I love Gouda cheese, and I love chicken (of course), and spinach—well, when eaten plain, I can take it or leave it. For me, spinach is among those vegetables that really aren’t any good when served plain—rather bland and boring—not really appropriate as a vegetable side dish like corn or green beans or asparagus. Spinach always seems to be better when it’s used as an ingredient in something else, such as in lasagna or chip dip or this recipe. With that said, while browsing through the BettyCrocker.com Website, I found a recipe that combines the three ingredients in a really tasty chicken dish appropriately named “Stuffed Chicken Breasts with Gouda and Spinach.” It looks like one of those recipes that requires a lot of time and fuss but is actually so quick and easy that you can make it even when you’re stretched for time.
Besides the three main ingredients listed in the title of the recipe, the only other ingredients are small quantities of ground nutmeg, salt, pepper, and butter. That’s it!
Here’s the complete ingredient list:
- 4 bone-in chicken breasts (1 ¼ lbs.)
- ½ cup shredded smoked Gouda or Swiss cheese (2 oz)
- ¼ teaspoon ground nutmeg
- 1 package (10 oz.) frozen chopped spinach, thawed, squeezed to drain excess moisture
- ½ teaspoon salt
- ¼ teaspoon pepper
- 2 teaspoons butter or margarine, melted
Simply mix the cheese, chopped spinach, and nutmeg until well blended and stuff the mixture between the meat and skin of four bone-in chicken breasts. Place the chicken, skin side up, in a greased, nine-inch square baking pan; sprinkle the chicken with salt and pepper; drizzle melted butter over the chicken; then bake the chicken uncovered at 375ºF for about an hour. (Although the recipe calls for a cooking time of 45 to 55 minutes, the actual cooking time required in my oven was about an hour.)
“Stuffed Chicken Breasts with Gouda and Spinach” was a very satisfying recipe: rich tasting, lots of flavor, and a real hit with my dinner guests on Thanksgiving Eve. Give it a try and see what you think.
When I found this recipe on the RecipeTips.com site, it looked like it would be a tasty dish to make after the Thanksgiving holiday—one of those quick and easy recipes that allow you to use up some of that leftover Thanksgiving turkey. I decided to try it last weekend using chicken, as the recipe calls for, to find out whether it would worth making again after the holiday. The answer was yes, I will definitely be making “Chicken, Rice, and Green Bean Casserole” again after the holiday, substituting the chicken with turkey. With only nine simple ingredients—mushroom soup, milk, uncooked rice, chopped cooked chicken, frozen green beans, canned mushrooms, pimentos, shredded cheddar cheese, and French fried onion rings—this dish was prepared, baked, and ready to serve in just under an hour.
Chicken, Rice, and Green Bean Casserole
This recipe is basically a variation on the ubiquitous Thanksgiving side dish, “Green Bean Casserole,” but it’s so much better. With the inclusion of chicken, rice, mushrooms, and cheddar cheese, it’s hearty enough to be served as a main meal; in fact, I served it with just some crusty bread rolls and nothing else (oh, and maybe a glass of wine or two). The recipe states that the French fried onions are optional, but I can’t imagine making the dish without them. The onions provide terrific flavor, and the crispy golden brown topping that forms in combination with the shredded cheese is unbeatable. Give this recipe a try and you won’t be disappointed.
When I was a kid I remember that on Thanksgiving Day, Grandma would pull into town in her big Caddy (a three-bedroom house on wheels known as a Cadillac Sedan Deville) and arrive at my parents’ home bearing her contribution to the Thanksgiving feast: a gastronomic catastrophe that for lack of a better name, I’ll call, “Grandma’s Thanksgiving Jell-O Salad a la Awful.” Actually, I could call it a variety of more colorful names, but none of them are fit to publish here. My sister called it, “Ick!” my brother called it, “P-U!” and Mom simply called it, “Oh, God!” All I know is that whatever you chose to call it, the Thanksgiving dinner was not enhanced by the presence of Grandma’s ever-repulsive runny lime Jell-O with carrots and peas topped with mayonnaise and paprika. While it might be a hit in some quarters, it certainly wasn’t at our house. Why ruin perfectly innocent lime Jell-O with mayonnaise—and paprika, for Pete’s sake! And so, while feasting on Mom’s beautifully roasted turkey with sage dressing, homemade cranberry sauce, buttery mashed potatoes served with her excellent roasting pan gravy, delicious sweet potato hot dish, always popular green bean casserole, and of course, Dad’s famous baked beans; we were forced to plop Grandma’s Jell-O nightmare onto our plates. Nobody liked it; nevertheless, we all choked it down, not because we didn’t want to hurt her feelings, but because we would never hear the end of it if we didn’t eat it. With a smirk on her face, she always dished up an extra large helping for Mom and expected her to gobble it up. Poor Mom.
