Day Thirty

She Said:

Well, we have been at our own Julie/Julia Project for one month. How exciting! We are totally loving this project, even though sometimes we just don't feel like cooking. Thank goodness we have our traditional Thursday pizza-and-a-movie night (see prior post) to break things up a little. And we don't cook every single day, obviously, but we're in the kitchen a whole lot more than we used to be!

Anyway, another recipe from Serving Up the Harvest by Andrea Chesman and this one was a TOTAL winner! I could eat this every night, I think. Actually, since I'm supposed to stay away from tomatoes, I wouldn't but it is just that good! We made some regular old mashed potatoes to accompany this meal and it was perfect. (Actually, the potatoes were tremendous - Yukon gold potatoes with just a tiny splash of whole milk, some butter, salt and lots of pepper. Delicious!)

Chicken Breast Niçoise

2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
4 large boneless, skinless chicken breast halves
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
1 large onion, sliced
4 garlic cloves, minced
4 cups seeded and diced tomatoes
1 cup cured pitted black olives, such as niçoise or Kalamata (we used your standard Black Pearls, sliced in half)
½ cup chicken broth
½ cup dry white wine (we were actually having red wine with dinner and didn't open a bottle of white just for this, so I just doubled the chicken broth)
1 tablespoon dried herbes de Provence (this is critical to this dish!)

1. Heat the oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat. Add the chicken breasts, season with a pinch of salt and a few grinds of pepper, and cook until well browned on the bottom, about 4 minutes. Turn the breasts over, season the second side, and cook until well browned, 3 to 4 minutes. Remove the chicken from the skillet and set aside to keep warm.

2. Sauté the onion in the skillet until soft, about 2 minutes. Add the garlic and sauté until fragrant, about 30 seconds. Add the tomatoes, olives, broth, wine and herbs. Cook until the tomatoes are broken down and the sauce is somewhat thickened, about 10 minutes. Taste and adjust the seasoning.

3. Return the chicken to the skillet (we sliced it up before doing this), reduce the heat, and continue cooking until the chicken is heated through and no longer pink in the middle, about 5 minutes. Serve hot.

I can't say enough about how good this meal was. He chose this recipe because it's in the tomato section and we have to spread those out through the year because I don't particularly care for uncooked tomatoes and I'm not supposed to be eating them anyway. But the way these were cooked was fantastic! And I have to say that I was never a black olive fan. I'm OK with kalamata olives but never your standard black olives. If they were in something highly seasoned (like nachos), I could eat them.

But the olives absolutely made this dish. It made such an impression on me that the pizza we ordered last night had black olives on it and I loved it. I guess it's something about the combination of the tomatoes and the black olives. Delicious!!

Oh and do not skip the herbes de Provence. When you get to the point in the recipe where it says to taste and adjust the seasoning, the herbs will be right there at the front and it's quite an experience.

I guess I really liked this one!

Day 30/365:Recipe 21/175