Chicken and Asparagus Pasta

How to cook moist chicken breasts

The key to any successful meal starts with properly cooked meat. No one likes dry chicken and it isn't that difficult to produce a moist chicken breast with just a little attention. Start with a medium high heated pan to get a nice brown sear on both sides then lower the heat to low to finish cooking. Once the center of yhe sides is no longer visibly oink yuou are getting close. If you slice the chicken prematurely you'll lose all of the juices but an easy way to check for doneness is just to pierce it with a fork. If your fork goes through easily it is no longer rare in the center. Allow the chicken to rest for 5 minutes before serving to allow to finish cooking and to seal in the juices. Also by cooking on low heat you minimize the risknof over cooking and drying out your meat. So when you are cooking meats you can't eat raw, like chicken, start with high heat to get some color then turn it down to keep in those juices!

2 boneless skinless chicken breasts
1 bunch asparagus
1 red bell pepper
1 cup chicken stock
4oz fusilli pasta
Salt
Pepper
Parmesan cheese

Heat a large skillet over medium high heat. Season the chicken with salt and pepper and brown on both sides for about 8 minutes per side. Chop the asparagus and bell pepper into bite sized pieces and add to the skillet with the stock. Cook on low heat until the vegetables are tender, the chicken is cooked through and the broth is cooked down.

Meanwhile, cook the pasta in salted water until al dente.

Serve the chicken and vegetables over the pasta and top with shredded Parmesan cheese.

Goat Cheese, Spinach and Sun Dried Tomato Chicken Roulade

The weeknight dinner is often tough.  It requires planning your meals ahead of time so that you have all of the groceries in house and getting home from work early enough and with enough energy to actually force yourself to cook.  It is not always an easy feat to accomplish this and make something that actually looks like you put effort into it.  This is where the chicken roulade comes in.  Baked chicken breast sounds boring, but chicken stuffed with cheese and vegetables sounds much more interesting.  The best part about this is you can take a weeknight where you have minimal groceries in the house, and throw together what you have to make an interesting dish.  Consider broccoli and cream cheese, ham and brie, bacon and just about anything. You can turn a simple boring chicken breast into what looks like a complicated meal with interest with minimal effort.

Goat Cheese, Spinach, Sun Dried Tomato Chicken Roulade
Ingredients
3 chicken breasts
1 cup spinach, roughly torn
6 pieces sun dried tomato, sliced
2 tbs goat cheese
Salt
Pepper

Heat the oven to 450 ºF.
Lay the chicken breasts, one at a time, in between two sheets of wax paper. Beat until about 1/4” thick.  Try not to tear the chicken while beating.  Divide the spinach, sun dried tomatoes, and goat cheese among the chicken breasts and place on the wide side of the breast.  Roll the chicken tightly over the filling towards you, tucking in the filling as you go.  Place the rolled chicken breasts with the seam down on a broiler pan to keep them from unrolling.  Season the chicken breasts with salt and pepper.
Bake for 25 minutes.  Allow to rest for 5 minutes before slicing.

Why use a broiler pan?
The broiler pan is an underutilized kitchen utensil but now that people are more health conscience it really should be something that gets brought out regularly. By cooking meats on the broiler pan all of the fats just drain right out and away from the food. If you cook meats at a high temperature and allow them to rest there is absolutely no reason to be concerned with dry meats.

Skillet Chicken and Asparagus

Every once in a while I will see a picture of a recipe that looks good to me and I decide to make it but when I describe it to J I am not able to sell it quite as well as the picture sold me.  This was another one of those recipes.  After I bought the groceries to make this and I told him what we were having he was far from excited.  Normally whenever I get home from work so late that I can’t get dinner started before 6:30 I tend to give up and we go out. Even though me starting dinner late and having it ready by 8:00 is no different than us going to a restaurant and eating at 8:00, but for some reason this makes sense in my head. The day that I was planning on making this I got home really late, like after 7:00, which is very abnormal for me, but luckily (for me, not my dog), Jason hadn't even left his office yet by the time I got home, so I just started dinner anyway without any input from him.  By the time he got home I was nearly finished with dinner and he was much more interested in what I was cooking than when I described it.  This turned into one of those dishes that will become a go-to. It was not the speediest dish but I really enjoyed the flavors and I will definitely be going back to it, even though just looking at this you wouldn't think it would be loaded with flavor when the only seasonings are salt and pepper, but this was just very flavorful to me, I think the bacon really added a lot, don't skip the bacon.

