chicken stuffed with mozzarella. tomatoes + spinach

lucky for me, my mom is one of my faithful blog readers, i think i have 2 :) ... so she was sure to see my list of resolutions for the new year, especially the goal to cook one meal a week – and she is holding me to it.

last night, i had a really good idea of what i wanted to make, but after browsing the foodnetwork.com for recipes and having no luck, i realized that i was going to have to do it without any help.

i am pleased to report that it turned out fabulous! here’s what i did [in case you can’t think of anything to make for dinner tomorrow].

first, i cut a few chicken breasts in half, so they were the same shape as the original piece of chicken, only half as thick. i laid all my pieces of chicken on a cookie sheet covered in tin foil.

then, on the center of each piece of chicken, place the mozzarella cheese, chopped spinach, and diced tomatoes and garlic (i sautéed mine separately just before because i like my tomatoes thoroughly cooked, but that step isn’t necessary for most normal people. i’m just not normal). stuff chicken as full as possible. then fold the chicken over, whichever way is easiest, and use toothpicks to hold chicken in place, if necessary. brush a mixture of olive oil, salt, and pepper on the outside of the chicken, both top and bottom. you could do this before you stuff the chicken too, now that i think about it.

bake at 425˚ for about 25 minutes.

a few minutes before my i pulled the chicken out of the oven, i spread the remaining tomato + garlic mixture over the top of each chicken breast. also, i wasn’t quite sure if the chicken was all the way done (especially on the bottom) so i cooked it on the stove for just a few more minutes in the pan i had used for the asparagus, just to be safe.

once the chicken is finished, remove toothpicks and enjoy!

hopefully i didn’t make it sound very difficult – it was actually really easy, and it only takes about an hour from start to finish unless you’re sadly slow at cooking like me. 

let me know if you try it and tell me how it turns out!

in case you were wondering, i served the chicken with red garlic mashed potatoes and asparagus sautéed in olive oil and one lemon’s worth of juice. [next time, i’ll use less lemon].

happy cooking!!