Belly Healthy

The key to this dish, I found, was using smaller chicken breasts, as the final dish is quite rich and no one at the dinner table will need vast amounts of chicken protein to fill up their bellies. Also, this might seem obvious, but since you’re wrapping the chicken up with the Parma ham (and the ham will stick together very nicely as the oils dry it and make it slightly crispy, too), you can feel free to make a very wide slit horizontally through the chicken breast, instead of a conservative slit like I’d done before. In fact, this makes it a lot tastier since the pesto can be spread over a greater surface area. The Herby Mashed ‘Taters and Northwoods Inn Cabbage Salad are other dairyless recipes that will be posted soon. Promise!

Serves 2

Ingredients:
2 small chicken breasts
6-8 sundried tomatoes, halved
4 slices of Parma ham

For the pesto:
a handful of fresh basil leaves
1/3 cup toasted pine nuts
6-7 chashew nuts
pinch of salt
tiny smidgen of olive oil

1.) Preheat the oven to 400ºF (200 celsius). While your’e waiting, whizz all the pesto ingredients in a blender. The smidgen of olive oil should help it blend, but don’t add too much or it will go all watery on you.
2.) On a cutting board, make a small slit in the top of each chicken breast to create a ‘pocket’.
3.) Spoon the homemade pesto into the pocket and layer the sundried tomato slices onto each chicken breast.
4.) Wrap each chicken breast with 2 slices of Parma ham and put them on a baking sheet. Cover as much of the filling as you can, or the tomatoes might burn.
5.) Finally drizzle each chicken breast with the rest of the oil and bake them in the oven for 25 mins or until the chicken is cooked through. (Be careful of any spluttering oil as you take the chicken out of the oven, as some of the pesto may have leaked.)
6.) Serve with roasted potatoes or grated carrots and cabbage salad.