Chicken Stuffed with Basil, Mozzarella & Oak-Roasted Tomatoes & an Event!!!

Chicken Stuffed with Basil, Mozzarella and Oak-Roasted Tomatoes

Nicole at For the Love of Food has come up with a creative and exciting challenge each month. I love this monthly event! I love browsing through all the wonderful blogs out there with their creative and challenging ideas. This event gives me the chance to showcase someone else's talents.

What is it all about: community, sharing, tasting, and blogging.

This is a gathering point for the food-blogger community to come and have their recipes tested by their peers. You are paired with a fellow blogger.

1)Browse through your partner’s yummy blog and pick out one dish that looks really interesting to you. 

2)Create the dish you’ve chosen

3)Taste it and tell us what you think (aka - blog about it)!

4) Don’t forget you have to include a photo - so snap away!

This month I have been paired with Abby,( a talented cook who grew up using a bounty of fresh and local ingredients in Malawi and now lives in the UK) at her enterprise Eat the Right Stuff . She has made it very difficult to choose just one recipe with all the enticing choices on her blog. Years ago when she was first starting out she was known for her foil parcels. I have always loved this method of cooking for the ease of preparation and cleanup too!!! So to honour her start in the culinary world I decided to prepare her dish . Chicken Stuffed with Basil, Mozzarella & Oak-Roasted Tomatoes . "You don't need baking trays, have minimal washing up, can cater to allergies and other food foibles with ease. Perfect, " Abby says. It has been a while since we both cooked in this way but she recently revisited one of the dishes that she used to make in foil packets. This recipe is very simple in preparation but big on flavour. Her dish is stuffed chicken breasts wrapped with pancetta and baked until the chicken is cooked through and the pancetta is crispy. Abby has come a long way in her culinary skills as we all have. Please check out all her delicious posts!!!

**Chicken Stuffed with Basil, Mozzarella and Oak-Roasted Cherry Tomatoes**

2 chicken breasts, skin removed
1 ball mozzarella, sliced
2 tablespoons oak-roasted cherry tomatoes
1 tablespoon basil leaves, shredded
8-10 pieces rashers of smoked pancetta
olive oil
freshly ground black pepper

Preheat the oven to 200C (?F)

Carefully make a slit in the side of each chicken breast, creating a pocket into which you can place your stuffing. Fill each pocket with half the mozzarella, oak-roasted tomatoes and basil.

Wrap the chicken breast with the smoked pancetta rashers, overlapping the edges so that when the cheese melts and oozes out of the chicken pocket, it will be contained by the pancetta. You might need to use cocktail sticks to hold everything in place.

Place the chicken in a lightly oiled dish, season with black pepper and cover with foil. bake in the oven for 15 minutes, remove the foil and cook for another 15 minutes. The chicken should now be cooked through and the pancetta crisp, if not give it a bit longer (if the chicken is ready you can crisp up the pancetta under a hot grill).

Serves 2

Conclusion: This dish made a perfect Sunday night dinner. I loved the mellow flavours of the fresh mozzarella. The pancetta added a nice crispy texture and a saltiness to the dish. I couldn't find the "oak-roasted" tomatoes prized by Abby, so, had to compromise with a combination of sun dried tomatoes and some very tiny tinned tomatoes from our Italian grocers. Abby needs to invite me to dinner so I am able to try the subtle differences of the original recipe using "oak-roasted" tomatoes.

You are reading this post on More Than Burnt Toast at http://morethanburnttoast.blogspot.com. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to the author/owner of More Than Burnt Toast. All rights reserved by Valerie Harrison.