Friday, November 05, 2010

Thirty Minute Meals?

Yesterday I made Rachael Ray's Spinach and Mushroom Stuffed Chicken Breasts.
They are quite delicious and they are relatively inexpensive to make, but they sure took more than 1/2 an hour.

I sometimes start dinner during commercials on the Food Network in late afternoon. It gets me in the mood.  I  drained the thawed spinach (am I the only one who thinks this is a yucky task?) Peeled and quartered the scallion and smashed the garlic.  Brushed off the mushrooms.  Got out the rest of the ingredients.  Sauteed everything, let it cool a few minutes and dumped it into the food processor.  So far so good.  Had to mix in the spinach and the cheeses, and that took longer than expected.  Messing with the admittedly tasty and healthy spinach IS a pain.

Then came another icky task.  Pounding the chicken. I decided to use waxed paper rather than ruin a zip-locked bag.  Big mistake.  The paper kept tearing and again, I had produced a sticky yucky mess.  I piled big blobs of stuffing on the now pounded breasts and used the toothpicks to seal after rolling.  Again, this was not a slam-dunk procedure. 

Browned the breasts and decided they were so big that they needed a bit of baking, too.   After that was completed, I made the sauce, fairly easy with good browned bits on the bottom.  Added the breasts back to the sauce, debated parsley or no parsley, decided NO, and served em up with garlic bread (home made) and fresh carrots and asparagus.  By now, you are probably thinking: "hmmmm, sounds like more than half and hour, and indeed, it was probably closer to an hour, and with the sides probably an hour and a half.

It was delicious, and I have enough for tonight, except I'll have to cook fresh veggies.  Woman's  work, or better stated, cook's work is never done.   These, by the way, are company worthy.  Just allow more than twenty minutes unless you are unchallenged by frozen spinach and the pounding thin of bulky chicken breasts.  so

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