Last week I was trawling through the local market on the way home from
work, looking for something easy to make for dinner. I ended up, as I
usually do, in the Italian foods section. The market had a sale on Sacla
brand pesto, both the usual basil one and one made from sun-dried
tomatoes, pine nuts and parmesan. I'd not had the tomato pesto before so
I thought I'd give it a try. Unfortunately, while I was waiting for the
water to boil for the pasta I made the mistake of tasting the pesto. Oh
boy, this stuff was good! I grabbed a spoon and dug in. In the end there
wasn't enough left for putting on the pasta, so I ditched that idea and
just finished the jar.

The label on the jar suggested putting it on chicken. And recently
there's been a few posts here about coating chicken with mayo before
baking it. I thought I'd combine the two ideas for lunch today. I took a
190g jar of Sacla brand sun-dried tomato pesto and mixed in a couple of
tablespoons of mayo. I used Hellmans because that's what I had to hand.
The supermarket had a sale on chicken thighs - a dozen large thighs for
£2.69. Half went in the freezer. The other six I put in a baking dish
with the pesto/mayo mix and left it to marinate in the fridge overnight.
I baked them uncovered in a medium-slow oven, basting with the leftover
pesto/mayo halfway through. When they were nearly finished, I moved them
to a lower shelf and cranked up the heat for some oven-roast potatoes.
The thighs browned nicely. They turned out great. Juicy and tender,
flavoured all the way through. This one's a keeper.

BTW, the oven-roast potatoes weren't bad either. I used waxy salad
potatoes prepared in the normal way. But before putting them in the oven
I did a Sicilian trick for getting a nice crunchy finish. I coated them
with seasoned semolina - salt, pepper, paprika and garlic powder. Very nice.

RobtE

"RobtE" > wrote in message
...
> Last week I was trawling through the local market on the way home from
> work, looking for something easy to make for dinner. I ended up, as I
> usually do, in the Italian foods section. The market had a sale on Sacla
> brand pesto, both the usual basil one and one made from sun-dried
> tomatoes, pine nuts and parmesan. I'd not had the tomato pesto before so I
> thought I'd give it a try. Unfortunately, while I was waiting for the
> water to boil for the pasta I made the mistake of tasting the pesto. Oh
> boy, this stuff was good! I grabbed a spoon and dug in. In the end there
> wasn't enough left for putting on the pasta, so I ditched that idea and
> just finished the jar.
>
> The label on the jar suggested putting it on chicken. And recently
> there's been a few posts here about coating chicken with mayo before
> baking it. I thought I'd combine the two ideas for lunch today. I took a
> 190g jar of Sacla brand sun-dried tomato pesto and mixed in a couple of
> tablespoons of mayo. I used Hellmans because that's what I had to hand.
> The supermarket had a sale on chicken thighs - a dozen large thighs for
> £2.69. Half went in the freezer. The other six I put in a baking dish
> with the pesto/mayo mix and left it to marinate in the fridge overnight.
> I baked them uncovered in a medium-slow oven, basting with the leftover
> pesto/mayo halfway through. When they were nearly finished, I moved them
> to a lower shelf and cranked up the heat for some oven-roast potatoes. The
> thighs browned nicely. They turned out great. Juicy and tender,
> flavoured all the way through. This one's a keeper.
>
> BTW, the oven-roast potatoes weren't bad either. I used waxy salad
> potatoes prepared in the normal way. But before putting them in the oven
> I did a Sicilian trick for getting a nice crunchy finish. I coated them
> with seasoned semolina - salt, pepper, paprika and garlic powder. Very
> nice.
>
> RobtE

Wow! Thanks for posting this. I became familiar with Sacla products while
living in Ireland from 2001-2003. And when I returned to the USA I was
delighted to find that their scrumptious (but pricey!) products were
beginning to appear in the better supermarkets in the Boston area. I'll
have to try this one out... very soon.

I got a belly laugh about your sampling the pesto and finding that all of a
sudden there wasn't enough left in the little jar to complete your recipe.
It is a common story, I'm sure with many of their products. Their pestos
are wonderful additions to a sandwich, spread on the bread as a secret
weapon. Yum!

Paul in New Hampshire