Chicken Roll-Up

It’s been a long time since I have actually written more than one sentence for this blog, so bear with me here.

The picture above was our dinner last night. I’d like to be able to take credit for that juicy, golden chicken filled with creamy spinach, goat cheese,  sun-dried tomatoes and tons of garlic, but I can’t. I can take credit, however, for those soggy greens on the plate!

After the jump, the story of how to turn Monday into a real, bona fide cooking night…

One thing that all good Americans can agree on (besides free chips and salsa) is that Mondays just plain suck. No two ways about it. Mondays suck so much they have the power to ruin Sundays. So when Gansie suggested that we hit up Giant on the way home from work last night…well, let’s just say I’ve been more enthused before (hope she isn’t reading this). For those of you that haven’t had the privilege of attending our fine local DC Giant supermarket, try to envision a line for a Obama rally, and then double it. Now times that by 14 for each checkout line. Bread lines in Leningrad were never this long.

Gansie then had the idea (or inspiration as I later found out) to make a real meal. I just wanted pizza. Pizza, beer, TV. Those things usually appease me. But after an hour and fifteen minutes in the supermarket from hell, I found myself cleaning Red Swiss Chard, prepping the greens for a soak in boiling, salted water and then garlic infused oil. Who have I become?

It turns out though, that this meal (minus the agony of purchasing the ingredients) is darn easy and pretty quick. While I scoured the Internet recipes for Swiss Chard, Gansie whipped up the filling for our rolled chicken. Though we had planned on making garlic bread, we realized that the filling for our main dish would work equally well as a spread. Trust me, it more than worked. I highly recommend this easy dish and if you come to a Gansie catered event, you will probably be trying this in the future. To heat the bread, we just placed it under the broiler for a minute and here’s the lovely result:

This treat made the wait for the main course tolerable, and frankly, it was a challenge not to just ditch the chicken and eat bread for dinner. It was that good.

But we soldiered on.

The key to making this dish easy is to buy thin sliced chicken breast. No need to pound the chicken, rolling is a snap. Gansie sprinkled the chicken breasts with salt and pepper before placing a healthy dab of the filling. Be careful not to overdo the filling, you don’t want it oozing out and burning. We seared the chicken in oil and butter for about 3-4 minutes before placing it in the oven, in the same pan, at 350 degrees for about 15 minutes.

(Note: toothpicks are a must)

As for the Chard, I used this recipe. Very very very easy, but surprisingly tasty, even for a veggie-hater like myself.

So what lesson have I learned from all of this? Well, Mondays may still suck, but at least it can’t ruin dinner.

Oh, and God Bless America.