by Erikson Arcilla

Created on: June 01, 2010

The trouble today was that we were all out of pork! My brother loves them, but I guess he’ll have to settle with what I’m making. The inspiration to making this recipe came a few months ago while watching T.V. It was a show featuring how healthy and safe it was to eat chicken breast. It doesn’t have that much fat, it’s easy to fillet and the best part is, it’s easy to cook. The problem however with chicken breasts that it doesn’t have that much flavor in it. It must have some kind of sauce with a kick to it. So I thought Mexican! Mexican cuisine features salsas and spicy flavors, usually put together to make delicious tortilla and taco dips. What if I put them together? I asked myself. Sure enough, dinner was ready and my mom, dad and of course my brother were hungry.  How did I make the dish? Hehe, here goes…

Ingredients:

1/4 Kilo Deboned Chicken Breast
5 tablespoons of Salsa ( It should have your basic needs like onions, bell peppers, etc )
2-3 tablespoons of Olive oil
1 Tsp Spanish Paprika
1/4 Tsp Cayenne Pepper
1/2 Tsp Thyme (dried)
1/2 Tsp basil (dried)
1 Tsp Mustard ( Prepared or Dijon)
2 Tablespoons of Parmesan cheese

You start of by patting the fillet with a kitchen towel to make sure the spices won’t get washed down. Patting it with a kitchen towel also ensures that your spices will mix well enough with what you are making. After this,season it with salt and pepper. Now  you can start by putting the Cayenne, thyme, basil, mustard, and the paprika all together and rub it on the chicken. After this, put the parmasean in with the chicken and make sure it sticks to the bird.

Heat your griller ( I use a cast iron pan grill ) and make sure to use olive oil to promote the healthy part of the dish. After you start to see a little smoke rise from the pan, you are good to go. Grill the chicken to desired state. I highly advice though that you use low to medium flame so your chicken won’t get over cooked. When you start to over cook your chicken, you lose all that juice inside resulting into a dry and tasteless bird. Okay, after cooking your fillet place it in a separate dish and set aside for a while.

Now for the sauce! Start off by heating your pan ( I use a non-stick ) and  heating your salsa. Put your chicken in with the sauce to that it can absorb some of that flavor and heat. Now this step is just to bind the chicken with the salsa, there is no need to do this for a long time. 3-4 minutes should be enough.

Serve and garnish with fresh basil or rosemary. Enjoy!

Note: Do not limit yourself to the amount of ingredients I used, feel free to tamper the quantity and add different ingredients to create your own version of this dish. I myself keep on tampering them. This is just a basic build.

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