Spinach Stuffed Chicken Breast with White Wine Sauce

In keeping with this week's goal to eat more veggies, I made this Spinach Stuffed Chicken Breast. A quick, yet veggie-packed recipe (no pun intended!) for weeknights that is ready in a very realistic thirty-five minutes, and is a great way to get rid of some of those annoying (but as yet UN-expired) leftover products in your fridge such as:
a) the mostly-empty jar of shredded parmesan that has been sitting on the fridge door, unused for over a month, completely lost to the untrained eye
b) the bottle of white wine that has about an inch left on the bottom (c’mon, you know you want to just finish it already so you can open a new one with dinner tonight), and,
c) the remaining bit of heavy cream leftover from last week’s Kulfi recipe!

You will need:

1 package frozen chopped spinach (truly a genius product – can anyone find a better time or money value than frozen chopped spinach?)
¼ cup shredded parmesan cheese
2 tbsp heavy cream
½ tsp ground nutmeg (can’t you taste the nutmeg already? It is such a no-brainer addition to any dish that uses cooked dark leafy greens.)
4 boneless skinless chicken breasts
2 tbsp lemon juice
Salt to taste
Freshly ground black pepper
1 tbsp butter
¼ cup white wine
1 tbsp flour
½ cup chicken stock, heated up for 2 mins in microwave
1 clove garlic, finely minced, or better yet “pressed” (if you have a garlic press)

Cook spinach according to package directions, and squeeze all the water out using a strainer, or kitchen towel. Empty dry spinach into a bowl, and mix in nutmeg, parmesan, and heavy cream. Add salt and pepper to taste, stir to combine.
Make slits in each chicken breast, along the thickest side to make “pockets”. Divide the spinach mixture into four portions and stuff each breast with a portion. Sprinkle lemon juice, salt and pepper on both sides of the chicken breast. (Note: if you put the lemon juice on first, the salt and pepper will “stick” much better – this is desirable!)

Melt butter in a large enough skillet, over medium heat, and add the stuffed chicken breasts. Cook on medium heat for 4 minutes on each side, uncovered. Then, turn heat down to “low”, cover the skillet and do 4 additional minutes on each side to ensure the chicken reaches the proper temperature. Once that’s done, remove the chicken from the skillet and put it to rest somewhere comfortable, like on a cutting board. In the meantime, get the chicken stock heating up in the microwave.

Now, you’re going to make a quick white wine sauce in the same skillet using all those delicious flavors from the chicken! Turn heat back up to “medium” and add the hot chicken stock to the skillet to “deglaze” (which basically means you pour liquid into a pan to sop up all the “stuff” that is stuck to the bottom of the pan, remainders from what you cooked in it previously, a pretty genius thing to do since that is where all the yummy flavor is!) Add flour, and garlic, and give it a good stir to combine and scrape up all the “stuff”. At this point the sauce will look like an unsightly brown paste – but that’s OK! Add the white wine and allow the whole thing to come up to a boil, stirring well. Let it happily boil away for about 2 minutes, so it reduces slightly. In the meantime the chicken breasts have had a good six or seven minutes to “rest”, so now you can slice it. (The “rest” is important to let the juices in the meat settle into an even distribution so that, when you cut into it, all the juice doesn’t ooze out of the meat, leaving your chicken dry - this is not desirable!)

Once the sauce has reduced, turn off the heat, and strain. Sauce, done! Drizzle sauce over the chicken breasts, and serve with your favorite potato dish, wild rice, cous cous, or other starch of your choice. (I served mine tonight with Risotto-style Rosemary Potatoes, but that's another recipe for another day.) Enjoy!