FOOD FRIDAY - Simple Pasta Salads

from Kris B.

I trust that I am not alone in having those nights where you wander through the kitchen looking in the fridge, rummaging through the pantry, and checking the spice cabinet hoping that there are some ingredients that will work together and magically become dinner.  If I am alone in this, please keep that fact to yourself!  Often these meals that I have scrounged together in desperation become some of my favorites.  This Tortellini Salad is one such creation.

As I recall, I had the three cheese tortellini and that sounded good for dinner, but didn't have the necessary ingredients to make a traditional pasta sauce.  I had broccoli that needed to be eaten.  Actually, I always have broccoli that needs to be eaten because it is my favorite green vegetable.  I am happy to eat it in, on, or with just about anything.  Because I was trying to come up with a meal rather than just a side of pasta, I wanted some meat to add to the tortellini and broccoli.  I had a few pieces of bacon that also were on the "need to eat soon" list.  I always have some kind of cheese on hand.  This particular night, Parmesan was the cheese of choice.  Throw a little red onion and some grape tomatoes into the mix and the dinner potential was becoming real.  Still, however, I had no sauce.

The easy solution would have been to pour some bottled salad dressing over the whole shebang and call it done.  All I had was Asian Sesame.  As much as I like that on certain salads, it didn't sound good with this.  I decided that I would start with a more or less traditional macaroni salad dressing and go from there.  

When all was said and done, this turned out to be really good.  This is probably because this salad contains most of my favorite food things.  It's filling but not too heavy, flexible, and better for you than some things!

INGREDIENTS
1 19 oz bag frozen three cheese tortellini
1/2 lb bacon
1 head of fresh broccoli, chopped into bite sized pieces
1/2 medium red onion, diced
1 cup grape tomatoes
1/4 cup finely grated fresh Parmesan cheese

For the Dressing
1/4 cup white vinegar
1/4 mayonnaise
1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil
2 cloves minced garlic
1/4 tsp dried oregano
1/4 tsp dried basil
1/4 tsp red pepper flakes
salt and pepper to taste

Chop the broccoli and dice the onion.  Grate the Parmesan cheese.

Cut the bacon into pieces and cook it.  Remove the cooked back to a paper towel to drain and cool.  While the bacon cooks, cook the pasta according to the package directions.  In its last minute of cooking, drop the chopped broccoli into the pasta water.  This will cook it just slightly.  Drain the pasta and broccoli and let cool in a large bowl.

While the pasta cools, in a medium bowl whisk together all of the ingredients for the dressing.  I prefer the dressing to lightly coat rather than drench the other ingredients.  If you prefer a "wet" salad, you may want to double the dressing proportions. 

Once the pasta has cooled, add the bacon, onion, and Parmesan cheese to the pasta and broccoli.  Add the dressing and toss the salad until all of the ingredients are evenly coated.  Refrigerate until ready to serve.  As is the case with almost anything that has a dressing or sauce, allowing the ingredients to mingle for several hours makes for better flavor.

This recipe is simple and quite forgiving.  Don't have broccoli and tomatoes?  Add another vegetable.  Squash is nice.  Prefer different spices?  By all means, go for it.  Don't like cheese tortellini?  Substitute your favorite pasta.  Have some leftover ham fro Easter?  Use that instead of bacon.  Make it your own.  Create Your Favorites Tortellini Salad!

Some days my cooking and my photography are guided by the same principles - both need to be quick and easy.  I quickly made this salad for our lunches today and needed to get the photo done quickly as I was leaving the house at noon and wouldn't be home again until almost 10 pm.  During my time away from the house, and more importantly my computer, I did have a little down time.  I decided that I would take today's photo with my phone and do any necessary editing on my iPad.

I shot the photo of the pasta on our outdoor kitchen cement counter with the resident camera on my iPhone.  The concrete added just a little bit of texture to the frame.  I then added the text and a frame using the Rhonna Designs app and I was done.  

