Sweet Mango Chili Chicken

Tonight's dinner featured more mangoes and an inspiration from a lollipop.  I have always loved eating these mango chili lollipops from the Mexican markets.  It had been a while since I have had it and have been craving it since I made the braised mango habanero ribs last weekend.  Since I could not get my hands on the lollipops, I used it as an inspiration to my dinner tonight.

The chicken was simply seasoned with salt and Chinese five spice powder in hopes that the chicken would take on the flavors of the mango sauce I was going to make.

The mango sauce was made with some Asian sauces, ginger, green onions, dried chili pepper, sambal chili and of course mangoes.  I diced up half of the mango and used it for the sauce and the other half for the garnish.

The mango garnish was inspired by the way my Mom would use to eat mango and rice growing up.  I thought this was odd and never wanted to try it.  It was more or less that I thought it was weird to eat fruit with an entree.  Who knew that I would be doing it years later.  I sliced the mango into long stripes and "marinaded" it in rice vinegar and sambal chili.  I did this because it reminded me of these slices of pickled chili mangoes I would see at Asian grocery stores and figured it would go along with my theme of my dish.

The chicken was quickly seared to get some color on the chicken and set a side.  I poured my mango sauce into the pan I had just used and just let it cook down a bit then returned the chicken to pan and let the chicken finish off in the sauce.

Here we have it...sweet mango chili chicken inspired by a lollipop.