Chicken with mango cherry chutney

This recipe was a bit outside of my normal comfort zone. It doesn’t contain ridiculous amount of butter… but.. we’ll let that slide.

For this recipe, you’ll need a few things that you most likely don’t stock in your kitchen on a regular basis.. so.. A quick ingredient list:

• 2 Mangoes, Chopped and Divided
• 1/3 Cup dried tart cherries
• 1 TBSP Packed Brown Sugar
• 1 TBSP Cider Vinegar
• 1/2 tsp Mustard Powder
• 1/4 tsp salt
• Chinese 5-Spice Powder
• 4 Boneless, skinless chicken breasts

First off, we’ll work on the chutney. This took a lot longer than I thought… so I’d allow for a some extra time, especially if you don’t work with mangoes very often.

As I said…I don’t work with Mangoes often… or ever for that matter… so I had no idea how I’d have to deal with this thing. For people like me, let me tell you about mangoes. They have a very thick skin, and a hard pit inside. This means that you’ll need an extremely sharp knife to make it through the skin, and the fruit will tend to stick to the inner pit… it doesn’t pull off cleanly like a peach pit. Once you manage to get a few chunks off of the pit, the next task is to remove the fruit from the skin. For this, you have to pretend that you’re cutting filets of fish. The best tool for this is an extremely sharp, but flexible knife. If you have one, a filet knife would probably be best.

Once you manage to free the fruit from its skin and pit prison, chop it into small cubes… you can make the call for yourself, but I wanted slightly larger chunks.

You should be able to get about 2 cups of chopped fruit from 2 mangoes.

Then, chop up about 12-15oz of dried tart cherries and add them to your fruit….

Put you fruits into a pan with the brown sugar, vinegar, mustard and salt.

You want to keep the fruit moving around in the pan while you cook it, or the fruit will stick to the pan pretty horribly… Keep the heat low, and just be patient and keep stirring.

After a little while, your fruit should look like above. You can mash it up a little bit to make it more like a traditional chutney, but you’ll be able to see when it’s cooked and everything is mixed together nicely. Add some vinegar if you need to deglaze the pan a little bit, add some more brown sugar if your mango isn’t super sweet… You’ll be getting tartness from the cherries, so you don’t really need any more tartness from the mangoes. Once your chutney is done, set it to the side and it’s time to work on the chicken.

I used chicken breast strips, but you could use whole chicken breasts if so inclined…. I like that the strips cook much faster though… For prepping the chicken, just make sure you’ve trimmed off the fat and whatnot, dump a few tablespoons of 5-Spice powder on a plate, and drag the chicken through it. Toss 1 – 2 tsp of Olive oil in the pan, and toss the chicken in. The five spice powder isn’t overpowering, so don’t be afraid to lay it on thick… a few minutes on each side, and the chicken is done.

And just like that, it’s done. Toss the chicken on a plate, put some chutney on top, and it’s magical.

I think that this recipe is pretty versatile, and you can adjust the sweetness / tartness / savory levels pretty easily. If you want a little crunch, I think that chopped pecans would go good with the chutney… you could garnish with some green onions for a crisp, crunchy addition.. or with some fresh mint leaves to play off of the chutney… I think that if you want a little more tartness in the mix, some dried cranberries would go well in the chutney…