Now that I am home from Edinburgh and a quick road trip to Nashville for a wedding, I am doing some cooking for my parents, sister, grandparents who have come to stay, and my boyfriend was also joining. With seven people to please, I wanted to do something easy and summery, so I found a recipe for kumquat chicken on Pinterest. I figured I could adapt it to some peaches that were threatening to become too mushy to eat. The sauce really makes the dish, and frankly the peach-garlic-basil combination was such a success that I may never get around to trying the kumquat version.
And it was so easy to assemble! You just need a blender and an oven set to 350F (that’s about 180C to anyone reading from the UK).
As a side, the original recipe had purple cauliflower pictured, but I kind of expected I wouldn’t be able to find that at Publix so I sacrificed the color and served it with two large heads of regular cauliflower, chopped into florets and tossed with olive oil and garlic salt. They are best roasted in a large baking tray on the middle rack of the oven for 25-30 minutes at 350F, so prepping the veggies should be your first step, as chicken tenders will cook a little faster.
To serve 7, you can work with pre-cut chicken tenders, or slice 5 boneless, skinless chicken breasts into strips. Place these in baking trays with some sides to them if you can so the peach basil sauce won’t find its way over the edges.
To make your sauce, drop the following into the blender:
two ripe, chopped or sliced peaches
1 generous teaspoon of garlic powder (or two diced garlic cloves) 1 teaspoon of kosher salt 1 teaspoon of black pepper 1/2 cup of packed, fresh basil a little over 1/3 cup of olive oil
It may take a few pulses, but should blend easily. Pour this sauce over your chicken until covered, and save the remainder to pour over the chicken once it has been plated or moved to a serving dish. Place the chicken in the oven for about 20 minutes, adding or removing a few minutes depending on how thinly your chicken is sliced.
Once the chicken is cooked through and the cauliflower has that little bit of golden brown crispy across the tops, you’re ready to serve. Enjoy dipping the chicken (and the cauliflower, if you like) in the remaining sauce. This unique, zesty-sweet dish capitalizes on seasonal fruit, is light enough to serve in the summer months, and is all the while is packed full of flavor.
If chicken is not your forte, you could use the sauce for anything, whether serving over pasta, fish, as a salad dressing, you name it. I hope you love it as much as we did!