I always thought that Grandma’s only purpose in serving the unwanted green gunk was as a joke—just to get a rise out of everyone—because she must have known how much we hated it. Three moaning children and the shell-shocked expressions on the faces of my parents, aunts, and uncles made that fairly obvious. We loved Grandma for many things, but her cooking wasn’t one of them.
In my last entry, I reported that the weather during the first week of November was perfect for grilling: sunny and unbelievably warm for this time of year, but my schedule didn’t permit me to do any cooking that week except for the slow cooker meal I threw together on election morning. Well, I really think I’ve missed my last window of opportunity to enjoy grilled food outdoors this season, for the weather has turned really ugly, and this being Minnesota, it’s highly unlikely that we’ll see more days suitable for grilling unless you don’t mind wearing a parka and woolen mittens while tending the grill. It’s always a sad time when I have to put the grill away for the season, but I’ll be compensated with a whole winter’s worth of delicious baked, sautéed, pan-fried, stir-fried, and slow-cooked chicken dishes that will certainly suffice until next spring.
Among those dishes is a new chicken recipe that I made last night called, “Chicken Normande with Mashed Apples and Potatoes” that I found on the Epicurious.com site. It is actually a recipe posted there from the February 2000 issue of Bon Appétit. Although the preparation time is a bit lengthier than what I have been used to for the past several months, having made umpteen quick and easy grilled chicken dishes, it certainly isn’t complicated and it’s definitely worth the effort.
This recipe incorporates chicken thighs that have been cut into pieces; seasoned with salt, pepper, and thyme; dusted with flour; and sautéed until browned and cooked through. The chicken is placed into a baking dish and is layered with cooked parsnips, uncooked peas, cooked apples and Yukon Gold potatoes (my favorite variety) that have been mashed, and a rich cream sauce flavored with brandy; then it’s baked in a 350°F oven for 35 to 45 minutes. With its golden brown potato and apple crust, this dish is like a French version of a shepherd’s pie, only better. This is one chicken recipe that I’ll be making again and again during the upcoming winter months.
Wow! Just when I thought the grilling season was coming to a rapid end, comes the month of November and some of the best weather imaginable: a lengthy string of days (that actually began before Halloween) with highs in the seventies and lows in the fifties, which is more typical of September than November in southern Minnesota—perfect San Diego weather I call it. Feeling a dose of spring fever again, I was itching to grill out and dine al fresco, but since daylight saving time is over and I knew that it would be dusk before I would get home from work, that plan didn’t seem too realistic. Besides, it was election night, and being a political junkie, nothing was going to prevent me from parking my butt in front of the television and watching the election returns, so I went to plan B and cooked up a one-pot meal in the slow cooker that was ready to eat when I arrived home.
I’ve never really had a name for this chicken recipe, which I concocted several years ago: I always referred to it as simply, “Slow Cooker Chicken,” but now I’ve decided to name it officially, “Election Day Chicken.” I’m sure there are other recipes out there that are quite similar to this one; in fact, a friend told me that she made something almost identical to this, but her version didn’t include red bell pepper, and the liquid she used was just plain water rather than the chicken broth that I use. This simple recipe has been a real hit with everyone who has tried it.
Election Day Chicken
Ingredients:
- 4 to 5 pounds chicken pieces—any combination of thighs, legs, wings, and split breasts
- 6 to 8 red potatoes cut into quarters
- 1 yellow onion, coarsely sliced
- 1 stalk celery, chopped
- 24 (or more) baby carrots
- 1 red bell pepper, sliced into strips
- 8 to 12 garlic cloves
- 1 envelope onion soup mix
- ½ cup chicken stock or broth
- Salt and pepper to taste
Directions:
- Place the quartered red potatoes, sliced onion, chopped celery, baby carrots, sliced red bell pepper, and the garlic cloves in the bottom of a slow cooker.
- Add the chicken stock or broth to the pot and sprinkle about half of the dry onion soup mix over the vegetables.
- Place the chicken pieces on top of the vegetables.
- Sprinkle the chicken with the remaining onion soup mix.
- Cover the slow cooker and turn the heat to high.
- Cook the chicken on high heat for about 6 hours, or cook on high heat for 2 hours and then turn the heat down to low and cook for an additional 8 hours.
- Season the chicken and vegetables with salt and pepper to taste.
How much more simple could it be? This is a perfect dish for a busy day, and the leftovers are great, too (if there are any leftovers, that is). I hope you’ll try it.
