Spinach Stuffed Chicken Breasts

There has been a constant sale on boneless, skinless chicken breasts lately, and the champagne chicken was such a success; I decided to try another stuffed chicken breast. Since I had fresh spinach, I decided to use that. I looked at a couple of spinach stuffed chicken breast recipes and created the following.

• 1 lb boneless, skinless chicken breasts
• 1 to 1-1/2 cup chopped spinach
• 3-4 sliced garlic cloves
• 1/2 cup French onion dip (because I had some and thought onion would go well with this) or sour cream for milder flavor or even cream cheese for creamier filling
  
• 1/4 cup cheese (I was going to use colby jack, but used pepper jack instead)
• sea salt and pepper
• olive oil

Mix the chopped spinach, sliced garlic and French onion dip until the spinach is completely coated and the garlic is evenly distributed.

Butterfly the chicken breasts and stuff the filling into the chicken. Top the filling with cheese.

Fold the chicken back up and sprinkle with salt, pepper and oil.

Bake in the oven at 400F for 1/2 hour, or pan fry over medium heat until completely cooked.

This was a very tender, flavorful chicken breast. I definitely want to try this with just sour cream or cream cheese to allow the spinach flavors to show through better. But with the French onion dip the spinach tasted very much like artichoke, which was nice.

My family loved this. I would make it again. It was easy! This can even be made up ahead and stored in the refrigerator until ready to cook.

Northern Pike in a Caper Sauce

I got some northern pike on sale last week and wanted something quick for dinner tonight, so pike it was.

Northern pike is a fairly common, mild-flavored, predator fish from where I grew up. It has a loose skeletal structure which makes it very difficult to get completely bone-free. But this was professionally filleted, so I was good to go.

I actually took the recipe from the package the fish came in (but of course I made a few changes). It had capers in it and I had bought a jar of capers months ago, but didn't have any recipes to use them in. Mmmm... capers!!!

• 2 cloves garlic
• 2 TBS olive oil
• 1 small tomato
• 1-2 TBS butter
• 1-2 TBS wine or sherry
• 2 TBS basil
• 2 TBS lemon juice
• 3 TBS capers
• 2 TBS Italian four cheese mix
• salt & pepper

Mince garlic and saute in olive oil. Chop up tomato and throw in the pan with the garlic. Throw wine (I actually used sherry), basil, capers and butter. Cook until the butter is melted. Salt and pepper to taste.

I used my clay pot cooker for the fish. It works great for fish too! I put a little olive oil in the bottom of the pot, But I don't think this was necessary. I put the fish fillets in frozen and poured the lemon juice and the caper sauce over the top. I sprinkled on the Italian four cheese mix and baked this for 20 minutes at 500F.

It was DELICIOUS!!!! This is going on my favorites list. And now I have a recipe to use up those capers on. Mmmm... capers!!

Marmarumalade Chicken

Today I was inspired by the large quantities of clemetines that were left over from when I had a cold and the marmalade that I made with some of them for my son the other day. I thought the marmalade would go very well with chicken, so I devised a recipe to bring the two together.

1 whole chicken

8 clementine sliced thinly

1/4 cup lemon juice or 1 thinly sliced lemon

1/4 cup brown sugar

2 cups spiced rum

2-3 TBS cilantro - fresh or dried

2/3 of a can of apple/passion/mango juice concentrate

In a large bowl, mix everything but the chicken. Place the chicken in this marmarumalade(by the way, my clever husband came up with that name. I like to name my dishes fun names, and I think that name fit well). Marinade for about 20 minutes. Flip the chicken over and marinade for another 20 minutes.

Then it was into my clay pot cooker. I stuffed the chicken with the sliced clemetines and poured the marinade into the cooker.

I let it cook in a 450 degree oven for about an hour and twenty minutes.

It came out a little crispier than I had intended but the clay pot cooker did its job of keeping the chicken moist, and it was DELICIOUS!!


I would definitely make this again!

Chicken Sum'n Sum'n

I was asking my husband what he wanted for dinner. He said that he didn't know. I said that I could make chicken... er, sum'n sum'n. He laughed and said that I should actually come up with a recipe and call it that.

So I did! And now you too can make chicken sum'n sum'n.

• 1 whole chicken
• 1/2 bottle wine
• 1/4 cup hoisin sauce
• 3-4 TBS thyme
• 1 tsp celery seeds
• 1-1/2 TBS sea salt
• 4 TBS pomegranate arils
• 1 medium sweet onion
• 1 tsp ground rosemary

In a stain-free bowl, mix wine, hoisin, thyme, celery seeds, and 1 TBS sea salt. Marinade the whole chicken in this mix for at least an hour.



Place the marinaded chicken in your chicken pan of choice. I used the clay pot cooker, but you could use regular pan or a dutch oven. In a non-clay cooker, I would suggest adding about 1 inch of the marinade to the bottom of the pan to keep the chicken from going dry.

Sprinkle 1 tsp sea salt, 1 tsp ground rosemary over the chicken. Add pomegranate arils and a onion cut into 2 inch pieces into the pan around the chicken.

In the clay pot cooker, I cooked it for two hours at 450F. I'm not sure what it would be in a regular pan: 1-2 hours on 350F? I would cover with tin-foil for first hour if in a regular pan, and then crisp the skin for twenty minutes without tin foil.

When cooked in the clay cooker it is so tender that you can use a fork to get meat off the chicken.

I served this chicken with garlic & rosemary mashed potatoes and a salad made with red lettuce, chopped pecans and the rest of the pomegranate's arils with a fat free honey dijon dressing. Oh Joy!!

Apple and Herb Chicken

I created this recipe for my clay pot cooker, but you can use it for how you normally roast a chicken.

• 1 whole chicken
• 1 medium sweet onion
• a few potatoes
• a few stalks of celery
• 2 cups baby carrots
• 1 TBS ground rosemary
• 2 TBS thyme
• 1 packet apple cider mix
• sea salt

While the clay pot was soaking in water (you need to soak it in water for 10-15 minutes before putting the ingredients so it will keep your food moist while it cooks) chop up the sweet onion, potatoes, and celery. Grind the rosemary and thyme in a mortar. Once the pot has soaked up enough water, dump the apple cider drink mix in the bottom, pile in a cut whole chicken, sprinkle it with sea salt and the ground spice, then dump in the chopped veggies with the baby carrots. On goes the lid and into a cold oven. Turned on the oven for 450 degrees (100 degrees hotter than you would usually cook the food). Bake for about an hour.

When I made this I ran some errands and came home a little late. Doesn't it look delicious even if it is a little, er, toasty?

IT WAS! The apple cider mix was a great inspired touch, too! And even though it cooked long, it was still moist.