Friday, February 4, 2011

Sun dried tomato pesto chicken served with steamed asparagus and spaghetti squash with pesto.

On my most recent grocery shopping trip I picked up a sun dried tomato pesto, and with the knowledge that it was in the cupboard I came up with this meal idea. It was a great one. 

I thinned out the pesto a little with some crushed tomatoes/pasta tomato sauce making it a little easier to roll chicken in. I think you could do it as it is too and it would be great. If you do add some more tomatoes you may need salt too. Roll the drumsticks or whatever pieces of chicken you are using in it and place in a tray. Add any left over sauce on top of them at the end. 


Then bake in the oven until done. With drumsticks I find they are normally done in about 45mins at 400-450. Check on them as you don't want them to dry out if you overcook them. I added the tiniest amount of grated cheddar at the very end, so little it was almost unnoticed, maybe some more would give you a nicer crust if you like that. 



Instead of having pasta with it I decided on using spaghetti squash instead. For those of you who don't know what that is, it is a yellow squash that comes apart in strings when you flake it after it's cooked, the strings looks like spaghetti and it is quite common over here to use that as a substitute for pasta. I cut up half a squash into large pieces so it would fit in a pan, added a small amount of water, put the lid on and steamed it till it was done. When you can handle them, flake the flesh out into the pan. You can either eat it just like that, or run some butter and pepper through it or as in this case, run some sun dried tomato pesto through it. You can eat it with any form of spaghetti sauce really, just for a change. 

I steamed some asparagus very quickly to go on the side. Done, dinner ready!


I think you could stuff large mushrooms or even small mushroom caps with pesto as a vegetarian option, and experiment with regular pesto too. 

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