By JB Mays
Occasionally, the mood may strike to eat healthy. Or perhaps you’re entertaining guests who do. Either way, it’s worth having a few dishes in your back pocket that satisfy health needs and don’t taste like boiled cardboard. Try this one out on them. The ancho chiles give it a strong, memorable flavor – you can find dried anchos in the Mexican sections of most (seriously, almost all of them) grocery stores.
The Setup
1 1/4 lb boneless chicken breasts
4 dried ancho chiles
1/2 oz cilantro (about 4-5 sprigs)
1/3 c canned tomato sauce
1/2 tsp ground cumin
4 radishes, sliced very thin
3 green onions, sliced
6 cloves of garlic, unpeeled (seriously, leave the skin on)
1/2 c yellow cornmeal
Salt
Butter*
Cheese* (Whichever kind you’d like, so long as it melts. So probably not Feta.)
*Leave these out if you’re feeling healthy. As for quantity, that’s really up to personal taste.
Cooking
1. Prepare the polenta first, so you can give it time to firm up. Bring 2 1/2 cups of salted water to a full boil. When it’s going well, add your cornmeal gradually. Stir frequently for 10-12 minutes, until it’s fairly smooth. (Add in your cheese and butter about halfway through if you’re going that route).
2. When the polenta is smooth, pour it into a baking sheet or pan sprayed with nonstick. Let it firm up in the fridge while you work on the rest of this.
3. Throw the chicken breasts, 3 sprigs of the cilantro, and 3 cloves of garlic into a large skillet. Poach chicken over medium heat, covered, for 12 min.
4. Take the chicken out and place it on a plate or cutting board to cool. DO NOT THROW AWAY THE CHICKEN WATER.
5. Take off the stems of the chiles and dump out the seeds (it’s a texture thing, you can add hot sauce later if you think you’ll miss them). Put the chiles in a bowl and pour the leftover cooking liquid over them. Cover it with foil and let it sit for 15 minutes while you do other things.
6. Roast the remaining cloves of garlic in a small, dry skillet. Cover the skillet in foil and you won’t have to clean the bastard later. Efficiency! When they’re blackened out all sides, dump them onto your cutting board and let them cool off.
7. If the chicken has cooled enough to handle, shred it. You can use two forks for this, but if you’d rather not have searing pain in your hands, best just to tear it up with your hands. Just wash them right after. And before.
8. Your garlic cloves should be cool by now. Pop them out of the skin into the blender, and add the tomato sauce, cumin, anchos, and hot sauce if you’d like. Liquefy that business.
9. Throw the chicken and newly-blended sauce into a pan and mix them together. Heat it up, cover, and set the heat to low while you finish the polenta.
10. Take the polenta dish out of the fridge. It should be cool and firm by now. Cut it into four squares and heat a pan with either nonstick spray (healthy) or oil (not so much) over medium high heat.
11. When the pan and oil have heated, throw in your polenta slices, going in batches if you don’t have enough room. Cook each side for 3-4 minutes, until it’s slightly crispy and golden brown. Don’t get impatient and turn up the heat – it will burn and smell like crap.
12. Top polenta with the shredded chicken. Add the radish slices, green onions, and any cilantro you’ve got left lying around. It’ll look approximately as fancy as pictured above. Enjoy yourself.