Father’s Day Dinner: Chicken Caprese

As I have mentioned, I come from a foodie family… we eat and we eat well. I am more into baking than cooking  a dinner, so I usually defer to everyone else for meals… I am perfectly happy to show up, eat dinner and then do the dishes. I am much more familiar with cooking dinner for myself or my friends rather than my family. Alas, this past Sunday was father’s day and I was making dinner for my dad. And shocker of all shockers, my father (the man who runs a restaurant and has been in the business for thirty-something years) was impressed with my cooking skills. Trust me, in my family, this is a big deal. So, I made a chicken dish I found on Pinterest (it wasn’t so much a recipe but more of a toss a few things together), and I am calling it Chicken Caprese.

Ingredients

• Two-three chicken breasts (organic is my preference)
• 1/3 cup heirloom balsamic vinegar
• 1/3 cup olive oil
• 1 heaping tablespoon, plus a bit more of minced garlic
• Fresh-sliced mozzarella
• Roma tomatoes
• Fresh basil
• A bottle of balsamic glaze

Steps

1. Mix first three ingredients together in a large zip lock back, toss in chicken and marinate for two-three hours.
2. Grill chicken
3. While chicken is cooking, arrange stacks to put on top of cooked chicken: one slice mozzarella cheese, one or two basil leaves, with a slice of tomato on top. I make two stacks per chicken breast and put them side by side.
4. Once chicken is cooked completely, pull off grill and put in a baking dish.
5. Put cheese/tomato/basil stack on top of chicken breast, and drizzle with balsamic glaze.
6. Put chicken in oven, under the broiler for a few minutes…. Just enough to soften the cheese.
7. Arrange on plate, add more balsamic glaze.

Forgive the bad BlackBerry photo!

I served this with a big salad full of veggies and a blue cheese dressing (which went great with the balsamic flavor of the chicken).  I also served it with a side of zucchini chips, which I blogged about here: https://convertedsoutherner.wordpress.com/2012/02/16/zucchini-chips/

I did do a few things different to this zucchini recipe though since I made these the first time… I soaked them in Italian dressing for a couple hours before I put them in the oven and left out all butter sprays. I also left off the shredded mozzarella cheese and just did the parmesan. I also used herd of Provence instead of basil.

All in all, a pretty good meal! I hope my dad doesn’t start expecting me to cook when we have family dinner night though, I’d much just show up and eat the yummy food!