Ras al Hanut Chicken

[John Costello]

On Thu, 7 Sep 2006, Simon Wistow wrote:

> I found myself cooking in an unfamiliar kitchen last night with a store 
> cupboard not as well stocked as I'm used to. A quick run to WholeFoods 
> (a strictly organic supermarket run, I believe, by the same people who 
> do Fresh and Wild in the UK) and I managed to cobble together something.

That is correct.
 
> I got some very large skin-on, bone in chicken breasts and scored them 
> fairly deeply a few times. Then I chucked them in a large bowl with 2 
> generous table spoons of Ras al Hanut, some olive oil and 2 or 3 tsp of 

Do you know what spices were in your Ras al Hanut?  I've looked around and 
found that the combination of ingredients varies from 6 to up to 27 
ingredients.

> I served them on some Porcini Risotto (from a packet, the shame) whihc I 
> livened up with some pan fried Chesnut mushrooms and made creamier with 
> the addition of some sour cream. 

That is a shame, as the Whole Foods likely had porcinis and certainly had 
the makings for risotto.
 
> I also fried some sliced red and yellow peppers in olive oil until a few 
> had started to blacken slightly.

Note that sliced red peppers can catch fire if the heat is too high.  I'm 
still not certain how that happened, and I haven't wanted to replicate the 
event.
 
> It was, all in all, a huge success and I was, as the kids probably don't 
> say, well chuffed.

Kudos to you.