Sometimes I feel like relying solely on my phone and its editing apps are cheating somehow.  Then there are the days where I know that it is the responsible way to use what little time I have.  When I got to the end of the day, I had a decent meal and an acceptable photo so I consider my day a success. Lol!


from Tracey G

I love using Food Fridays as a reason to experiment and try new recipes. Probably not the best thing, because if it doesn't turn out I'm stuck with it and can only report that it was awful, lol. But I've, for the most part, yet to have that happen. I've ran into some difficulties in the execution of the recipe, but it's always something I know that another run-through would iron out. This one was rather humorous as I was trying to get it together. I mean, come on, how hard can a macaroni salad be - really!? Well, it helps if on the day you're making it you have all the ingredients in the proper amounts that you need. I miscalculated my mayo supply, thinking I had much more than I actually did, and ended up having to make a half a batch of it. Then, trying to get the pickle juice into the bowl, I tipped the jar a bit too far and spilled some all over my recipe and island, lol. I was not having a good day! But I must say, all the trials and tribulations were totally worth it, I absolutely loved this recipe! And it's another one of those you can customize to your tastes, very easily I might add too.

I discovered it in my newest Taste Of Home magazine as I was flipping through. I've been on the hunt for a new macaroni salad. I love the version with tuna and peas etc, but I was getting really bored with it, and just wanted something different. This is the first one that caught my eye, maybe because it reminded me of deviled egg ingredients to a certain extent or something. Not sure, but I am glad I gave it a try, it's wonderful in my opinion, and as I told Kris, I likely could have eaten the whole batch myself, lol.

Now, I have to be honest here, the original name is NOT "Grandma's Macaroni Salad", it's "Judy's Macaroni Salad". But, I don't know a Judy or even the Judy. And to be even more honest, I never knew any of my grandparents, my maternal grandmother passed away when I was 6 months and my other grandparents passed away well before I was born. So, I can't even say I knew WHAT my grandma's macaroni salad was like - but this is what I IMAGINE a grandma's macaroni salad would taste like. It seems like a nice vintage mac salad recipe that a grandma WOULD make, so that's my reasoning and I hope everyone and Judy will forgive me! I will include the link to the original recipe of course!  

It involves simple ingredients that I think are a great combination: Elbow macaroni, hardboiled eggs, cheddar cheese, sweet pickles, mayonnaise, sweet pickle juice, salt and pepper - extremely uncomplicated. That's probably why it works as well as it does.

So, here's the recipe:

Grandma's Macaroni Salad

courtesy of Taste Of Home as Judy's Macaroni Salad
Serves 12, 3/4 cup each

2 1/2 cups uncooked elbow macaroni

1 1/2 cups mayonnaise

1/4 cup sweet pickle juice

1/2 tsp salt

1/4 tsp pepper

1 cup (4 oz.) shredded cheddar cheese

6 hard-cooked large eggs, chopped

6 sweet pickles, chopped

1) Cook macaroni according to package directions. Drain macaroni; rinse with cold water and drain well.

2) In a small** bowl, combine the mayonnaise, sweet pickle juice, salt and pepper. Stir in the cheese, eggs and pickles. Add macaroni; toss gently to coat. Refrigerate, covered, at least 2 hours or until chilled.

** The original recipe as I've put here, calls for  a "small" bowl - but I used a medium sized bowl as due to the fact after you mix the ingredients in it, you then toss in the macaroni and I don't see how a small bowl would work very well for that and mixing the ingredients all together! :-) 

Food Friday - Eggstravaganza

from Kris B.

When me girls were little and we had all of those dyed hard-boiled Easter eggs, I remember being so happy when I had eaten the final deviled egg and egg salad sandwich!  Those were the only things that I knew to do with the eggs once they had been hunted and were no longer  of interest to the kids and I didn’t want them to go to waste.  I wish that I had discovered Scotch eggs back then!  They would have provided me with another alternative and my non-vegetarian child would have enjoyed them.

What I’m sharing with you is more of a process than a specific recipe.  The process involves cooking eggs somewhere between soft and hard boiled, covering them in sausage seasoned somehow, then coating them in some crispy carbohydrate, and then cooking them somehow.  I’ll tell you how I did them, but know that there are variations that you may want to try.

