How to Boil Water: Pesto-Presto Chicken with Gingered Carrots & Parsnips

Today's home-cooked meal is brought to you by Rachael Ray and The Taste of Home Cookbook. This is my first Rachael Ray recipe. I love her but I had yet to do anything by her, so I was pretty excited to finally be able to cook one of her recipes. Why hadn't I earlier? No good reason, other than I wasn't cooking and just recently started this (this week) and up until today I did only recipes that I had cooked before. Had to ease myself back in before going all out and doing something crazy. So maybe this isn't that crazy but it's new and different and that makes it exciting and somewhat crazy. It's not overly complicated. It's pretty straight forward and I had every confidence that I could cook the heck out of these two recipes!

Pesto-Presto Chicken
Ingredients:
3 tablespoon pine nuts
8-10 fresh basil leaves, about 1/2 cup
1/4 cup fresh flat-leaf parsley leaves, a handful - This is my oops. I didn't find any flat-leaf parsley in the store...and by that I mean I forgot to look. But by the time I figured out that I should have, I was already cooking so dried parsley is just going to have to do. I didn't put in this exact measurement but more or less guessed. It's always different between fresh and dried. 
1 (5.4-ounce) round of Boursin garlic and herb soft cheese - Another oops. I didn't find this exact kind, but I found a garlic and herb soft cheese so that gets me somewhere. However, my container had more than 5.4-ounces so I had to not put in the entire container. Sometimes it's hard to find the exact thing at the grocery store. 
1/2 cup grated Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese, a couple of handful
Salt & Pepper
4 pieces of boneless skinless chicken breast (6 ounces each)
12 (1/2-inch thick) slices of vine-ripened tomato, from about 3 medium tomatoes
2 tablespoons EVOO (extra virgin olive oil)

Directions:
1. Preheat the oven to 450 degrees.
2. In a small pan over medium heat, lightly toast the pine nuts, then set aside to cool.
3. In the bowl of the food processor, combine the basil, parsley, pine nuts, Boursin cheese and 1/4 cup of the Parmigiano. Season with a little salt and pepper and process into a smooth mixture.
4. Butterfly each piece of chicken breast by slicing into but not all the way through the breast at the equator. Open the two halves as if you were opening a book.
5. Pound the split breasts with a meat mallet to about 1/4-inch thickness. Season both sides of the chicken with salt and pepper, then divide the herb-cheese mixture among the four pieces of chicken using a couple of small spoons. Fold the chicken in half (like closing a book) to enclose the cheese mixture.
6. Transfer the chicken to a nonstick rimmed baking sheet and shingle 3 slices of tomato over each breast. Drizzle the stuffed breasts with about 2 tablespoons of EVOO and sprinkle with the remaining Parmigiano.
7. Bake the chicken until it's cooked through and light golden brown, about 20 minutes.

I'm sure there is a few things I could have done differently. For example, I didn't cut through my chicken but when I start pounding on it, a couple of places opened up in the back. I should have put parchment paper down on the pan because I had a spilling out problem. But it's all things that I learned for next time I guess. 

Overall, the chicken was good. I was surprised actually. I wasn't sure what I was expecting. But it was better than what I expected. I could, however, taste every herb in the cheese because my taste buds are on overdrive with this pregnancy. But it was still good. I wasn't overly thrilled about the tomatoes on top. The tomatoes went bad quickly so there weren't many good pieces left for me to actually put on the chicken and it definitely made it tougher to cut. I just wasn't a huge fan of the tomatoes but it did make it interesting. But mostly it was good. It is one we will be added to the favorites book at least.

Gingered Carrots & Parsnips
Ingredients:
3 medium parsnips, peeled and sliced
4 medium carrots, peeled and sliced
2 tablespoons honey
1 teaspoon butter
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
Dash salt
2 tablespoon chopped pecans, tossed - I decided to skip these.

Directions:
1. Place 1 inch of water in a small saucepan; add parsnips. Bring to a boil. Reduce heat, cover and simmer for 1 minute.
2. Add carrots; cover and simmer 6-8 minutes longer or until vegetables are crisp-tender. Drain and set aside.
3. In the same pan, combine the honey, butter, ginger and salt. Stir in vegetables; heat through. Sprinkle with pecans.

Easy, easy easy. A million times easy. But interesting tasting. Honestly they weren't horrible, but you could definitely taste the ginger. Really the whole point of picking this recipe was that we needed a vegetable and I wanted to try something new. And this was definitely new. We probably won't be having this one again. But now we know. So if you like ginger and honey you should definitely give this one a shot. It was super easy!

We had a delicious meal of Pesto-Presto Chicken, Gingered Carrots and Parsnips, Cinnamon Applesauce and milk. Healthy to boot. It seem that even Addison enjoyed this meal. She moves all the time, and she moved even more during meal time and this dinner was no different. Even though the vegetables didn't turn out perfect and we didn't care for it as much as the chicken, but this meal was still a success! Go try it.