The Life and Times of a Crock Pot Junkie

So the story starts about a year ago in West Philly when my best friend received a crock pot for Christmas that she then brought with her when she moved to our W. Philly apartment. Together we experimented with it and made delicious spaghetti sauce (my mother's famous recipe), incredible Indian delights and various things in between. The love of the crock lasted for about two months and then as we tend to do, we lost interest in spending money on good food and spent too many nights after work bellied up to our favorite bar, The Good Dog.
Fast forward to a year later when the best buddy and I are no longer living together but are still the bestest of best. It's January 10th and I'm turning the big two four and she keeps talking about how she has the best gift ever for me but that I'm going to crack up when I open it. I open it hesitantly and then proceed to, just as she said I would, crack up. It's a crock pot cook book for cooking in a small crock. "The crock pot is at my house" she says, "cuz I didn't want to drag it to Tattooed Mom's for you to open." She got me this amazing cook book:

..as well as a lovely 1.5 qt.crock:

Now that I live in South Philly and the Italian Market is mere blocks away I've started to really explore my crock. In the last few months I've made everything from hot dips to soups and marinated meats. A couple of stand outs were a zucchini soup (a recipe allegedly from a 1950's magazine that was cited as being Katherine Hepburn's favorite---lady's got good taste!) made with curry and cayenne pepper (I added corn to make it a little more robust, it was a good choice!) and a Moroccan spiced chicken over whole wheat couscous. I recently made the latter for my co-workers and anyone who works at the Walnut Street Theatre knows my boss is a picky eater who isn't much for exploring new foods. She loved it so much she was trying to steal bits off of my apprentices' plates!
Today I'm moving onto a bit of a summer plate. I'm making fresh corn risotto in the crock and to go along with it I'm making some "fly by the seat of my pants" citrus chili chicken. I only have one crock so I'm going to marinade and simmer the chicken over a slow flame in a pan but if I had two crocks I can guarantee you that the chicken would be marinading crock-style as well!
Today's ingredients:

Fresh basil, lemons, limes and corn from the market as well as some plum tomatoes. The colors are enough to put a smile on my face!
Check out the marinading chicken too:

and in the pan:

This one I made up as I went: Mild cayenne pepper from the Spice Shop in the market, Adobo, a clove of fresh garlic, one lemon peeled and squeezed, one lime sliced, one lime juiced, 1/3 can of Goya Passion Fruit cocktail and pepper. We'll see how it goes!

Here's the finished products:



The chicken has some good bite and turned out quite tender. This semi-Caribbean style chicken goes awesome with the Italian corn risotto dish thanks to the lightness of the corn in the risotto meshing well with the lime and lemon in the chicken. I'm not sure what sparked my idea to make a lime flavored chicken with a corn risotto but I give it a thumbs up---of course, I'm the chef here so my opinion may be biased. I did, however, make up a plate for the bestest best as she is moving into my place tonight. With that in mind, watch out Philadelphia the Michigan gals are back together and about to cause some serious trouble!