Today I’m testing a new slow cooker by making Mediterranean Chicken from a recipe I found on the Hamilton Beach website.  I chose this recipe because it uses lots of great ingredients, like dried tomatoes.

Eric dried tomatoes last month.  He chose tiny ones from a friend’s superabundant garden.

He halved them and tossed them in a bowl with a little olive oil.  Then he set them onto a parchment-lined cookie sheet and peppered them with minced garlic and another little drizzle of oil.

The tomatoes sat inside our oven, turned to its lowest setting, 170 degrees, all day.  Our house smelled delicious!  The tomatoes emerged wizened and reminded me of arrowheads.

The Mediterranean Chicken recipe uses other great ingredients, too, like mushrooms, onions, and zucchini.

These ingredients go into the slow cooker first.

You also need lemon juice, Kalamata olives, garlic, and oregano.  I used dried oregano from our garden.

These ingredients are added to canned, diced tomatoes in a bowl.  If it were summer, I’d use fresh tomatoes instead.

For me, the hard part of the recipe was browning the chicken in oil on the stove.  I usually bake or grill chicken. The recipe called for boneless chicken thighs but organic chicken legs were on sale, so I used those instead.  I skinned them but didn’t bone them, so this will be a messy dish to eat.  I think you could simply leave the chicken out and have a great vegetarian dish, especially because garbanzo beans are another of the ingredients.

You need capers, as well.

The chicken goes atop the veggies in the slow cooker.  The beans go in next, then the tomato mixture.  The capers go on top.

I plan to serve this with penne and parmesan.  Hope it tastes good!  For the recipe, go to Hamilton Beach.

Update: The guys loved this dish.  Slow cooking made the chicken tender enough to fall off the bones, so it wasn’t messy to eat after all.  The flavors melded beautifully.  The zucchini was a bit soggy for my taste.  Next time I might cut it into bigger pieces.