Quick Chicken w/ Tomato-Garlic Compote

This recipe is fun - it is pretty easy - so i can pull it out of my memory even when i am at someone else's house. My mother in law - loved it! I actually bread the chicken ever so lightly with flour so it adds a nice crust. i love it served with egg noodles!

I threw the medallions on the BBQ grill for a minute before finishing them in the pan. That added a little something. THe compote is fabulous.

I added finely chopped dried chipotle peppers to this recipe that I found at Urban Fare to create a Mexicana taste. Slices of avacado with lime made a good alternative garnish too.

I passed on the sugar, I seered it in a grill with a lemon sauce, and it was great for my taste.

I am new to cooking and have been enjoying rouxbe a great deal! I tried this recipe last week and found the compote very tasty. I have one question about preparation... I pan seared the chicken as suggested and then placed in the oven on a foiled covered baking sheet as suggest. To my disappointment, when I removed it from the oven after cooking the compote the chicken was "soaking wet" and has lost all the nice golden crust it got when pan seared. Is this supposed to happen? If not, what probably has gone wrong? Thanks!

Thanks Renata for your comment. We overlooked an important tip on this recipe. It has to do with resting meat. Resting meat is very important. WE failed you on this recipe because we said to place the chicken from the pan, onto a tray, cover, then place into the oven. What we should have said is to transfer the chicken to the plate, let sit at room temperature for about five minutes (to stop the cooking process), then tent with aluminum foil with holes in it. What happend to your dish is that you (because of our instructions), placed the hot chicken onto a plate and by wrapping it in aluminum foil right away, the chicken simply continued to cook. The oven may have been on "warm", but the chicken was too hot, so the foil actually created an "oven-like" temperature. And without poking holes in the foil, the steam did not escape, so this affected your end crust (carmelization). It is normal for liquid to escape from meat when resting though. I will add a note to this dish. Please try it again, and make sure to let the chicken sit on the counter - UNWRAPPED - for at least five minutes. You are only putting it into the over then to keep it warm for a few minutes, but it will not continue to cook. Here is a drill-down we will add to this dish. Meat Needs to Rest After Cooking Let us know how it goes next time. It will work. Have confidence. Sorry for the oversight on our part. Joe

I just made this recipe earlier today and found it very easy, and exceptionally good. I sub'd balsamic because I was out of white wine vinager, but it still was great. I think next time I'll try to grill the chicken, it's just way too cold right now!

This recipe is so yummy and healthy. I served it with an arugula, parmesan and fennel salad sprinkled with balsamic glaze.

So quick and full of flavor. Honestly I had forgotten how delicious and easy this recipe is. This just happens to be one of the first recipes we did here at Rouxbe and I had not tried it in a very long time...there is not much time for repeat in my cooking repertoire. It really only took me about 15 minutes to make and we were sitting down and eating within about 30 minutes. The only thing I did differently was that I used the same pan I cooked the chicken in to make the sauce. Yum!

I made this last night for dinner...it was fantastic!! My husband and son loved it!! It will definitely be a repeat on our menu!!!

Have made this twice now. Great with a pasta side. I doubled the sauce recipe because it is so good.

This recipe was fantastic! I reduced it to 1 portion since I was only cooking for myself, but I was simply floored. Amazing. I didn't have any nice greens to serve with it, so I served it (to myself) with a sprig of fresh organic basil to tear over the compote at the table. The rustic compote was delicious on its own, but a touch of fresh torn basil took it to a whole new level. I'm so pleased! Here's a picture: http://drp.ly/1pdlfw

I had a huge packet of boneless chicken leg meat from costco, wondering, for this recipe,if i remove the skin, could I substitute it for the breast? Also does it work for other recipes that call for boneless skinless chicken breasts? thanks a lot!

I think using skinned, boneless chicken thighs would work great! Probably even more flavor!

I've been seeing a lot of recipes lately, including this one, that call for white wine vinegar. We don't have this ingredient in the country I live in. In fact, even red wine vinegar is called "grape vinegar". Will it ruin things to use regular white vinegar or a mix of vinegar and white wine?

White wine vinegar is very popular in cooking as it not only adds a nice subtle tartness, it also adds flavor and sweetness to dishes. Because it is made with white wine, it imparts a hint of the original wine flavor before it became vinegar. White vinegar is colorless and tastes somewhat harsh when compared to wine vinegar. Which is why it is not often used in cooking. It is however very popular with things like pickling (and cleaning coffe pots). Here is a quite a bit more information on vinegars and their potential substitutions, that you might find helpful. Here is another link that you may also find useful. Out of curiosity, which country do you live in? You could also try phoning around to your local specialty food stores (or even higher end restaurants). Alternatively, you could also order white wine vinegar online. Cheers!

I live in Jordan. Checking with high end restaurants is a very good idea.

