Recipe: Mexican Mole-Rubbed Chicken with Grilled Vegetables

My mother handed me this Cuisine Favorites Chicken magazine a few weeks ago and I tagged a few pages as I flipped through it, being drawn in by the beautiful photography. This chicken dish caught my eye because my dad's favorite dish to order at our local Mexican restaurant is the Chicken Mole, a chicken dish served with the complex chile-and-chocolate sauce called mole (MOH-lay)—this dish turns that sauce into an easy-to-mix rub. The rub is sweet and spicy and creates a subtle heat that stays on your tongue while you eat. The vegetables, tossed with olive oil, salt, and pepper, then grilled and drizzled with lime juice, are so fresh and juicy (as is evident in my picture).

Tried to present a clean plate, but the lime juice-drizzled vegetables were just too fresh and juicy!

Serves: 4
Prep. time: 15 minutes
Cooking time: About 15 minutes
Difficulty: Easy
Special equipment needed: Grill (or the equivalent indoor equipment)

Ingredients
For the chicken:

• 1/2 cup orange marmalade
• 1 tbsp. white wine vinegar (I used apple cider vinegar and it worked well)
• 4 boneless, skinless chicken breasts
• 1/4 cup chili powder
• 1 tbsp. crushed red pepper flakes
• 1 tbsp. salt
• 1 tbsp. black pepper
• 2 tsp. ground cinnamon
• 2 tsp. cocoa powder

For the vegetables:

• 1 onion, halved (a red onion could be a great substitution here)
• 1 zucchini, halved lengthwise
• 1 yellow squash, halved lengthwise
• 1 red bell pepper, quartered
• 2 fresh tomatoes, halved
• 2 limes, halved
• 8 green onions, whole (trim off the roots and cut off an inch or two above the white—the green part has very little flavor)
• Olive oil
• Salt and pepper, to taste

Directions
Preheat the grill to medium-high. If you want to cook directly on the grill, coat the grill grate with oil, otherwise, tear off a piece of aluminum foil to put on the grill grate and plan to cook the food on it.
Combine the chili powder, red pepper flakes, salt, pepper, cocoa powder, and cinnamon in a small bowl. Stir the marmalade and vinegar for the chicken together in a large bowl, then coat the chicken breasts in the mixture. Rub the chili powder and cocoa powder mixture into the chicken breast so they're evenly coated on all sides. Set aside. Toss the vegetables and limes in a little olive oil, salt, and pepper. Put all of the vegetables and the chicken on the grill—grill the chicken until cooked through, and grill the vegetables (turning them once) until they are slightly soft, but still a little crisp, and have golden brown grill marks. Remove the limes from the mixture, then chop all of the vegetables into bite-size pieces and squeeze the limes over the mixture. Serve the chicken alongside the mixed vegetables. If you're looking for a starch, serve with white or red rice, or lightly-grilled tortillas to help soak up the heat.

This dish is perfect for a warm summer night! Fresh vegetables, seasoned lightly with lime, salt, and pepper are crisp and warm—the perfect compliment to the sweet and spicy chicken. All you need to add is a margarita, mojito, or sangria and it's a mini fiesta!

Listen to Your Gut

One of the most important lessons I've learned through my cooking adventures is to trust my gut. The more I cook and the more I experiment in the kitchen, the more I learn and the more comfortable I get with ingredients and equipment. I'm learning what flavors work well together and what flavors don't blend well. I'm learning that recipes aren't always perfect and most can use a little tweaking. I'm learning what ingredients can be used as substitutes for other ingredients and when substitutions just won't work. I think anyone who really works at cooking can learn the basics and be able to put a meal on the table (Food Network's Worst Cooks in America has helped two TV seasons worth of terrible cooks—people who can't even boil water—learn to cook delicious meals). However, I think it takes a real passion for food, a love of learning, and trust in oneself (and one's taste buds) to be a really good cook. If you can take criticism well and pick yourself back up after you make a crappy meal, then that's all the better.

It's exciting to feel confident in my growing cooking skills and my knowledge of food, but it's definitely an ongoing process and there are certainly bumps in the road along the way. Tonight was one of those bumps in the road: by ignoring my gut instinct about the recipe I was following, the resulting dish really didn't work. I'd found a fantastic-looking recipe for fettuccine with zucchini ribbons and walnuts and I was excited to try it out. It's a sauce-less dish, but for flavor, a paste-like mixture of anchovies, fresh garlic, and crushed red pepper is added to the dish. Now, I'm in a bit of an awkward position when it comes to following recipes because most serve 4 people or 6-8 people, but I'm only cooking for 3. This means I can't simply halve a recipe, because there wouldn't be enough for my family, but I don't want to make a full recipe (especially one that serves 6-8) because that's just more temptation to eat bigger servings (and when you're trying to lose weight and eat healthy, that's no good) and we don't need leftovers cluttering the fridge. So, I have to go with my gut and decide how much of each ingredient I'll need. Unfortunately tonight, I didn't listen to my gut when it told me "the two anchovies called for in this recipe seems like a bit much because they have such a strong flavor," and I used the call-for amount. The result was a pasta dish with a fairly overpowering anchovy flavor and some light-hearted criticism from my parents. While eating, I thought over how I could change the dish to make it better and I'm confident that, if I made it again, I'd trust my gut and it would work out well.

Looks lovely, but the anchovies in this dish were far too overpowering and it almost ruined the meal

So, now I know what to try next time, but the recipe is tucked away inside my recipe binder for now, because there are countless more recipes in books, on TV and the Internet, and in my head waiting for me to try them out. I just have to be sure to listen to my gut when I make them. Lesson learned.