INGREDIENTS

5 eggs

1 pound bulk sausage

1/2 finely diced yellow onion

3/4 tsp salt

1/4 cup all-purpose flour

1/2 cup fine bread, cracker, or corn flake crumbs

1/2 panko

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

Hard boil four of the eggs.

Finely dice the onion and in a medium combine with the sausage.  Add salt and pepper to taste.  Divide into 4 equal parts and flatten into patties.

Carefully peel the cooked eggs.  Pat them dry with a paper towel.  Dredge the eggs in the flour, then place each one on a sausage patty.  Wrap the sausage around the eggs, completely closing the seams.  

Whisk the fifth egg.   Dip each sausage covered egg in the beaten egg and then dredge them in the bread crumbs covering completely.  Then again dip them in the egg and this time coat them in the panko.

Place the eggs on a baking sheet and bake for 35-40 minutes, until the sausage is cooked through and contains no pink.  Turn the eggs over two or three times during the cooking process to achieve crisping on all sides.  Traditional Scotch eggs are deep fried.  I’m not a fan of deep fat frying anything so I baked mine.  This is one of the reasons that I double dipped the coating.  I wanted them to be as crispy as if they had been fried.

Serve immediately.  Or, let the eggs cool to room temperature and then freeze them in a plastic freezer bag.  To reheat, place on a baking sheet in a 375 degree oven or toaster oven for 25 minutes.  I would not advise reheating in the microwave.  

Scotch eggs are delicious served with your favorite mustard or mustard mixed with a bit of mayonnaise.

You may wish to season your sausage with a little thyme or rosemary.  You can also use this same recipe and deep fry your Scotch eggs if you wish.

from Tracey G

I love breakfast/brunch casseroles. I love the idea of preparing something the night before, throwing it into the fridge to sit overnight and it comes out ready to be baked the next morning. Talk about making a morning easy with just a small amount of effort the night before! So, these things are always popular with me for holidays. Especially the big ones, Easter, Thanksgiving and Christmas. Those are the mornings when there is so much going on, it's a nice convenience to be able to just throw breakfast (or brunch) in the oven and let it cook while you attend to other things, be it hunting Easter Eggs, prepping turkeys for the oven or opening Christmas presents. These kinds of things help take one more thing off your to-do list!

I have run across a lot of recipes through the years, and I'm always willing to try a new one, generally the combination of ingredients are ones you know you can't go wrong with. I found the original recipe for this at Taste Of Home, which can be found here: Farmer's Strata, and used it as a basic guide for my own twists.

Some of my tweaks were for convenience - as in I had a certain ingredient I wanted to use up AND it was already prepped, then some were for my tastes and preferences - for example I don't like soggy bacon, so instead of adding to cook in the strata, I decided to use it as a topping. It worked wonderfully, and kept it's integrity! But I was really pleased with what I ended up with by the time I got to eat it! There was only one thing I'd do differently, add more potatoes, I used 2 cups, but they could easily have been increased to 3 or 4!

Breakfast Strata

1 lb sliced bacon, cut into 1/2-inch pieces

1 c chopped fully cooked ham (I used Smithfield brand fully cooked ham cubes for convenience)

1 small onion, chopped

1 clove of garlic, finely minced

10 slices white bread, cubed

2 c cubed frozen hashbrown potatoes, thawed

3 c (12 ounces) shredded cheddar cheese

8 large eggs

3 c milk

1 1/2 tbsp Worcestershire sauce

1 1/2 tsp ground mustard

dash of salt and pepper

1) In a large skillet, cook bacon until crisp. Remove from pan and set aside. Add onions, ham and garlic, and cook until onions are tender. Remove from pan and set aside. Add hashbrown potatoes and cook until tender, set aside.

2) In a greased 13x9-inch baking dish, layer half of the bread cubes, potatoes and cheese. Top with all of the ham/onion/garlic mixture. Repeat layers of bread, potatoes and cheese.

3) In a large bowl, beat the eggs; add milk, Worcestershire sauce, ground mustard, salt and pepper. Pour over all. Cover the pan and chill it and the cooked bacon overnight.

4) Remove from the refrigerator about 30 minutes before baking. Preheat oven to 350°F. Bake uncovered for about 65-70 minutes or until a knife inserted near center comes out clean. About the last 10 minutes of cooking, top with the reserved cooked bacon to reheat and re-crisp.