Made the Chicken with Garlic Tomato Compote for dinnner. It was great husband and daughter like to very much also. Wasn't too fond of the tomato skins. Wonder if I can peel the tomatoes, lol I will give it a try next time or maybe try peeled roma tomatoes. Anyway, it tasted wonderful :-)

This is a very simple dish and as a chef myself simple dishes are best because the food speaks for itself without getting too complicated. My wife loved it I made it twice once with white wine vinegar and rice vinegar both work equally well. I find that rice vinegar has more sodium and sugar than most vinegars so I can omit the sugar and salt if need be. Happy cooking

This is the first dish I made since joining Rouxbe. I made the greek salad to go with it and my family was blown away. Delicious. Learning how to correctly pan fry really inspires confidence. The compote was more runny that what showed in the video, I guess I was using juicy tomatoes but it didn't matter as it tasted wonderful. This will be a recipe that I make and serve to friends.

Hello! I made this recipe, and it was pretty good, but I think when I make it again I will: (1) Pound the chicken medallions to make them more tender; (2) Flour the chicken medallions lightly in order to give them a nice crust (as suggested by Lisa N); (3) Use quite a bit more salt and pepper than specified to season the chicken; (4) Use refined olive oil rather than the extra-virgin olive oil I did use (since the recipe calls for “olive oil,” and even though I knew the smoking point of extra-virgin olive oil is too low, it didn’t occur to me until later that I could use refined olive oil); (5) Perhaps undercook the chicken a little (since in order to avoid overcrowding the pan I had to cook the chicken in four batches, and [since I was concerned the olive oil might have degraded due to the high heat] in between each batch I rinsed out the pan and then heated it up again – this took quite some time, and all the while the previously-cooked chicken was sitting in the warm oven); (6) Incorporate the sucs from cooking the chicken (assuming I hadn’t burned them!) and the chicken juices rendered after resting the chicken into the sauce; (7) Double the sauce ingredients (as suggested by David N), as there was only enough sauce for a little more than half the chicken (but I like a lot of sauce!); (8) Take the garlic out of the pan as soon as any of it begins to brown (rather than waiting for all of it to start to brown, as I did – since by that point some of it had already over-browned); (9) Use a medium shallot rather than the large shallot I did use (since the size was unspecified and I like shallots – but the sauce ended up almost all shallot!); (10) Use white vermouth instead of white wine to extend the sauce (if needed) (since as it turned out the sauce had plenty of liquid but I had already opened up a bottle of wine in order to measure out 1/4 cup for my mis en place); (11) Add freshly-grated Parmesan or Romano cheese on top of the sauce (I love cheese!); and (12) Add fresh basil on top of the sauce (as suggested by Rob S). I did let each batch of chicken rest about five minutes before putting it in the oven covered with vented foil (as mentioned above), and the chicken stayed nice and browned. I also added an additional tablespoon of olive oil to the pan for each successive batch of chicken, so that I ended up using four tablespoons of olive oil rather than one tablespoon. Finally, as mentioned above, the sauce had plenty of liquid – perhaps too much. I tried to cook off the extra liquid, but I was concerned that I was overcooking a sauce that is meant to be cooked only briefly (and thereby dulling the fresh flavors of the ingredients and rendering the tomatoes mushier than they should have been). By the way, I don’t know how anyone could make this recipe in half an hour (or a quarter of an hour!) – it took me at least a couple of hours to make it. Is the time counted starting after the mis en place has been created? If anyone has any thoughts on my thoughts, I would love to read them! Thanks! Jeanne

Not sure where I went wrong with the recipe but my family and I felt it was a bit tart. We used white wine vinegar, and I made sure that to carefully observe the garlic since it can cause a bitter taste. We weren't too keen on the recipe but it was a good try. I might attempt it again but with red onion.

Hi Diana - Thanks for letting us know. There is a an acidic flavor profile, but the tomatoes ideally help balance with their sweetness. It's a dish that really benefits from ripe tomatoes, as that will be the key to imparting the sweetness that gets balanced in the dish. In any event, maybe you can try again once it's peak of the season for tomatoes? Good luck! ~Ken

Is there a rule of thumb when reheating chicken with tomatoes? I feel like it never really works. The chicken always seems to be spongy when reheated with tomatoes. Is this faux pas ?

Hi Cindi. There is not specifically a rule of thumb rule for reheating a chicken and tomato dish. That said, how you are reheating the dish may have an effect on the chicken. I tend to use my oven for reheating dishes, a microwave may create different results. I ensure they are covered or that stock or water is added to help retain moisture. Removing the cover when the dish is coming to temp will allow for some color and crispiness if that is what you were looking for. Chicken Cacciatore and similar dishes lend well to reheating and can be wonderful to spread out for weekly meals.