To go with chicken

I cooked up a chicken in the crockpot earlier this week, and I've pretty much been eating it ever since. But you can't live on just chicken - tonight when I got home I decided to look for something Edmonds to eat with my leftovers.

Flicking through the vegetable section, I landed on kumara and orange (p161) as a side to my chicken. I was going to go with just that, but on the spur of the moment, I flicked to the sauces and marinades looking for something that would work with chicken.

Onion sauce (p188) is another of the dreaded white sauce variations. It didn't really scream "have me with chicken" but I didn't see any reason why I shouldn't.

I peeled the kumara and got it on to boil - somewhat of a novelty since I only ever roast it - and started melting the butter for the sauce in another saucepan. I choppped up some onions, added them to the butter and let them cook over a low heat until they went clear.

The kumara cooked very quickly, so I drained off the water and added orange juice and grated rind, brown sugar and a little butter, before putting it back on the heat to create a tasty-looking orange glaze.


Meanwhile, the onions had gone past clear and started to go crispy. I saved them just in time, stirring in some flour and then gradually adding milk to make a thick sauce.

I heated up some leftover chicken and hastily cooked up some beans, so as to have at least a little green on the plate! Having added the kumara and poured onion sauce over my chicken, I sat down to eat.

The kumara was very sweet, with a slight hint of bitterness. I quite liked it, but it wasn't perhaps the best side dish for chicken with onion sauce! It didn't occur to me before I started, but orange and onion don't really go together! I was pleasantly surprised by the onion sauce: it had plenty of flavour and went well with the chicken. I like this one far better than any of the other white sauce variations I've tried so far.