Coconut Chicken with Cabbage & Pimenta Arriba-Saia

Tonight I was working - the heat and humidity of the air almost the same as during the day. Silently sweating my way through the tasks and messages, I drank some water with ice cubes when FINALLY, a slow but steady rain shower cooled my hot head and everything around us seemed to relax and sight of exhaustion and relief.

Coconut Chicken with Cabbage & Pimenta

Feeling all cosy and refreshed with new motivation on board, I suddently felt an urge to cook up a storm and off I went to check what I had in the fridge. I had most things I usually get as my `basics` except the coconut milk that I picked up randomly (but instinctively) during my last shopping trip.

I HAD to use this coconut milk no matter what I was going to cook. I checked what was in need to be eaten so that I would not have to throw it away and TADA, a pretty big chunk of cabbage lying innocently on the bottom of my fridge, neglected during the last few days.

So I did a short search on cabbage and coconut milk and found an overwhelming amount of coconut cabbage chicken recipes, mostly curry-related dishes. I don`t have curry spice at home, but thought, alright, cabbage+chicken+coconut=dish should be totally working out so I mixed some of the ingredients I found in different recipes and came up with my own version of Coconut Chicken with Cabbage, adding my self-made pimenta spice I had mentioned beforehand (*Pimenta Spice), quite simple as it is just plain Arriba-Saia pimenta-vegetables in a salt-vinegar solution.

Ingredients (serve 2):
400g chicken (breast), cut in 2-3cm cubes
1/3 of a medium-sized cabbage head, finely chopped
1/2 teaspoon of butter
a tablespoon of finely chopped fresh coriander
a bit of black pepper
1/2 teaspoon of Arriba-Saia pimenta(-vinegar) (if you have another pimenta or hot spice such as pepperoni or something similar, that should probably work as well, depending on how hot you like your sauce)
1 tablespoon of loose chicken stock (add more salt if preferred)
1 onion, finely chopped
2 medium garlic knobs, finely chopped
1 tomato, finely chopped
100ml coconut milk
juice of 1/4 lemon (or half a teaspoon of plain lemon juice)

I first quickly pre-fried the chicken in a bit of water, butter and chicken stock in the pressure cooker for about 6min while chopping the veggies. Then adding first the onion and cabbage, letting it fry a little bit I later added garlic and the rest of the ingredients, finishing off with half of the coconut milk, then letting it simmer on low heat for about 5min and adding the rest of the coconut milk and lemon juice just before serving it. Maybe you might need a bit more salt, the prince of sun and I do not add much of it compared to most Brazilians around here, in general, when I cook with chicken stock, I don t feel the need to add more salt anyway.

I preferred it with plain rice and nothing else as it is very flavourful and sweet-spicy, but the prince of sun had it with rice and beans and found it a delicious match as well.

BOM APETITE!