Spicy Chicken Legs

My friends regularly ask me for the recipes behind my food. What friends, you ask? Well, for a few months, I've been taking pictures of the dishes I crafted and posting them to Facebook, usually with a brief explanation of the dish. Below is a dish I made a couple nights ago, when the temps in Massachusetts reached into the 90s. Turning on the oven was certifiably crazy, but the results were worth the sweat.

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I don't usually use recipes when I cook. I approach food organically. Typically, I think about the ingredients we have in the fridge or the items that are on sale at the grocery store, then I develop what I hope will be a well-balanced meal around that. Ram has been on a health kick for a while now, and he prefers to eat meals that are very low in salt, sugar, fat, and carbohydrates. Talk about throwing a wrench directly into the path of my tastebuds! But the truth is, his preferences (usually) help to sway me in the way of healthier eating, and I have to admit, I often need that push.

This meal is composed of three things, each with its own spices and style. The common thread is the spice, though. For me, the food on the plate needs to be complementary. I wouldn't, for example, throw an Italian-style meatball on the same plate as a teriyaki chicken kebab and an Indian samosa. With the exception of a potluck, where incongruous dishes end up sharing a plate, this hodge-podge is not harmonious, and I want my food to make sense.

The coleslaw was the starting point. I saw a chef use cabbage on Food Network over the weekend, and I thought, "There's a vegetable with a ton of fiber [which Ram will love] that also stretches a long way." I immediately started to develop my week's meals around the cabbage: slaw with roasted chicken, Asian lettuce wraps, and slaw with cod cakes. Ahh-- the other beauty of cabbage (besides being fibrous and hefty enough for several meals) is that it can take a variety of flavors to match the direction of the dish (while still maintaining its own flavor and texture).

So I shaved the cabbage with my chef's knife and just tossed it with a few tablespoons of jerk marinade. I received the marinade a few weeks ago at my going-away party at work. The essence of jerk marinade is Latin-inspired spices; mine lists coriander, red pepper, ginger, and thyme among its ingredients. Talk about simple! I take all the help I can get in the kitchen, provided that the help isn't full of chemicals and preservatives.

After setting aside the coleslaw, I de-skinned and washed six chicken legs. Hannaford had them on sale this week, and I bought a large package that included six legs and six thighs (see tomorrow's post for my thigh treatment). I patted the legs dry, preheated the oven to 450, and coated the legs in another going-away party gift: a rub of garlic powder, paprika, and lots of black pepper. I think the balance is something like 1 part paprika, 2 parts garlic powder, and 3 parts black pepper. Because the chicken was dry, it took the rub really well. I placed the spicy legs (this is sounding dirtier by the minute) on a baking rack atop a cookie sheet (elevating the chicken above its fatty droppings not only saves us from ingesting the fat, but also preserves the spices on the underside of the legs). I set the timer for 45 minutes, and when I pulled those legs out, they were piping hot and juicy-- not to mention burning-my-lips-and-tongue spicy! I drank a small glass of milk with dinner, trying to keep the tears at bay. If you recreate this spice rub and don't like a ton of spice, reduce the black pepper to 1 or 2 parts.

The final element of this dish was a super-quick saute of corn. We had two ears left over from a meal last week, so I sliced the kernels off (into a bowl, otherwise they'd have migrated to the floor) and tossed them in a small frying pan with a tiny bit of olive oil, a nob of butter, and some black pepper and chili powder. Maybe a couple minutes later, I plated it all up.

Cooking this meal was virtual suicide, considering the temperatures outside. And the heat of the spices certainly heated up the palate. But the meal was extremely economical and healthy. The chicken legs cost about $3.50, the cabbage was $.69 a pound, and the corn was $.38. We ended up using the leftover slaw the next night with our chicken wraps, and we each had a leg leftover for lunch. As far as I'm concerned, flavor is paramount, but to satisfy diners with healthy food while staying under-budget is a super-big bonus.

Even though chicken legs require no fork, I leave you with fork in hand.