Food Friday - Christmas Brunch

from Tracey G

I love this dish - and I'm sure most people have some kind of version of a "ring" in their bag of recipe tricks, lol. It uses the refrigerated crescent roll dough to make it pretty. My mom found this particular recipe years ago, and I know she's added a few tweaks here and there and I've even made my own on the fly with it. I discovered that what's written in my book is different from what she had written down, lol. So I made my version this time, but I know we've made hers more, lol. She called for shredded Colby Jack, I used shredded Swiss, so you can go with whichever you like - or change it up each time you make it. Sometimes ham and Swiss is what you after - so go for it, as I did!

 I also upped the Dijon mustard amount - I go by taste, so I start with the 2 tbsp called for and go from there. I think in this particular go, I added a couple more extra (could even have been 3 extra for a total of 5, lol) - I love the flavor it adds. It also calls for chopped/minced onion and since Harry is not a big fan, I used some onion powder (to taste). Although, since it has broccoli in it, my hopes of him eating it were dashed. But I did decide it would be good without the broccoli, lol.

The longest part of the recipe, for me is arranging the crescent roll dough in an even pinwheel - I'm so particular I arrange and rearrange more times than I can count so I can get if fairly even. You really don't have to be too particular because once it bakes it looks pretty anyway. ;-) It's also one of those recipes that tastes better the next day - so leftovers, if there are any, are really good if not better than the day before!

Broccoli Ham Ring

Preheat oven to 375°

2 - 8 oz. tubes refrigerated crescent roll dough

1 ½ c shredded Monterey Jack cheese with Colby (Colby Jack)

¼ lb fully-cooked ham, diced (1/2 c)

2 ¼ c finely chopped broccoli

1 small onion, finely chopped

2 tbsp Dijon mustard (more to taste)

1 tsp lemon juice

Unroll crescent roll dough and place triangles on 12” pizza pan (or large cookie sheet), forming a ring with pointed ends facing outer edge of pan and wide ends overlapping. Press wide ends together.

Combine remaining ingredients; spoon evenly over wide ends of rolls. Fold points over (towards center of pan) and tuck under wide ends (filling will be visible). Bake for 20-25 minutes or until golden brown.

from Kris B.

First let me apologize for my uninspired photo of this week's recipe.   This poor shot has nothing to do with the fact that I am behind with everything and am not yet fully feeling the Christmas spirit.  It is much more traumatic than that!  My tripod, with camera attached, tipped over and my lens took the brunt of the fall.  Thankfully, despite the fact that for some reason I had taken my UV filter off of it, the glass didn't break.  The plastic ring around the edge, however, is another story.

I logged on to the Nikon website to see what the procedure was for sending it in for repair.  Surprisingly, it was an easy process, not often the case these days.  I was presented with a multiple choice menu from which to identify the nature of my problem.   #2 "Dropped or Impact Damage". I guess I am not the only unfortunate person to have such a problem.  Once all of the pertinent information was supplied,  I was given an estimate of the cost of repair.  Mind you, it is only an estimate; but, I had to provide payment information at that point in order to proceed.  The good news is that the estimate is a great deal less than the cost of replacing the lens.  The bad news is that this lens is the most expensive one that I own.  So after school this afternoon, I'll make my way to UPS with all those who are trying frantically to get holiday gifts shipped and send my lens on its way.  Hopefully it will not get lost in the Christmas rush!

Once Nikon receives the lens and assesses the damage first hand, they will send a specific cost of repair and I will again have an opportunity to decide how to proceed.   Until then, I will be forced to use some of the lenses in my bag that I haven't used much lately.  That is a good thing, I think.  I have been kind of lazy and have been relying on my "workhorse" lens rather than pushing myself to be a little more creative with some of my other options.  We'll see what happens...

Back to breakfast...

Despite what the photo looks like, this egg dish with a southwest touch is really good!  The recipe was given to me by a friend several years ago.  I believe she got it when she was working as a substitute innkeeper for a bed and breakfast.  I wish that back then I had been more diligent about making note of such details.

