Capers, Vlada and Daytime Television: Chicken Diablo, A Love Story.

So lets talk about capers. I love capers. Anytime I go to a restaurant and there is a dish with capers involved I know that's what im getting. Because I like you guys, I will admit that there have been a couple of dark moments in my life where I've been cooking with capers and maybe ate a whole spoonful out of the jar. ok, maybe two spoonfuls. Those jars are pretty tiny people! That's like half the jar! I'm slightly proud and ashamed at the same time. Enough about capers though, Lets talk about my other best friend, Vlada.

Vlada and I have been friends for the past decade. She is the capers to my lox and cream cheese. At one point in our early 20's we thought it would be a great idea to film a cooking show called "Butter and Booze" well we took the booze part a little too seriously and that ended that about halfway through the recipe. By some magical fate we've have both ended up in Northern California to spend our adult years together. Having friends is fun, Having friends that knew you when you when you were still wearing glitter eye shadow and drinking Long Island Ice Tea's is basically the most fun. We both are currently figuring out together what its like to be in a relationship with nice men, navigating our way through motherhood and judging the cast of every daytime TV show and what they are wearing (spoiler alert, they are all squares with bad outfits). This recipe is adapted from The Chew, I say adapted because obviously we made it better and added way more jazz to the mix .Its super simple, looks and tastes like you spent hours and is ready in 20 minutes. If you do your job right you only have one pan to clean. BAM! perfect meal.

You need this stuff to make it:
1/4 cup of olive oil
4 boneless skin-on chicken thighs
salt and pepper
1/2 cup of water
1 large red pepper (thinly sliced)
1/2  of a red onion (chopped)
2 cloves of garlic (thinly sliced)
1 jalapeno (seeds removed and thinly sliced)
14 oz can of organic crushed tomatoes
 2 tablespoons of capers
1/2 cup roughly chopped flat leaf parsley


How to cook it:
Dry chicken with paper towel and season both sides with salt and pepper. Heat olive oil in a large pan and add chicken skin-side down with tongs. Drying the chicken before you season it will prevent it from popping in the oil. Cook on medium high heat for about 4-5 minutes. Flip chicken and cook for another 2 minutes. Add red onion, garlic, jalapeno, half the parsley and a little salt.  Let cook for another minute or so.  Add water and deglaze the pan with a wooden spoon, scraping up all of the fun chicken skin goodness. Cook until water is reduced by half which should take like 1-2 minutes. Add the can of crushed tomatoes with the juices, capers and cover. reduce heat and let flavors merry together for about 5 or so minutes, remove from heat and add the rest of the parsley and adjust seasoning to taste.

 You can serve this over just about anything! Mashed potatoes, quinoa, maybe a fun pasta! Really anything, or its great as just a main dish but that wonderful sauce deserves to be soaked up by something. Make this for dinner and tell me how great I am and how much you really wish that Vlada and I would actually film a real cooking show.

xo