Hey friends – happy Monday!! I have just enjoyed a hearty lunch of…well, peanut butter and jam sandwiches. It will tide me over to dinner, at least! And as of two minutes ago, I’ve bought symphony tickets for a few weeks from now(Faure’s Requiem, which I’ve never heard, but excited about!).

Now, in the few minutes I have left before I resume work, thought I’d post a recipe I made last night and also begin a new tradition called “Hungry Monday”. Oh wait no. That is truly a most terrible name. And I also fully expect this tradition to last exactly one week as I doubt I’ll remember it next week…but nonetheless, I made a pretty good dinner last night(if I do say so myself!) and I want to write down the recipe now before I forget what I did. And…well, just in case anyone is reading this and wants to try and mimic this utter delight of a meal. Without further ado…

This recipe shall be entitled: Chicken and Leek Creamy Goodness, which if that’s not too much to scare you off, then…read on!

Basically, this is a super easy meal. I just wanted chicken and leeks and rummaged through a bunch of online recipes(None of which had what I wanted!) so I ended up combining a few recipes and doing my own thing(like adding peppercorns because I like peppercorns!)

Ingredients:
-Some chicken breast pieces(preferably boneless/skinless)
-Bottle of some kind of white wine
-Leeks! I used three, because they came in a bunch of three.
-One regular sized white onion
-2 lemons
-Ground black peppercorns
-Garlic powder(or if you’re less lazy than I, just get actual fresh garlic!)
-Some dijon mustard
-A very little bit of olive oil
-2 cans of coconut milk

And that’s it. I hope you like the precision of my ingredient list…truly, you can play with this and alter as you see fit…

Directions:
1) Brown the chicken(I had three breast pieces, cut them in half) in the olive oil. Don’t use very much oil, just enough so the chicken won’t be sticking to the pan! Once chicken is done, take out of the pan and place on a plate for a while.
2) While chicken is cooking, chop your onion into small pieces and place aside. Also chop up your leeks into pieces and place the pieces in a bowl of water and rinse to get all the dirt out. Let them sit in that water for a while – you won’t need the leek until the end.
3) Throw the onion pieces into the frying pan with the oil remnants and add a cup of white wine. Add a bunch of peppercorn and garlic powder and let the onion pieces cook for a little while!
4) Add a little bit of mustard(however much you want, really) and the coconut milk, stir and let boil for a while.
5) Add the chicken and let the chicken pieces cook in the sauce as it continues to boil. Squeeze the lemons into the sauce, continue to add spices and mustard to taste and really…just let it simmer until it starts to thicken. It may take a little while(but worth it!!)
6) Once sauce starts to thicken, add all the leek pieces and stir(maybe adding more spices too, mmm!).
7) Once the sauce reaches desired consistency, turn off heat and you’re done. Chicken and leeks and creamy goodness! I served over a potato(because I *really* wanted a baked potato…), but I think this would also go great over rice. Enjoy. (I hope)

And again, I really only posted this for my benefit, because I tend to forget my recipes if I don’t write them down and I don’t have my handy little notebook with me…but I thought I may as well post it on here too. For posterity! Oh and side-note…credit to whom credit is due. This whole idea was pretty much entirely inspired by Chris, who mentioned making having chicken and leeks a few weeks ago and it sounded so good I thought I needed to give it a try. So thanks Chris. (This would probably be even better with a glass of Tokaji, which sadly is hard to find at a reasonable price around here…)

Now it is back to work for me. Bye dear friends!