Tuscan Chicken Recipe
Recipe Details
An Original Recipe by Lorraine Elliott
Preparation time: 20 minutes
Cooking time: 25 minutes
Serves: 4
Ingredients
- 4 chicken breasts, skin on or off
- 4 cups/1 litre/1 quart water
- 5 tablespoons fine salt
- 1 tablespoon garlic powder
- 1 egg, beaten
- 3 tablespoons flour
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 1 teaspoon black pepper
- Oil for frying
- 1 white or brown onion, peeled and diced
- 200g/7ozs cherry tomatoes, halved (or 175g/6ozs sun dried tomatoes, drained)
- 3 cloves garlic, peeled and diced
- 150g/5ozs baby spinach
- 4 tablespoons tomato paste
- 200ml/7flozs evaporated milk
- 3 tablespoons cream or cream cheese
- 1 teaspoon chicken powder
- 1/2 cup nutritional yeast or grated parmesan
- Chopped parsley to serve
Step-by-Step Cooking Instructions
Step 1
If you have time, brine the chicken breasts to keep them juicy and tender. All you need is 30-60 minutes. Dissolve the salt in the water - I dissolve the salt in 1/4 cup of hot water and them top it up with cold water and mix in the garlic powder. Place in a container in the fridge for 60 minutes.
Step 2
Place the beaten egg in one shallow bowl and mix the flour, salt and pepper together in another shallow bowl.
Step 3
Heat frypan on medium high heat and add oil. Dredge each chicken breast in the egg and then the flour mixture and cook bottom side down. Cook for 8 minutes then turn over and cook on the top side for 8 minutes. Remove from the pan.
Step 4
Add more oil if needed and fry onion for 3-4 minutes until caramelised and then add the cherry tomatoes. Cook until these are soft, around 8 minutes or so. Add the garlic, baby spinach, tomato paste, evaporated milk, cream and chicken powder. Then add in the nutritional yeast and return the chicken breasts to the pan for 5 minutes to cook through.
Step 5
Sprinkle with chopped parsley. Serve with pasta or potatoes.
Personal Note
As I mentioned, I was making this for Mr NQN as I had two trips back to back, one to Broke Fordwich for our anniversary and then straight off to Antarctica (squeeaaal)! I bought a lot of chicken breasts and made this Tuscan chicken to give to Mr NQN to eat for the first couple of nights. I figured he could eat one per day for dinner. Mr NQN ate one on the Friday night and that left 4 chicken breasts and since Yuki was coming over to stay over for one night to look after Teddy and Milo and we usually leave food for her I figured she might have a chicken breast for dinner since she was going out to lunch on Saturday and maybe she might eat one for lunch on Sunday.
When we came back from our anniversary weekend on Sunday night I was delighted to see that Yuki had eaten all four of the chicken breasts and a big scoop of matcha tiramisu! She loved it so much and said that it came from a restaurant which was such a nice compliment. I mean the restaurant was Olive Garden (which I've never been to, only heard about on tv shows and movies) but Dear Reader, this is really a sign that it is utterly delicious!
So tell me Dear Reader, have you ever been to an Olive Garden? What is it like? Do you prefer chicken breast or thigh?
If you love eating chicken breasts, make sure to visit the chicken breast category for many more recipes. A couple of my other favourite chicken breast recipes are: stuffed chicken breast with spinache and cheese and pan-fried chicken breast recipe.