Eucalyptus Country « Chicken with Pecan Honey Sauce

Chicken with Pecan Honey Sauce – very noice!

It’s hard to believe, but yes I cooked this. And just look at the presentation – it’s almost restaurant like instead of the usual “slapped on the plate” appearance that my food tends to take. As Maccas is fond of proclaiming lately – “it’s a little bit fancy”.

Much as I initially begrudged having to get Foxtel in order to get TV reception where we live, I’ve discovered that it is somewhat useful for providing some inspiration for new meal ideas. And while I’ll never be Nigella, I am learning a few new things. Like simple sometimes being better and combining fruit and savoury together can be quite acceptable. So with my new found interest for cooking something more than bottle pasta and packet burritos, I went and got a few more cookbooks from Borders. Not that I need more cookbooks – I have shelves of them that I have never opened that are hand me downs from parents and grandparents. I even have a few I’ve bought myself and never opened.

But if I hadn’t gone to Borders, I wouldn’t have found this very small cookbook called After Work Healthy by the ever reliable Australian Women’s Weekly. I generally pick my cookbooks by looking at the picture on the front, the title and a quick flick through to see if I am prepared to eat at least five recipes in there. This one passed the test, so in the shopping bag it went.

I picked out a few recipes to make this week with my new-found enthusiasm for cooking and decided that this little number would be an appropriate first test. Enough fiddly stuff to make it seem a bit special but it seemed easy enough that I probably wouldn’t stuff it up. Success was very important tonight because I am from the Homer school of cooking – if at first you don’t succeed, resign yourself to a lifetime of easy, quick prepare meals involving packets and bottles. I’m pleased to say that it was a success and although the combination of fruit and chicken in the one dish seemed unusual, the flavours matched up really well. If serving it with the fruit really puts you off, you could always serve it with roast spuds instead.