Because my older daughter is a vegetarian, our Christmas morning main course is always meatless.  (The rest of us have bacon or sausage on the side.).   And truthfully, the "protein dish" is never what anyone in my family looks forward to.  For the last ten years, said vegetarian daughter has made homemade cinnamon rolls by the dozens for Christmas morning.  (Leftovers are a must!). These are the part of the morning feast that we all anticipate!  But, I insist on something with protein during the morning to help mediate the sugar and caffeine high on which we all find ourselves.  Hyper adults on Christmas  are not nearly as cute as sugared up excited children. Lol!

INGREDIENTS

1 TBS olive oil

1/2 yellow onion, diced

3 cloves garlic, chopped

12 corn tortillas, taco sized cut into pieces

2 4 oz. cans diced green chilies

2 Cups Mexican blend cheese

4 eggs

2 Cups buttermilk

1/2 tsp salt

1/4 tsp black pepper

1/4 tsp cumin

1/4 tsp oregano

Dash of cayenne pepper, to taste (optional)

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

I make this is an cast iron skillet, but it can be made in a 2 quart casserole dish as well.  Coat the pan or dish with non-stick cooking spray.

Sauté the onions and garlic in the olive oil until browned.

In the cooking pan, layer half of the tortillas, all of the onion mixture, half of the green chilies, and half of the cheese.  Continue layering with the remaining tortillas, chilies, and cheese.

In a medium sized bowl, whisk together the eggs, buttermilk, and spices.  Pour the egg mixture over the layered ingredients.

Bake for 40 minutes.  Remove the pan from the oven and let rest for ten minutes.

This dish is good just like this, but can also be topped with sour cream, extra cheese, and/or diced fresh tomatoes.

I'm f you haven't yet settled on your Christmas morning menu, I hope you'll add this one to the list of contenders.

During this hectic and crazy time of year,  make sure to give yourself the gift of a few moments of peace in every day!

Food Friday - Chicken Out

In addition to this week’s recipe, I offer you a few observations on life courtesy of  my experiences with this week’s recipe.

1. Ever thinking that you will be ahead of the game is wasted thinking.  

It seems that no matter how much I plan and schedule and prepare and believe that I have things under control, I don’t.  This week was an object lesson in that.

During the school year, I try to cook ahead, sometimes it is whole meals and sometimes just ingredients so that I can throw together a quick meal when I get home.  On Sunday, I roasted two chickens.  Some of the meat I used immediately to make a chicken chili for a friend, some was for this week’s recipe, and the rest was going in the freezer.  Wednesday, I got the chicken out to make and photograph this week’s Chicken and Shells.  Just as I was starting, the contractor working on our landscaping wanted me to come outside and decide which way I wanted the gate to swing.  I left the ingredients on the counter only to return three minutes later to find the baggie of chicken no longer on the counter, but on the dog bed under my desk where there also sat a very full black lab.  That not only put an immediate stop to this week’s recipe preparation, it also meant that we had nothing for dinner that night, and my husband had no lunch the next day.  This is where planning ahead gets you.  I thought that I was being so clever by scheduling such that I would get the work done for the blog, and dinner, and the next day’s lunch all done at once and I was completely thrown off by an arthritic black lab who has trouble getting up and down stairs, but managed to get up on his hind legs to steal the meat of a whole chicken!  We had Taco Cabana for dinner that night.

2. The whole is usually greater than the sum of the parts.

We usually photograph all of the ingredients and the preparation of our recipes here.  I did that with this recipe, but the photos weren’t…well, they just weren’t pretty.  Technically they were OK, but that’s it.  Gorgonzola cheese is not pretty.  Flour and cream are not pretty.  And the there’s the whole meat thing.  

I can’t bring myself to photograph meat, especially raw meat.  I do eat meat, but not very often and I have to admit that I don’t cook it very well.  When we eat meat at home, most often it is prepared on the grill, and not by me.  Going back to the chicken mentioned earlier, my husband does all of the cutting and de-boning.  I just can’t do it.  Yeah, I am a walking contradiction!