4 boneless, skinless chicken breasts

1 lb asparagus

2 medium yellow squash

1 ½ cup chicken broth

2 tbs flour

4 pieces turkey bacon, chopped

1 tbs lemon juice

Olive oil

Salt and pepper to taste

In a large skillet or dutch oven, heat one turn of olive oil over medium high heat.  Add the asparagus and enough water just to cover the bottom of the skillet to steam the asparagus.  Cook for about 5 minutes, until crisp tender, then remove from the skillet and set aside. Drain out any water remaining in skillet.  Add bacon and cook until crisped, remove from skillet and set aside.  Season the chicken with salt and pepper and place in the skillet and cook for 10-15 mins, browning both sides but not cooking through.  Remove the chicken and set aside.  Add the squash to the skillet and cook until tender, about 3 minutes.  In a small bowl whisk the chicken broth, lemon juice, and flour then add to the skillet.  Stir frequently and cook until the gravy is thick and bubbly.  Return the chicken to the skillet and cook about another 15 minutes or until the chicken is cooked through.  1 minute before serving return the asparagus to the skillet to reheat it.  Serve the chicken and vegetables topped with bacon.

Serves 4, 240 calories, 6 g fat

For essentially being chicken with vegetables this was a very flavorful dish.  I tend to not like recipes that require you to remove from the pan and set aside and cook something new over and over again but this was definitely worth the effort, I will be keeping this one.

Jamaican Jerk Chicken

J found this 52 week cooking challenge where every week they give you a theme that you are supposed to cook one dish by. We initially were excited about it and were going to do it but I got side tracked pretty quickly and gave it up.  This week I was struggling to come up with my menu so we went back to that list to see what their suggestion was for this week and it was Jamaican.  We are both big fans of jerk chicken but for some reason never make it, so we thought we’d try it.  I have a Jamaican friend whose jerk chicken is just awesome and she would probably cringe at our results but as white people that do not eat a whole lot of Jamaican food we were both pretty pleased and will most likely make this again.

1 cinnamon stick

1 tbs coriander seeds

1 tsp whole cloves

1 tsp black peppercorns

1 tsp nutmeg

½ tsp ground allspice

1 bunch scallions, chopped

1 large onion, rough chopped

2-3 Scotch Bonnet peppers

1 tsp thyme

5 cloves garlic

½ cup white vinegar

1 cup soy sauce

½ cup sugar

10-12 boneless skinless chicken thighs

In a dry skillet over medium-high heat, toast the first 4 ingredients until aromatic.  Grind the spices then add the spices and the next 6 ingredients to a food processor and puree.  Combine the puree and the vinegar, soy sauce and sugar in a large bowl.   Add the chicken to the bowl, cover and refrigerate for 2 hours to overnight. 

Heat a large skillet to high heat and sear both sides of all of the chicken thighs.  Once seared add all of the chicken and the marinade to the skillet and cook on medium heat until the chicken is cooked through.  Once the chicken is cooked remove it from the skillet and allow the marinade to cook down, about 10 minutes, so that it can be served atop the chicken.

This could not have been easier to make.  I had J make the marinade one night while I was cooking dinner for that night and we just put the chicken in the marinade in the fridge overnight and the next night when I was ready to cook it I just threw the chicken in the skillet and made my sides.  I made Island Rice and black beans to go with this and could not have been more pleased with my dinner.

