Week 30

This week I finally made the middle eastern grilled chicken and it was delicious! It's a good thing, too, because I spent about two weeks looking for a critical spice, sumac. I know, I could have ordered it online in that time, but I just kept procrastinating about it and figuring I could find it around somewhere. I finally found it at Williams-Sonoma and it is so unique and really crucial to the dish, so go get some and make that chicken!

The other plans are to smoke some chicken thighs, have pasta with meat sauce, and red potatoes with sausage and kale. Those are all things that don't really have recipes, per say. But I won't leave you totally hanging, so I'm also planning to make pesto chicken:

Pesto Chicken (adapted from Maximized Living), serves 2-3

• 1 pound organic chicken thighs or breasts
• 1/4 cup pesto sauce
• 4 roma tomatoes, sliced
• sea salt and ground black pepper
• shaved parmesan cheese
• sliced black olives

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Trim any excess fat from the chicken and place between pieces of parchment paper. Pound chicken to even thickness (approximately 1/2 inch) with a meat mallet. Sprinkle both sides with salt and pepper and transfer to a baking dish. (General cooking hint: you want the chicken to fit snugly for best cooking – you do not want a lot of extra space in the pan)

Spread pesto sauce over the top of the chicken breasts and cook for about 20 minutes than add the sliced tomatoes and parmesan cheese. Continue cooking until chicken is cooked through (about 15-20 additional minutes). Add olives as garnish.