Surely I was not the only one wondering if they were on candid camera today when I strolled into the produce aisle of our local Whole Foods and found this. Alright, so my green smoothies were going back to frozen spinach. {My husband can make all the jokes he wants about the horror of not having arugula, kale and baby spinach...} Anyway, it wasn't until I arrived home with the kids at 6pm that I realized without my normal Monday stock of fruits and veggies our dinner ingredients were slim. (Understatement.) Freak out? No. Take-out? No. (At least not tonight.)
A quick inventory of the freezer (chicken) + pantry (diced tomatoes, artichoke hearts, sun-dried tomatoes and kalamata olives) + fridge (1/2 a bottle of white wine, 1/2 a tub of Feta, and a lonely package of fresh mint-- though you could totally use dried mint) and voila: dinner assembled in minutes. Preheat the oven to 375, and all you do is pop all of the ingredients into a baking dish, give it a stir so the flavors blend while cooking, and bake it for 20-25 minutes, or until the chicken is cooked through. How easy is that? And you'll just have to trust me that my house smells sooooo good as it's cooking! This is actually a variation of a Mediterranean Shrimp video I shot a while back, so check that out, if you'd like. Might be nice as a Valentine's meal if you're looking for something special, that's still super easy. Here is tonight's dinner in pics, for those who like a visual:
If you end up with extra, this meal freezes nicely too. I plan to serve ours over couscous... if I remember, I'll snap a pic.
Did you defrost the chicken first? I always have trouble with defrosting (when it's last minute and I don't have time to do it overnight in the fridge) when I use the microwave. Some areas stay frozen and some start to actually cook. Any thoughts?
ReplyDelete-Loren
thawing is tricky.... i did take the chicken out of the freezer in between school pick-ups and after school activities and i left it on my counter for about 1.5-2 hours-- TOTAL NO NO from a food safety perspective!!!!!! so it wasn't thawed, but i could still use a big cleaver and cut it into pieces that cooked more quickly..... you could totally do this recipe from frozen tho. if you think you might do that, I'd store chopped chicken breast in the freezer, as full breasts would take a really long time to cook from frozen... does that help?
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