Chicken Paprikash - who knew there was a spicy paprika!

I started following Martha Stewart's everyday food blog, which has lots of great recipes, and found this chicken paprikash recipe.  It seem relatively simple and also used a lot paprika, which is not a spice I generally utilize, and I thought it would add a new flavor to the kitchen.
The necessities...

* 4 chicken leg quarters, cut in half at joint (about 3 pounds total)

* Coarse salt and ground pepper
* 2 teaspoons vegetable oil
* 1 large yellow onion, halved and thinly sliced lengthwise
* 3 garlic cloves, roughly chopped
* 2 tablespoons sweet paprika
* 3 tablespoons all-purpose flour
* 1 3/4 cups low-sodium chicken broth
* 1 can (14 ounces) diced tomatoes
* 1/2 pound wide egg noodles
* 1/2 cup sour cream or thick plain yogurt

To begin, I chopped up my onion and and the garlic.

Chopped Onion

Chopped Garlic

Then I heated a couple of tablespoons of oil to a big cast iron pot.  Martha says to use a heavy duty pot or a dutch oven but since our Le Creuset is still in the mail, cast iron it was.  While the oil was heating I heavily salted and peppered the chicken and placed it in the pot, skin side down, and let them cook for about 6 minutes before flipping and cooking them on the other side for another 6 minutes.  Once the chicken was nice and browned I set it aside for later.

Chicken awaiting the next step...

I removed some of the fat and oil from the pot and added my sliced onions and chopped garlic and gave it a few stirs.

Sizzling and reducing

I like my onions really well cooked, so I let them cook down about 5 minutes.  Next I added the paprika and flour and stirred it up.  Martha said that it should be stirred until the paprika stuck and was fragrant.  For me however, the paprika stuck immediately, not allowing much time for it to become fragrant (this could have been due to the fact that I was using a non-enamel cast iron pot, or the fact that the paprika was on the older side - who knows.)  So, I moved to the next step quickly and added the chicken broth and stirred until the mixture was smooth.  I added the can of diced tomatoes and gave the pot another couple of good stirs, making sure everything was blended together.

Sauce is ready to go

I took the cooked chicken and added it back to the pot, skin side up, and made sure it was basically covered by the sauce.

 

Simmering

 I covered the pot and let it cook on a simmer for about 20 minutes, allowing the chicken to fully cook through.  Meanwhile, I cooked up some pasta - while Martha said I should use egg noodles, the store I shopped at only had pasta, so I cooked pasta that was roughly the same shape.

Once everything was finished, I put the pasta in bowls and then placed the chicken pieces on top.  To the sauce in the pot I added the sour cream, stirred it all up, and then ladled the sauce into the bowls.

Ready to serve

Now, I think if I were going to serve this at a dinner party of something, I would have tried to add some greenery to dress it up a bit.  But given I did not have any one hand, Nick was stuck with an ungarnished plate!

This dish was pretty good, but not great.  I think part of the issue (like I said above) was that the paprika did not really get enough time to cook and fully develop for any number of reasons.  Also, this recipe did explain that there are actually two types of paprika: a sweet variety, which is more common, as well as a Hungarian variety, which is a lot spicier.  I think the extra kick would have really added to the flavor and given the whole dish an extra dimension.  I also think this could have been way better if it was made in the new dutch oven....so I may have to repeat this one to test my theory!