COOKING WITH JAZ: Baked

Monday, 3 March 2014

Stuffed chicken Breast with spinach served with baked veggies

Wassup my good people!

Hope you had an awesome weekend! Im excited about this recipe. Its funny cause I was abit worried it wouldn't turn out as good as I had envisioned it in my head, I sure thank God it did. Working to step out from my cooking comfort zone so that I may be able to make fascinating and fab meals that I can teach you all to make easily.

I made stuffed chicken breasts with spinach and mozzarella and served them with a mixture of my fav mixed veggies, courgettes, eggplant and red peppers. I love these three because of their natural sweetness. I didn't want to tamper with their taste so I knew that baking them would do the trick.

Ingredients:- Serves 4
3 -4 chicken Breasts [depending on number of people, serve 1 breast per person]
Mozarella Cheese
Fresh spinach
Toothpicks
6 cloves garlic
2 Courgettes
2 Eggplants
2 red peppers/hoho
1 white onion
Black pepper
Oregano
Tomato paste
Olive oil
Beef cube

So I started of by washing all my vegetables and chopping them up.

Heat oven to 180 degrees. I then cooked the garlic and half the onion with some olive oil and added the chopped eggplant, courgettes and red pepper. I allowed to cook for about 5 minutes just to absorb the flavor of the garlic and I then put them in a baking dish. garnished with some oregano and black pepper and popped them to bake covered with foil for about 15 minutes.

I then put another sufuria on the stove with olive oil and the chopped onions and garlic to cook. I then added the tomato paste, approx 4 tablespoons and beef cube. To keep the paste from burning on the bottom of the sufuria I added a few tablespoons water. I then added the chopped spinach and cooked for 3 minutes.

Once the spinach was done, I put it aside and took my chicken breasts, washed and cut them in the middle. Make sure to use a sharp knife. Do not cut completely to the end since we need one closed side.

I greased the oven tray with olive or vegetable oil and placed the open chicken fillets.

I then added a few spoonfuls of spinach in each open chicken fillet topped with a few slices of mozarella.

After that I used toothpicks to close the fillets. Be careful to close them well so that the filling doesn't all fall out. I garnished with salt, black pepper and chopped garlic.

I put the chicken in the oven to bake for about 15 minutes or until you can see that the chicken is cooked. You can always cut one of the fillets in the middle to check.

After that I removed it from the oven, removed toothpicks and sliced them in a few pieces and baked for another 2 minutes.

And vuala! The chicken was ready. Perfectly moist, healthy and full of flavor. The baked veggies were the perfect compliment aswell since they were juicy and sweet. You can also compliment this meal with additional rice or a baguette.

All in all this is a perfect meal for the evening when you're looking to have something light.

ENJOY!

More recipes coming up this week!

Tomorrow I post about my spicy scotch eggs recipe!

Sincerely,

Jaz.

Tuesday, 18 February 2014

Salmon with baked baby potatoes and a creamy mushroom sauce

Hey guys!
Hope you all had an awesome love weekend! :-) I sure did.

So I was planning to make this dish over the weekend but sadly I had the worst migraine throughout. I'm much better now so I was eager to finally get in the kitchen last night and create this masterpiece that I had in my mind all along.

Im a great fan of salmon. I find it to be the tastiest fresh water fish there is. The only problem is that it is not found locally here in Kenya so we usually import it at a very high price. I bought three fillets for about 800 ksh!! YAIX!! I had missed eating salmon which was one of my weely meals in Spain since it was so much cheaper there. All in all we all have to pay a price sometimes for something good and worthwhile.

I decided to bake it and once I saw some baby potatoes during one of my supermarket errands I figured I'd give them a try aswell. Since Im a fan of mushrooms-I opted to make a thick creamy sauce with some cream and white wine that I had in the house and even added some peas for some flavor and color.

Ingredients:-

Salmon fillets [and not the steak since the steak has bones]
Baby potatoes or normal potatoes [depending on preference]
1 pack mushrooms
1/2 cup peas
1 onion
4 cloves garlic
Extra virgin olive oil
Cooking cream
1/2 beef cube
2 tablespoons Unsalted Butter
1/2 cup white wine
Oregano
black pepper
Salt to taste
Dhania/correander
Foil

Heat oven to 180 degrees.
I started of by washing and boiling the baby potatoes as they were without peeling them. I allowed them to cook for about 20 minutes. [You can poke with a knife and if the potato slides of know that it is cooked.]
Once they were done I drained the water and put them on a large baking tray, sprinkled some olive oil, a dash of salt and some chopped correander/dhania over them and popped them in the pre-heated oven for about 7-10 minutes.

I then cleaned the fillets and placed each fillet on a piece of foil paper. I chopped and added 2 cloves garlic, some oregano, salt and a dash of olive oil over each and wrapped them well in foil.
I then placed the fish in the oven to bake for about 15 minutes.