes (it should come off very easily) and remove any blemishes/ eyes. I remove the skin only at this point as I feel that there is minimal wastage of the potato using this method.
• Push the potatoes through a sieve to get a super fine texture (like that of baby’s food) – do this if you love really smooth, melt-in-your-mouth type of mashed potato like I do! It’s really worth the effort. Alternatively, if you have a potato masher, that’d work too. A word of caution on the use of a mixer for this purpose: the potatoes may be ‘overworked’ by the mixer and may end up gluey.
• Set aside the finely mashed potatoes.
• Melt the butter (do not burn!) and pour the hot butter over the mashed potatoes.
• Using the same saucepan, put the leftover marinade from the chicken to boil then pour over the mashed potatoes.
• Mix the mashed potatoes evenly with the melted butter and sauce.
• If you like it even creamier, you can add cream – but I think the butter’s sinful enough and the mashed potato is already creamy enough with the amount of butter I mixed in!
• If you like, you may add herbs, black pepper or anything else you fancy to the mashed potato. We love it as it is though. 🙂

Well, from the photo of the chicken chop, you probably noticed that there was chicken chop gravy but I didn’t mention how to make it. That’s because this time round, I used the leftover sauce meant for the roast beef from Christmas eve dinner. But trust me, the delectable food today didn’t hinge on the use of that sauce. When I do make a gravy that I really fancy (so far I’m still experimenting for my favourite), I’d definitely post it on my blog! Stay tuned! 😀

For toddler’s consumption: