Against the Grain - Braised Chicken Breasts with Eggplant, Tomatoes and Feta

One of my plans for retirement was to go through all my cookbooks, alphabetically and try all the recipes. But, after starting my plan, I realized that:

A) Some of my cookbooks are season specific, e.g. soup and stews so I definitely won't be trying recipes in them until the cold weather returns.

B) I won't be trying every recipe in every book because:

i) I don't like all foods
ii) I have no need to make the appetizers for the most part since it's only my husband and me and appetizers just means more calories used during the day. However, if I find healthy, easy appetizers, I might make some of them as healthy snacks.

I'm planning on using my SP blog to track these recipes that I've made and my thoughts on whether I might make them again.

One thing you should know about my cooking is that I always do my cooking first thing in the morning as I have an autoimmune condition that makes me very tired a lot of the time and I find that if I do all of my chores in the morning, they will actually happen.

The other thing you should know about my cooking is that I rarely cook every day. I usually cook something and then I eat it every night until it's gone and then I make something new.

The first recipe I tried is from the cookbook, Against the Grain by Diane Kochilas.

The recipe was called Braised Chicken Breasts with Eggplant, Tomatoes and Feta and it's on page 188-189 in the cookbook.

The first change I made to the recipe is that I used zucchini instead of eggplant as I don't care for it. I also used diced, canned tomatoes instead of fresh since fresh aren't really in season yet.

I also cooked some red rice (similar in nutritional value to brown rice) and put the cooked rice on the bottom of the baking dish that I was going to cook the chicken in and that worked out nicely as the juices from the tomatoes mixed nicely with the rice.

I've been cutting up the chicken and mixing it into the rice and tomato mixture so if I was going to make it again, I would probably use cubed chicken breast pieces and make it as more of pilaf than just another chicken breast dish.

All that said, I did like the dish but am not sure I like it enough to make again.

I rate this recipe 3/5.