Overdue Chicken

It has been almost a month since the equinox, which we did celebrate with a dish from our Wicca Cookbook. We have fallen a bit behind on our once-a-week recipe concept, and I have fallen even further behind in my blogging!

I modified the recipe for Divine Skewers (p. 82). It calls for marinating chunks of chicken and then grilling them, along with bell peppers, to cook on a grill. In the recipe, cherry tomatoes are to be added to the hot skewers about halfway through the cooking process.

Not having set up our grill yet this year, I opted simply to cook the marinated chicken in our indispensable cast-iron skillet, adding the cherry tomatoes halfway through. Somehow, I completely forgot to include the peppers, which we had in our freezer from last year's farm box.

The result (served over rice): fantastic! The marinade is easy to prepare, a bit unusual -- I have never used yogurt in a marinade -- and the key to the success of this simple dish. To prepare it, the following is simply placed in a blender and pureed, as they say, until smooth:

1/2 cup plain yogurt
1 onion, quartered
3 large cloves onion, chopped (I used a small handful from the farm-box stash in our freezer)
2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice (I think I cheated here and used some from the bottle we keep on hand)
1-inch piece fresh ginger,  peeled and chopped (never cheat with ginger!)
2 teaspoons vegetable oil (I used EVOO, and will try to think of a good flavored oil to use next time)
3/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon allspice
1/2 teaspoon ground turmeric
1/4 teaspoon ground red pepper
salt and pepper to taste

We might need to try this recipe again in a couple weeks, as we made a bit of a pagan calendar mistake! It is probably no surprise that the The Wicca Cookbook is arranged according to the wheel of the year, with a section for each cardinal date, and a section in between for each cross-quarter date.

Image: The Mother House of the Goddess

We started browsing in the Equinox section of the book, and did not realize we had skipped right over the Beltane heading. So look for a reprise of this recipe, on or about May Day!