3. Multitasking…

I can’t do it!  If I could, I probably would have done something differently and protected the chicken from the supposed arthritic dog.  Also, my inability to multitask clouds my opinion about the ease of preparation of this recipe.  It probably is not terribly time consuming, but when you stop and attempt to photograph each step along the way, it seems more cumbersome to prepare than it probably actually is.  In my defense, I have yet to burn anything because I have been more concerned with photographs than cooking, so maybe there is hope that I may one day become an efficient multi-tasker.

4. I have found my photographic calling - garlic portraiture!

As I said, most of the ingredients used today were not visually appealing to me.  The garlic was the exception…and the garlic keeper.  The garlic keeper is one of the relatively few things that I kept from dad’s home.  It sat on the counter.  Always.  And it always contained garlic that my dad had grown in his garden.  That’s why I kept it.  Now it sits on my counter, with garlic…that I buy at the grocery store.  Some day, I will grow my own garlic as my dad did.

Pasta shells are kind of pretty too.

When you attempt to share a new recipe every week, you realize how repetitive your eating patterns are!  I always thought that I cooked a variety of things, but as Tracey and I put our heads together mapping out the recipes for the coming weeks, we realize that we are now sharing new found recipes rather than personal favorites.  Such is the case with my contribution this week.  Chicken and Shells is in the current issue of Cuisine at Home magazine.  I love this magazine!  It is now the only cooking magazine for which I still have a subscription.

And (finally) the recipe…

Chicken and Shells

INGREDIENTS:

1 pound medium pasta shells

2 boneless, skinless chicken breast seasoned with salt and pepper

5 TBS olive oil, divided

2 TBS all-purpose flour

2 TBS minced fresh garlic

1 1.2 Cups low-sodium chicken broth

1 1/2 Cups heavy cream

10 oz. Gorgonzola, crumbled

2 sprigs fresh rosemary

1 Cup fresh bread crumbs

1/4 grated Parmesan cheese

2 TBS chopped fresh parsley

1 tsp minced lemon zest

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Coat a 9x13 baking dish with cooking spray.

Cook the pasta according to the package directions.  Drain and transfer it to a large bowl.

Saute the chicken in 2 TBS of olive oil over medium heat until an instant read thermometer inserted into the thickest part registers 165 degrees, *about 6 mines on each side.  (*It took about eight minutes on each side for mine to be cooked through.)  remove from the pan, let cool, and then shred.

Using medium heat, add another TBS of olive oil to the pan used to cook the chicken.  Which in the flour and garlic.  Cook for one minute.  Gradually whisk in the garlic and the cream, then add the Gorgonzola and the rosemary sprigs.  Do not strip the the rosemary leaves.  Add the entire sprig to infuse the sauce with the herb flavor.  Return the chicken to the sauce.  Bring to a boil then reduce the heat to medium-low and simmer until thick, about ten minutes.

Remove the rosemary sprigs.

Combine the sauce with the pasta.  Transfer to the prepared baking dish.

Combine breadcrumbs, Parmesan cheese, parsley, lemon zest, and remaining 2 TBS of olive oil.  Sprinkle this mixture over the pasta.

Bake for 20 minutes or until golden brown.

In the interest of full disclosure, I did not use the parsley or the lemon zest in the topping.  I forgot to buy the parsley and decided that the lemon zest wasn’t necessary without it.  Other than that, I made the recipe exactly as it was in the magazine.

And we are having it for dinner tonight.



By Tracey G

Thinking on Kris's post, I have to say that every time I've tried, as well, to be ahead of the game, it seems to be a fail in one way or another. It's either on a small scale, or a rather epic fail as in the smart black lab who did not waste an opportunity for some yummy cooked chicken when it arose, lol.

 I had this week's recipe that I'm sharing, all done and prepared on Wednesday, but it never fails that something prevents me from stringing more than 2 minutes together to get the shots processed, and then put together with words in a manner that makes sense, lol before Friday afternoon or like today, Friday evening. I guess this is the life of having a 6 yr old in your home, lol. That's where my minutes go, most of the time happily, some of the time not so happily, lol. I am hoping that when school starts this year, I will do better than last year in time management.

