butt-burnin' chicken

Let's just say I'm paying for this dish today, but in no way do I regret the actions of last night. Ashton and I hadn't made a meal in a while, so we gathered up some of our ideas and worked off of our initial craving of spicy chicken. A coworker had Creole for lunch yesterday, and I've been enjoying some chorizo burritos this week, so I had spicy on the mind. For this particularly succulent dish, we used the following:

5 chicken breasts
about 15 asparagus stalks cut into quarters
4 cloves of garlic, minced
a generous layer of cayenne pepper over the chicken
1 diced green chile pepper
1/2 can of chipotle peppers in adobo
1/4 block of monterey jack cheese (I'm sure shredded would have sufficed)

I layered the bottom of the dish with half of the asparagus and then placed the chicken on top and sprinkled the cayenne over them. Then I placed 1 blob of chipotle on each breast and spread the rest of the asparagus over the breasts. I sprinkled the entire thing with the chile pepper and garlic and then coated it all with the cheese.

We baked it for 45 minutes at 350 degrees, but much to my chagrin the thicker pieces were definitely not cooked all the way through. We nuked 'em, but next time I think I'll plan to use maybe smaller breasts or make it more like a casserole to make them a bit thinner and easier to cook through. Also, I would like to marinate the chicken or spread the spice a bit more in a sauce somehow, because the top of the chicken tasted great, but there wasn't any flavor in the cracks. Nevertheless, we mixed 2 packets of Mexican and Taco rice and placed the chicken on top of a pile of rice for each person and enjoyed! There were definitely some watery eyes and a bit of coughing, but all in all it was a good meal. About a solid B with definite potential.