Spicy Chicken Chili

We hosted a super bowl party this weekend and I of course planned and fretted over my menu for a whole week. After scouring through super bowl menus and pinterest pins for far more time than I am ok with admitting, I decided on a few snacks and a couple entrees.  I took this as an opportunity to make a few things that I had been craving but I also made some traditional super bowl foods.  One of which was a chili.  I wanted to try something different than my standard ground turkey/bean chili recipe that is good and easy but really kind of boring.  I decided to go with a spicy chicken chili and found a number of recipes that initially seemed interesting but after further review decided to keep looking and found what is going to be the only chili that I make from now. I adjusted the original recipe a little bit to use some of the ingredients that I had on hand that needed to be used and still can’t believe how good this turned out.

When I made this I didn't measure any of the spices so I will put the recommended volumes but don’t hesitate, which you never should, to taste and season to your liking because I can’t actually vouch for these volumes but the general base I thought was really good.

1 large package of boneless chicken thighs ~ 3.5 lbs, sliced into bite-sized chunks

1 tbs olive oil

1 onion, diced

3 cloves garlic, minced

2 tsp chili powder

2 tbs ground cumin

1 tsp black pepper

½ tsp cinnamon

1 ½ tsp salt

½ tsp cayenne pepper

2 roasted red peppers, diced

1 green bell pepper, seeded and diced

2 jalapeno peppers, diced

1 can rotel

3 cups chicken broth

2 cans large butter beans

In a large pot heat the oil to medium high heat and add the chicken, stirring often.  Once the meet is browned add the onion and garlic, cook for another 5 minutes.  Add the remaining ingredients except for the beans. 

Reduce the heat to low, cover and simmer for about 30 minutes.  Adjust the lid so the pot is partially covered and continue simmering for about another 30 minutes to boil off some of the excess liquid so the chili is more thick and less of a stew.  Add the beans and simmer for about another 30 minutes.

Before the party J and I bet on which of the dishes were going to be cleaned out by the end of the night and this was not one of the ones I bet on but turned out to be the favorite and is definitely going to be my go-to chili recipe from now on.

Sweet Potato with Cuban Turkey Picadillo

I have really been in a rut lately. I either cook the same old things (lots of tacos) or we go out to eat.  I am trying to start the New Year off better, I’m two weeks in and it hasn’t gone stupendously, but I’m making at least some effort.  My first attempt at something new was this baked sweet potato that got such a big thumbs up that it will be added into my list of go-tos.

4 medium sweet potatoes

2 tsp olive oil

½ cup finely chopped onion

2 tsp minced garlic

2 tsp ground cumin

1 tsp ground cinnamon

1 lb 99/1 ground turkey

¼ cup dry sherry

¾ cup canned crushed tomatoes

¼ cup dried cherries, roughly chopped

¼ cup pimento-stuffed green olives, sliced into rounds

1 tbs capers

¼ tsp salt

2 tbs chopped cilantro

Heat oven to 425 F.  Pierce potatoes all over with a fork and heat in the microwave for about 12 minutes to start softening them.  Place them on an aluminum foil-lined baking sheet and finish baking them until tender, another 10-20 minutes. 

Heat the oil in a large skillet over medium heat.  Cook onion until soft, add garlic, cumin and cinnamon and cook 1 minute.  Add turkey and cook through, about 5 minutes.  Add sherry and cook for 2 minutes, stirring occasionally.  Add tomatoes, cherries, olives, capers and salt.  Reduce heat and simmer for 5 minutes.  Mix in the chopped cilantro. 

When the potatoes are soft, remove them from the oven and allow to cool for a few minutes so they aren’t steaming when you try to eat them.  Slice them open and mash the insides with a fork.  Divide the chili mixture among the potatoes and serve.

Serves 4, 400 calories per serving

I could not have been more pleased with this. I think it was flavorful and filling and was really good for lunch the next day. I will definitely be making this again.