 It was all new to me last year, I had no idea what to expect, and I will admit I felt lost 90% of the time without Harry around. I feel like I wandered aimlessly through my days. (same feeling after my mom passed away and I was no longer driving her to dialysis 3 days a week, and being her caregiver with her living with me - was a culture shock when I lost her) By the time I started getting the hang of being home, alone, during the day, it was June and school was out. LOL I had just started to get a taste of how I could structure my day and boom, all wiped away with summer vacation, lol. But this year - I am hoping that I can hit the school year running and balance trying to be as involved in his school and class stuff as possible along with my self-imposed work from home projects that I adore, namely this blog, my photography and being a part of the Capture Your 365 Creative Team and CY365 community in general! But, we'll see.... I think Kris and I have learned, or at least have been reminded over and over that planning ahead has not always equaled actually being ahead! :-)

Now, as far as this week's food offering, I don't think I have run across any recipe, ever, that has surprised me as much as this one. I never expected such flavor from such simple ingredients as are found in this recipe, in this combination. And it's almost criminal how uncomplicated and effortless this dish is, lol, but yet, tastes like you put hours into it! It's gone through some changes, and that sounds funny when I think about it, but it had a few other things as toppings along with the cheese, but I found that if I boiled it down to the basics, it was yummier and easier as less ingredients were needed to get it done.

And here we are - the ingredients. Yep. Just 3. Boneless skinless chicken breasts, prepared pesto and provolone cheese. Usually I use shredded, but this was all I could get my hands on and it worked just fine of course, lol. :-) 

Preheat your oven to 400°F. While it's preheating, time to put this together. Start by placing the chicken breasts in a 9x13 inch baking pan. The recipe calls for 4 breasts, but sometimes I only use 3 so I downsize my pan a bit. This go around I had 5 pieces of chicken.

Once the chicken is arranged in the pan, spoon the pesto over the chicken breasts. The recipe calls for 1/2 cup. I ended up using the whole 8 oz jar this time because I wasn't thinking and contaminated it all with raw chicken by using the same spoon to scoop it out of the bowl and to spread it around on the chicken, lol. Normally I just measure out what's needed and proceed from there, but in the sake of saving a step, I dumped the whole thing into the bowl (for the photos first) and scooped - fully intending on using that 2nd spoon I'd gotten for the spreading, lol, not one for both... Oh well, the pesto is the best part and it was just as yummy with all of it as only a 1/2 cup, lol. 

Once you get the pesto evenly spread on the chicken, it's time to bake it. Usually takes about 35-45 minutes for the chicken breasts to be cooked thoroughly, but I always get out my meat thermometer and check at the end of 35-40 minutes or so to see where I'm at with doneness. 

After you've baked your chicken and it's the correct temperature for proper doneness (which according to foodsafey.gov is 165°F and can be found here:foodsafety.gov Safe Minimum Cooking Temperatures), it's time to put on the cheese! Now, here's where I normally use the shredded provolone, but as you can see the deli-style slices worked just fine. Pop them back into the oven for 1-2 min or until the cheese is melted.

Once the cheese is melted and as browned as you'd like, pull it out and let it rest for about 5 minutes  (I've let it sit for 10 minutes before and had no ill consequences, lol) before serving. 

I served this batch with a garlic-buttered noodle that had some green beans mixed in, it was a bit of overload on green, lol, but it's one of the few vegetables Harry will eat these days, so I work them in a lot, lol. It is one of my favorite ways to do a quick side dish though, while the noodles are cooking I toss in a handful or two of frozen cut green beans, so that when the noodles are done, so are the beans and they're already tossed together that way - and then you can season any way you like :-) 

Pesto Baked Chicken

serves 4

Preheat oven to 400°F

4 boneless skinless chicken breasts, about 6 oz each

1/2 c prepared pesto

1 c (4 oz) shredded provolone cheese

Place chicken breasts in an ungreased 9x13-inch baking dish, spoon pesto over chicken.

Bake, uncovered, at 400°F for about 35-45 minutes or internal temperature in the thickest part of the chicken breast reaches 165°F. Remove from oven and sprinkle with cheese. Bake 1-2 minutes longer or until the cheese is melted. Let stand about 5 minutes before serving.