Lately the phrase “coconut cream” has a strange, hypnotic effect on me—I basically feel compelled to test any recipes that contains the ingredient. This was the case with Lime-and-Coconut-Soaked Chicken with Cilantro, and it certainly helped that the dish listed only six ingredients total.

My recent coconut cream obsession has come from a fling I’ve been having with the piña colada lately. Frothy and potent, it’s my hot afternoon drink of choice and has made coconut cream a staple in my pantry. I also have another coconut cream infatuation: the Thai soup tom kha. Made of coconut cream and lemongrass broth, it’s rich and borders on buttery, and I find it pretty much impossible to go into a Thai restaurant and not order it.

My grilled chicken recipe did not list lemongrass as an ingredient, but it was recommended as an addition in italics. I figured a tom kha-like marinade couldn’t be a bad thing, so the marinade was thrown together one warm evening that was, despite the recipe’s original draw, sadly void of lemongrass. While coconut cream has reached staple status in my kitchen, lemongrass has not. So the marinade was made with only the official ingredients listed in the recipe proper (coconut milk, chicken, lime, cilantro, salt and pepper.)

Assessment: Since I had successfully paired a lime chicken with polenta previously, grilled polenta became the companion to this chicken as well. My friend described polenta as “filler, like yucca,” the latter being a Caribbean potato, more or less. And then he went on to say I best not rave about this meal on thecookingcritic.com. I lashed out by calling him an uncultured polenta amateur. He reminded me of his art degree and all the culture it implied. I harrumphed.

While the grill gave the polenta a nice flavor, I have to say I much prefer my polenta fried—perhaps this isn’t such a big surprise. The chicken, on the other hand, had a pleasant, mild flavor to it, but I had hoped for something with a little more oomph. Marinating it over night might have helped, and I think it would have benefited from being skewered next to some pineapple. But all in all, I prefer the similar-but-better-tasting Lime-Cilantro Chicken I made before and will probably turn to it next time I grill up some chicken.

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