Cajun Chicken with Spicy Sweet Potatoes, Bacon and Green Beans

Where do you find cooking inspiration??? I find inspiration in many things;  Pinterest is a great place, check out my plethora of pinteration here.  Fellow food bloggers have me salivating over their creations daily, I am really loving this blog right now.  Cooking shows, magazines, local farmers markets and the grocery store round out my list.  Really inspiration is every where and since starting this blog every where I look I am finding new things to try in the kitchen.

For quite some time I have been a BIG fan of collecting cook books and specifically Jamie Oliver's cookbooks.  For Christmas this year I recieved Jamie's 15 Minute Meals from my mother in law.

I am IN LOVE with this book.  I have always enjoyed Jamie's story like style of writing, it's like he is right there in the kitchen with you.  Every recipe is accompanied by a photo which I believe is a MUST; how am I suppose to know if my finished product is what was intended by the original creator?  I also enjoy that the recipes only take fifteen minutes. 

Ok, truth be told I have yet to accomplish making any of the recipes in fifteen minutes.  I can see how 100% kitchen organization, accompanied by solid cooking skills, the ability to improvise and memorization of the recipe could in fact have dinner on the table in fifteen minutes.  The reality is to that to the typical home cook the fifteen minute title is a little bit of a tease.  That being said half and hour is defiantly doable and that isn't too bad when you have a screaming, hungry toddler clinging to your legs as you try and hold off feeding them more O shaped snacks in the hopes that tonight they will in fact eat dinner.  Nope folks I will take thirty minutes, especially when that screaming toddler has devoured everything I have made from the book, score one for Mom!

So I will reiterate, I LOVE this book.  It quickly feeds my family healthy, whole some, real food, that is toddler approved.  It also offers me a tonne of inspiration, which is one of the reasons I enjoy my cookbook collection.  When I am at a loss for what to make, when the creative juices have run dry I flip through a cookbook and usually a recipe will catch my eye and although I very seldom recreate it word for word I will draw inspiration from the author. 

Take Jamie's recipe fro Spicy Cajun Chicken.  I pulled from it the parts I loved, like the cornmeal and cajun crust on the chicken which is an amazing alternative to fried chicken.  My family also enjoyed the addition of sweet chili sauce to the sweet potato mash, so I kept that.  Oh, and the bacon, of course I kept the bacon.  I said see you later to the okra, I've never cooked with it before and the first time I made this recipe I wasn't about to start, plus it isn't always available in supermarkets here, so I swapped it for green beans.  I also omitted the feta cheese as I dairy intolerant and try to omit it wherever I want to and most of the time I DO NOT want to omit it so I do it when I can.

My Cajun Chicken with Spicy Sweet Potatoes, Bacon and Green Beans was inspired by Jamie Oliver's recipe and tweaked to fit my cooking style and my families tastes. Oh and as a bonus, thanks to my tweaking of the recipe I have made it a true fifteen minute meal, for me, it may take you a little longer the first few times as you learn the steps. 

Feel free to make this recipe your own, that's all part of the inspiration process.  What inspires you to cook??? Where do you go for ideas???