Recipe of the week: Berbere roast chicken with eggplant & goat’s cheese

Do you know how they make the chicken in suburban Chinese restaurant stir-fries so soft and moist? I discovered the secret last week and my mind is blown.

I learned how to velvet chicken from a post on Tin Eats. You sprinkle sliced chicken breast with bicarb soda, which makes it’s unbelievably tender and juicy. I totally recommend trying it. Then I made chicken with cashews, which is one of my fave suburban Chinese foods.

I’m looking forward to hearing if my friend liked an antipasto bake I made. If it was a hit I’ll share the recipe – it’s salami, ham, sundried tomatoes and other goodies in a creamy pesto sauce. Evil but so delicious that the youngest has requested a version of it for dinner again tonight.

I also made Berbere roast chicken with eggplant and goat’s cheese last week. It’s an old favourite from before I had kids. It looked really nice arranged in the casserole dish to take to my friend’s house. But, of course, I forgot to take a photo.

It looked kind of like the dish from Bon Apetit – pictured main – but with eggplant and zucchini instead of potato and carrot. Oh, and I couldn’t get my hands on Berbere spices so I used baharat, which is similar, but has cinnamon instead of nutmeg and no ginger.

Here’s the recipe:

Berbere roast chicken with eggplant & goat’s cheese

4 chicken marylands

Berbere spice mix

Olive oil

sea salt

1 eggplant, cubed

One red capsicum, diced

2 red onions, quartered

I zucchini, roughly chopped

1 punnet cherry tomatoes, halved

40ml red wine vinegar

Marinated goat’s cheese

Olive oil, extra, from marinated goat’s cheese

Mint

Coriander

METHOD: Preheat oven to 200C. Mix spices with olive oil and brush over chicken. Place chicken in roasting pan, season with salt and cook for about an hour in the oven, until the juices run clear when poked with a skewer.

Place the eggplant, capiscum and onions in a separate roasting dish, toss in a little olive oil and sprinkle with salt and a pinch of berbere spices. Cook for 30 minutes. Add zucchini and cherry tomatoes and cook for another 15 minutes.

Remove chicken from oven and drain off juices. Add vinegar and some of the goat’s cheese olive oil. Pour over veggies. Scatter a few cubes of crumbled marinated cheese over the veggies. Sprinkle with fresh herbs and arrange chicken on top. Serve.