Thursday, March 15, 2012

Walnut-Crusted Chicken with Spinach and Pomegranate

Okay so I'm changing up my blog a little bit. I'm going to start recording everything I fix. Well everything new I fix for breakfast, lunch and dinner.
I am mainly pulling receipts out of the Flat Belly Diet! Cookbook and the Flat Belly Diet! Family Cookbook. I never do a recipe 100% because I love to experiment. I don't know the calories on what I make but I make sure everything I fix has at least one mufa in it. Some receipts have more.

Tonight I pulled from two recipes. Walnut-Crusted Chicken Breasts with Pomegranate Syrup and Rotini with Chicken and Broccoli. Both are out of the Flat Belly Diet! Cookbook.

I had chicken with the bone in it so I had to find something for it. Most recipes call for boneless but whatever, it's all I had. So I took the chicken, cutting off any of that extra white skin that is just icky until you cook it. I was also told you are supposed to take that off because it can be bad for you. Haven't done my research on that but I did it anyway.
Next I took walnuts, LOVE walnuts. I put them on just about anything. Also the recipe called for it. I mixed it with an egg, some panko Italian breadcrumbs and some basil and orango. The recipe called for you to dip the chicken into the crust but it also called for boneless and that wasn't happening so I just placed the crust on top. I popped that sucker in the oven and it backed. How long? Not sure, didn't put it on a timer.
Next since I had spinach and love when you roast cherry tomatos, I did that. I placed olive oil, EVOO, in a sauce pan and put in some cherry tomatos, more walnuts, some red onion along with half a red bell pepper. I sauteed and roasted as my poor right hand kept getting splattered with sprinkles of hot oil, but worth it.
Then I took some pomegranate juice and grated some fresh ginger into another sauce pan and let it cook down a little. I was hoping it was going to turn more into a glaze but it didn't. It just looked like red-wine with specks of ginger.
So after all of this, all this cooking, I put the chicken on the plate next to some spinach. On top of the spinach I put on the sauced mix of tomatoes, walnuts, red pepper, and red onion. Then over all of it, I poured on the pomegranate and ginger.

Which mufas did I use? Olive oil and walnuts.

Here is the end result:



My presentation isn't pretty but there it is, chipped,scratched plate and all. The date is also wrong on the picture. I just keep forgetting to set that stupid time since I rarely use the camera.

Most of this stuff people don't carry in their house but I do. A few weeks before I started the Flat Belly Diet I started stocking up on the basics. Shit, I spent almost $50 on spices. Try that on minimum wage and having barely any hours to even call part time.

I don't like to waste food so I try to modify these recipes so I can use up certain things. I'm kicking my own ass right now for thinking it was okay to buy a huge bottle of butter milk. Yeah it expired the other day, but still good.

So finially, here is the taste test. Sound the dun dundun dunnn music

It's pretty good. The chicken is juicy and everything is roasted perfectly. The spinach tastes a little weird with everything but its still good. I'm for sure eating it. I wish I had more than just a cup of pomegranate juice or I'd be able to have more juice. Until next time. Which will be some kind of blueberry/strawberry cake.

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