First off, how about blackcaps from Ludgate’s? I bought a pint and they were gone by the end of the day between Joe and I.

I love red raspberries, but black raspberries are definitely my favorite berry of all. We used to pick them during the summer and it seemed like they were easily found along any road or embankment. I feel like I don’t find them as easily anymore, but it might be that I’m just not looking in the right places or as hard. They’re both sweeter and more tart than red raspberries and I just don’t understand how people make jam or anything with them as it’s too easy to gobble them up right out of the box.

This was last night’s dinner and it was excellent, if I do say so myself. I went a little bonkers between the farmer’s market and Ludgate’s, so, among other things, I had a pint of baby yellow squash and zucchini, heads of fresh garlic, and a pint of cherry tomatoes to work with.

I cut up the squash and zucchini into bite-size pieces and thinly sliced one large head of fresh garlic and let them sit together in a bowl while I prepared everything else. I chopped the tomatoes into wedges and then sent two more big cloves of garlic through the garlic press and mixed that into the tomatoes.

The rice is a medium grain brown rice, made using Cook’s Illustrated Foolproof Oven-baked Brown Rice recipe. I originally got it from the magazine, but Alanna at A Veggie Venture secured permission to reprint it, so you can find it there. The first time I made brown rice, it was gluey and bland and bordering on kind of gross. This recipe leaves you with fluffy, tender, nutty rice that I look forward to eating again. It takes about an hour to bake, so that leaves you with ample time to get everything else ready.

Two plain old boneless, skinless chicken breasts were rubbed with some olive oil and sprinkled with salt and pepper and put into the oven to cook along with the rice. The oven is set at 375 degrees for the rice, so I put the chicken in for about 10 minutes a side. After the 20 minutes passed, the chicken was JUST cooked enough to not be pink and for me to cut up into slices.

While the chicken was cooking, I started to saute the squash/zucchini in some olive oil in a pan. I let that go on its own for a bit and then added in the tomatoes. These cooked down until they were saucy. I added a little bit of water as it was getting a little too thick and also threw in some dried green pepper flakes (which, of course, would rehydrate in the sauce). At this point, the sliced chicken was tossed into the pan and things simmered until the rice was ready.

Right before serving, I tore up a few black Cerignola olives and added them to the sauce and chicken. Rice on the plate first, followed by the sauce, chicken and veggie mixture, finished with a few scrapes of parmesan cheese. Yummy!