Stuffed Chicken For The Week

As we picked out our meals for the week, we knew that we needed chicken early in the week to use as leftovers for lunches.  With this mind we picked out Artichoke-Stuffed Chicken Breasts on page 250.

As always, the first thing to do was to prepare my mis en place.  I grouped the bowls by ingredients that would be added at the same time.

Overall, the stuffing is rather easy to bring together in the sautee pan.  I think it took longer to prep than to cook.

Now it was time to prepare the chicken breasts.  Because I like to learn and share techniques, I'll show another favorite tool set of mine in the kitchen:

I don't like metal "tenderizer" hammers as there is little forgiveness.  The dead-blow hammer from my carpentry shop works much better.  Okay, so step one is to butterfly the breast open.

Then put the breast between two sheets of saran wrap.

Then go to town with your dead-blow hammer.  Remember to show some restraint, but make that chicken respect your authori-tah!

Because it is recommended that the stuffing cool completely, you can take your time and prepare all of your chicken breasts in this manner, doing your best to achieve uniformity.

Then lay in the stuffing!

You will need something to hold the breasts together on the grill, and I used toothpicks.  If you have the means, in the past I have used sprigs of thyme to sew the seam, but toothpicks work in a pinch.

For the meals for the week, I actually prepared six breasts.

I grilled in two stages because I didn't want to use a whole lot of coal just to cook six breasts all at once.  This also gave me the time to clean up the kitchen.

I had already eaten a large amount of vegetables as a snack while watching the World Cup, so the plating will only show the breast.  Otherwise, I would recommend some sort of Tuscan vegetable arrangement.

This was delicious.  The goat cheese melted and integrated itself throughout the stuffing, and the sun-dried tomatoes lended a nice intense flavor.  The artichoke hearts were supple and juicy, the garlic was only in the background, and the heat from the red pepper flakes (even though I was little heavy-handed with the stuff) remained subtle.  In short, I liked it!