MAD Hungry MY Way: Lo’s Spatchcocked Chicken with Pears & Mustard Sauce

I get tons of feedback on here and on facebook about people making the MAD Hungry recipes or their riffs on them. We’re going to start a new part of the blog where we show YOUR Mad Hungry Meals. Send your pics, riffs and stories to madhungrylsq@gmail.com & we’ll post!

Below is from my fellow MAD Hungry crew member, Lo, who couldn’t help but dig the spatchcocked chicken cooked on MHTV yesterday:

Spatchcocked Chicken with Pears and Mustard Sauce

I’m not one to be mesmerized by TV food ever and I mostly eat veggie or scrounge for leftovers at home due to budget concerns (I hadn’t made or bought any meat since MAY)

BUT

After watching the spatchcock chicken episode at the MAD Hungry office, I just began craving a solid meal, but one that didn’t take a long time since I had worked a little late. I got back to my neighborhood around 7pm and made a b-line for the grocery store to pick up some bosc pears and a chicken. Back in my apartment, I whipped out my cast iron and turned the oven to 400. I cut up the pears into 8ths and raided my fridge;  I was thinking something fall, something foolproof, and grabbed the whole grain mustard and a lime (it was really all my fridge had to offer).

Spatchcocked the chicken with a knife, since I don’t have kitchen shears, and rubbed it with salt, pepper, and the mustard. Cooked the one side just like I watched LSQ do on TV earlier to crisp the skin. Before I flipped the chicken to skin side up, I threw the pears into the bottom of the pan and then laid the chicken on top. Put the chicken into the oven to cook and boiled some broccolini in heavily-salted water, at about 7:30PM. 40 minutes later I had the chicken out and resting, the now-roasted pears out of the pan, and was finishing the sauce: tweaked a little from MAD Hungry. Since I used pears, chili flakes and lemons wouldn’t totally mesh, so I went back to basics (and CQ’s fave, mustard), and put a tablespoon of the mustard and juiced a lime to make the sauce.

By 8:30PM I was feasting on one of the most satisfying meals I have had in months that took from raw to my fork and mouth: 1 hour.

To say the least, I’m watching the clock until I can reheat my leftovers and I’m definitely wearing my “fat girl” pants today. Check out the gallery below to see my eats! (there’s no broccolini in the pictures because it’s pretty much my favorite and didn’t make it to the plate)

[picasa username=”lsq713″ albumname=”LoSSpatchcockedChicken”]