I made food: Mediterranean chicken en papillote

Today I was faced with cooking the dreaded chicken breast, which I normally hate because they tend to be dry and tasteless. My husband suggested trying to cook them en papillote (apparently he heard about it on NPR), which just means you wrap the food in a parchment paper packet so it steams in its own juices.

I followed this recipe from Martha Stewart, except I omitted the artichokes and olives for budgetary reasons.

First you mix up a mustard vinaigrette.

Then in the middle of a piece of parchment paper, you make a little bed of asparagus and top it with a half chicken breast, some vinaigrette, feta, basil and tomatoes.

Then the chickens all go to sleep in their little beds and into the oven...

...and here's what you get when you open the package! (We ate it with penne and homemade marinara.)

Because it cooks all sealed up, the chicken stays moist and tender. It's relatively low-fat (unless you drink all that leftover dressing at the bottom...) And it's very flavorful thanks to the mustard vinaigrette. We both agreed this recipe needs to go into my chicken breast recipe rotation!


Everyone ready for the 31-Day Challenge starting tomorrow? I am!!

I made food: stuffed onions

Take a look at these bad boys:

Onions stuffed with quinoa, spinach, arugula, and feta! I got this recipe from Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything; the only change I made was to add quinoa for extra protein.

The basic procedure is this: cut the onions in half, put them face down in a dish, drizzle them with butter and white wine, then put them in the oven at 375 degrees for about 15-20 minutes. Meanwhile, cook the quinoa and boil the greens for about 3 minutes. Squeeze the excess water out of the greens. Mix the quinoa, greens and some feta in whatever proportions you want. Take the centers of the onions out, leaving a few layers, and put the stuffing in. Put some panko on top, drizzle some olive oil, and stick them back in the oven for another 20 minutes. Add some bacon bits if you want and you're done!

These were so amazingly good, and filling too (I got pretty full on these two halves). The onions were perfectly sweet. And because of the bacon and feta I didn't need to add any extra salt.

YUM!