Chicken baked in yogurt with spinach

I haven't done too many specifically Greek dishes and I'm not sure Modern Greek by Andy Harris is as kitchen-tested as some of the bigger names in cookbook writing, but this was a pretty good recipe.

It calls for 4 bone-in chicken breasts (meaning halves of course) that you brown in a skillet where you have sauteed 2 sliced onions in 2 Tbl. olive oil and removed them with a slotted spoon. You put the browned chicken breasts with the onions into an oven proof dish and cover that with a yogurt mix.

Now Harris either has runnier Greek yogurt that I got at Whole Foods or he has cheesecloth that's much more porous, because I got nowhere with his direction to strain 2 lbs (4 c.) of Greek yogurt through a cheesecloth. I don't think a steamroller could have gotten that stiff yogurt through the cheesecloth. I finally was able to strain it through a sieve (and not my finest sieve), though since he gives no explanation of why you strain it I'm not sure what it achieved. Just beating it would have smoothed it and made it more fluid, if that was the objective.

So anyway you add 2 cloves finely chopped garlic, 3 Tbl. all-purpose flour, 2 tsp. dried mint, 1 tsp. ground cumin, salt, pepper, and 2 lightly beaten eggs to the yogurt and mix well. This is the mix you spread over the chicken and onions. You sprinkle 2 Tbl. of grated parmesan (or kefalotiri if you happen to have that) and pop it into a 350-degree oven for 40 min.

As always, these breasts from WF were huge, so I left the chicken in the oven nearly an hour and the yogurt mix was just set and browned. I could only guess how much salt to use in the yogurt mix and I erred on the low side; next time I think I would just salt and pepper the chicken directly after browning. My mint flakes were evidently 10 years old because they contributed nothing.

The recipe also calls for 2 bunches of steamed fresh spinach as an accompaniment. This was great and we had a green salad, too.