Pages

Tuesday, January 22, 2008

Stuffed Chicken and Roasted Cauliflower

Still getting caught up on recipes around here. I'm going to sneak this one in really quickly before I head off to bed.

We had these two dishes for dinner the other night. Both were delicious, but I served them with a whole grain rice mixture and it made for a rather bland-looking, but very tasty meal.

Mushroom Stuffed Chicken Breasts
Mushroom Stuffed Chicken Breasts with Madeira Sauce

This is another stuffed chicken breast recipe from Cooking Light. This recipes calls for creminie or button mushrooms, but I chose to use shiitake - hands down they are my favorite mushroom. I accidentally purchased far more than I needed for stuffing the chicken breasts, so I used put them in the sauce which I doubled since we are usually of the opinion that you can never have too much sauce.

This dish was very good, but I'm a little frustrated with the process. Technically, stuffed chicken breasts are really pretty easy, but I'm struggling a bit with the stuffing process; I often end up slicing through in the wrong spot, and even without the holes, the stuffing tends to ooze and leak out the sides during the cooking process. I noticed the other day that the stuffed chicken breasts that Wegmans sells are slit at the top, stuffed, and then baked - this would help eliminate a lot of the oozing problems and is something I will consider doing the next time.

Roasted Cauliflower
Roasted Cauliflower

We've tried roasted cauliflower before with Indian spices, but I wanted to try a pure and simple version. There's not a whole lot to say about the cauliflower recipe - cauliflower, olive oil, salt and pepper - except that my son turned up his nose, took a bite, and then proceeded to beg some off of my plate. Now honestly I really didn't want to share because I was really enjoying it myself, but when your child asks for more vegetables, you DO NOT refuse him/her! Next time, I'll roast 2 heads - one just wasn't enough. I love simplicity!

Time for bed................

7 comments:

  1. The chicken looks wonderful. Thank you for posting a review, as I probably would have passed over it... but, that picture definitely sold me on wanting to try this one!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Patsy - Pictures can be persuasive, can't they? ;) Adding the extra mushrooms into the sauce and basically doubling the sauce definitely made this even better.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Oh my god! That stuffed chicken looks delicious!!

    I totally agree with you about the mushrooms. Shiitake mushrooms are hands down my favorite mushroom.

    I've only tried making stuffed chicken once, and it didn't turn out to well.

    Seeing this makes me want to try once more :]

    ReplyDelete
  4. Tarah - Mmmmm..yes I love shiitakes and I am so happy the boys will now eat mushrooms. I'll post if I try the other stuffing method - maybe it's the answer to easier stuffed chicken breasts......

    ReplyDelete
  5. I can sit and drool over those mushroom stuffed chicken breasts...mmmm. Your pictures are beautiful.

    Thanks for the inspiration

    ReplyDelete
  6. One thing that can be helpful with stuffing chicken is to pound it a bit before splitting - that way it is easier to stretch the chicken over the stuffing. It also seems like with this recipe you could pound the chicken breasts into scallopine and roll the stuffing inside. Just a few thoughts. Photos are beautiful!

    ReplyDelete
  7. Nina - Thanks! My pictures used to be pretty bad, so it's so nice to hear that people are enjoying them now. :)

    Adrianne - Thanks for the tips. I was really trying to avoid pounding them - I try to keep things as simple as possible. But I may have to give it a try. :)

    ReplyDelete