Asparagus and Chèvre Stuffed Chicken Breast

Here's another chicken breast recipe, courtesy of the truckload of chicken in my freezer. I'm actually using it all up - only 4 pieces left!

This was an impromptu inspiration a few years ago - I had chicken, asparagus, chèvre, and arugula. What to do...EUREKA! And today I found myself in the same situation - chicken breast, a small amount of asparagus leftover from the asparagus tart I made a couple days ago, a bag of arugula, and some tasty, tasty herbed goat cheese. Plus, I had an open bottle of white wine to use up. I'm moving in 2 weeks, so I'm trying to use up everything in my fridge and pantry. Chicken broth in the cupboard...use that sucker up!

I think my favorite thing about this dish is how the chèvre starts to mix in with the pan sauce, and then the arugula catches all of the excess to make a seriously tasty little salad underneath.

My sister won't eat this because apparently they used to serve those frozen, molded stuffed chicken breasts in her sorority house all the time, and the ladies got to calling them "hamsters." So here you are, folks, asparagus and chèvre stuffed hamster over arugula!


Ingredients:

2 boneless, skinless chicken breasts
10 spears of asparagus (approx - more if you only want to use the head ends)
2 oz herbed chèvre (approx)
salt and pepper
olive oil
1/2 cup white wine
1 1/2 cups chicken broth
2 loose cups arugula, washed and drained

Equipment:
1 skillet or chef's pan
1 baking dish
kitchen twine

1. Preheat the oven to 350 F. Pound the chicken breasts flat and lay them underside up. Salt and pepper. Cut the asparagus spears to the width of the chicken breasts. (I used all head-ends because I had enough asparagus left and I wasn't going to use it for anything else, but you can use head-ends and stalks.) Lay chèvre in slices across the asparagus.



2. Roll up chicken breasts and secure with kitchen twine. Make sure to tie them pretty tight, so the stuffing doesn't come out.



3. Heat olive oil in a skillet on medium-high. Sear chicken rolls for a few minutes on each side, so the whole thing gets a nice crust. Transfer to a baking dish.



4. Bake until cooked through, about 15-20 minutes. Meanwhile, make the pan sauce. (IMPORTANT - make sure to remove any pieces of chèvre that have oozed onto the skillet before deglazing.) Deglaze the pan with the wine, then add about 1 1/4 cups of the chicken broth. Raise the heat to high and bring to a boil. Lower the heat to medium high and allow the sauce to reduce. When thickened, add the remaining chicken broth, stir, and reduce heat to low (this prevents the pan sauce from gumming up on you while you wait for the chicken). Allow to simmer for a few minutes until sauce is a rich brown and the chicken is done. Remove twine from chicken. Divide arugula between 2 plates and place one chicken roll on each. Spoon pan sauce over. Drink some wine.



The close-up:



And the cross section:




MEDIA PAIRING:

In honor of my sister, the Hamster Dance Remix.

Cranberry Cashew Chicken Salad

Thanks to a Costco trip, I have like a metric ton of chicken in my freezer. I bought that much because chicken is so freakin expensive at grocery stores in LA. Sorry dudes, but $6/lb is way too expensive for chicken. I think it's because of this Foster Farms monopoly. Sure, they say it's "all natural" or whatever, with no "plumping," but come on, it's all factory farmed chicken when you get down to it. Hello, where's the Purdue for $2.59/lb? Edged out by the chicken racket, that's where. Stupid Foster Farms mafia. Anyways, I have a lot of bulk chicken now. I love chicken, but you can only make so much baked or panfried chicken breast before you're just done. So, here's another way to use it. Another good thing is that you can make this with frozen chicken, so no "Oh eff, I forgot to thaw something for dinner...canned soup it is." The other good thing is that I usually have dried cranberries, cashews, and mayo around, so as long as I've got some celery in the fridge, I'm good to go.

I'm only slightly embarrassed to say that I spent a long time developing a favorite chicken salad recipe. It's not like this is complicated, but I tried many different ingredients before I settled on this combination. It's got that great crunchy/salty/sweet combination. I've also made this with almonds and dried apricots, but cashews and cranberries are my favorite together. I once made this for an event I catered, and shit was GONE.

I scaled it down because I didn't want to make that much. This amount is good for 4-6 servings.


Ingredients:

2 boneless, skinless chicken breasts (and water for boiling)
1/2 red onion
2 ribs celery
3 oz dried cranberries
1/2 cup cashews
1/2 cup mayo (approx.)
salt and pepper to taste
Bread, if desired

Special equipment - grater

1. Bring a pot of water to a boil and cook chicken breasts until cooked through and easily shreddable (about 15-20 minutes). Use 2 forks to shred. Let cool slightly (but not totally, because the flavors meld better if the chicken is still a bit warm when you add the other ingredients).

2. Grate the red onion (it will be kind of a pulp - gives a much more subtle flavor than crunching into chunks). Slice the celery ribs lengthwise and chop them at about 1/4". Give the cashews a rough chop. (You can buy cashew pieces if you want, but I usually keep the whole ones around for snacking. Plus, sometimes the pieces taste kind of dry and stale.)



3. Add most of the mayo to the shredded chicken and stir to combine. Add celery, dried cranberries, and cashews. Mix everything together. At this point, you will probably want to add the rest of the mayo (or however much it takes to coat and bind everything). Taste the mixture and add salt and pepper to taste. (I usually don't have to add much salt, if any, because the mayo and the cashews usually have enough salt.)



4. Pile on bread or a roll if you want. This is great on challah rolls and in pita, but regular sandwich bread lightly toasted is good too.




MEDIA PAIRING

The Kim Kardashian commercial for Carl's Jr's new cranberry apple walnut chicken salad. What a shit show. I love it. Technically it's not chicken salad, but salad with chicken in it, but whatevs.