We all know cooks who can just make things. No script, no measuring, just experience and instinct. As much as that sort of free cooking baffles little ol' anal, ahem, precise me, that's exactly how Lynnelle's amazing chicken salad came to be. No recipe, no precise measurements, just good taste and know-how.
Like many home cooks, my dear friend Lynnelle loves trying new things in the kitchen. In preparation for a Memorial Day picnic several years back, she decided on chicken salad: quick, easy, and portable. Using fresh ingredients she had on hand and her undeniably good palate, she inadvertently created what was (and still remains) the best chicken salad that I have ever had.
There are few scenarios that rain on a home cook's parade like fixing dinner after an exhausting day of work. In my experience weeknight cooking has not been the hobby type of pull-every-gadget-out-and-labor-hours cooking but the I-just-got-home-and-everyone-is-hungry-NOW type of cooking. Oh, yeah. Been there, survived that.
With the back-to-school bustle underway, this herb stuffed chicken breast recipe is a great solution to quick weeknight cooking. I've only made it a handful of times, but it's so simple that I don't even use the recipe anymore. You can easily play around with different herbs and specialty goat cheeses. (I recently tried a peppadew variety on closeout at Kroger.) And if you're not up for experimenting, the recipe (click here for the original) will do just fine.
Now, is this a first class dish? No, it's not. I would love to tout this picture perfect meal otherwise, but I've been let down by the hoity toity descriptions of too many recipes to likewise disappoint (ahem, deceive) other home cooks. What I can say is that it's a great standby. It feeds hungry tummies. It uses ingredients you may already have on hand. And it can be thrown together in about 30 minutes. Oh, and since it's from Cooking Light, it's around 300 calories per serving.
