I Cooked Some Chicken for the #Expediaworldonaplate Challenge @expedia

Everything changes. Maybe it was my Hello Fresh experience. Maybe it’s my renewed fiscal responsibility. But yes, every so often as of late, I’ve been buying raw meat — raw meat! — and cooking it myself. You heard that right. I am walking past the already pre-roasted Waitrose roast chicken and buying raw chicken and coming home and popping it in the oven for 40 minutes all by myself.

Miracles do happen, people. They really do.

So when Expedia contacted me about #Expediaworldonaplate, they kinda got me at just the right moment. They asked me to create a dish of my choosing, photograph it, and feature it on my site. The only catch? The dish had to originate from or be inspired by Cyprus or France. “One problem,” I told them. “I’ve never been to Cyprus. Is a trip to Cyprus included in the challenge?”

While a trip to Cyprus wasn’t included in the deal, £100 worth of products like olive oil, feta cheese, olives and baklava were included.

I ate all the baklava immediately.

And then I started thinking about what I would actually cook. Chicken is easy for me and I am a sucker for chicken thighs. All those people who love skinless, boneless chicken breasts? F*ck em. Give me the chicken thighs. The more skin, the better.

So I bought a bunch of chicken thighs and brought them home, along with some fresh garlic and lemon. I shoved some garlic cloves under the skin of the thighs, an advanced move for me. And then after slicing the lemon real thin, I placed the chicken on top of all the lemon slices. I got one of the jars of olives they sent me and spooned out 20, 5 for each thigh, and dropped them around the dish. A bit of olive oil and white wine and done. Into the oven for 40 minutes.

Out. Fantastic. My flat smelled all garlicky and lemony. Nice. Now, this is where my old self comes through. I ripped open a bag of salad leaves and placed a handful on my plate. Then I dug around the fridge until I found the 2-day old egg fried rice I knew I had in there somewhere and microwaved it for 45 seconds. I got out the block of feta and chopped it up, probably a little too perfectly. (Crumbled probably would have been better.) I dropped it all over my chicken and let it rest for a few minutes and warm up. Then, I plated everything and sat down to eat. DONE.  Classy. Nice. Too bad I didn’t have any baklava left for afters.

The next day, I polished off the leftovers for lunch, impressed by my own industriousness in the kitchen.

And the day after that, I chopped up the last remaining chicken thigh and shoved it into a pita with the rest of the feta and some lettuce. A nice lunch.

So thank you, Expedia, for your #expediaworldonaplate challenge. Thank you for the £100 worth of products and the £50 John Lewis voucher too. That was all very generous of you…which begs the question…What’s in it for you???