Honeymoon Chicken: Pesto, Lemon, Olive, and Sun-Dried Tomatoes
Have you heard of Marry Me Chicken?
Well, I’ve got a riff on the famous and delicious dish, and, considering the nice zing that you get when eating it, we can just skip the ceremony and go straight to the honeymoon.
Background: I have joined a wonderful group on Facebook called “Cooking and Coping: Gathering Around The Virtual Table” which has been a nice source of food ideas, tips, and entertainment during the last year. Its membership is open to the public, and I highly recommend joining.
Those who participate in “Cooking and Coping” will often seize on a dish, and, for a while, its members will feature their versions.
One of the recent popular dishes being featured by different cooks was Marry Me Chicken. I’d never heard of such, but the flavor profile was instantly attractive: standard Mediterranean ingredients in a cream sauce.
As often happens when I find a new recipe, I look for variations online to note ingredient adjustments or variations of technique.
What I found with the Marry Me Chicken recipe was its kinship in flavor to a linguine recipe from Giada De Laurentiis.
So, as I often do, I joined the two recipes in matrimony. I said “I will” and “I do” and jumped to the good part.
Missing from the original chicken dish were green olives and lemon, and as both recipes feature olive oil, Parmesan, and basil, I figured that prepared basil pesto could serve as a partial substitute. I also used boneless, skinless chicken thighs instead of breasts to avoid any issues of uneven cooking and dryness.
The results were outstanding.
Serve, as I did here, with roasted potatoes and onion, or rice, or pasta, as you like.
I made the Lipton Onion Soup roasted potatoes recipe off the back of the box (added a large-dice sweet onion for giggles) to go along with the chicken, and its flavors blend with the chicken’s sauce beautifully.
Enjoy …
Honeymoon Chicken
4-5 chicken thighs (boneless, skinless)
1 tsp Tony Chachere’s or another spicy seasoning blend
2-3 garlic cloves, minced
½ - 1 tsp red pepper flakes
½ large lemon, zested and juiced
¾ cup chicken broth
½ cup heavy cream
½ cup sun-dried tomatoes, chopped (not packed in oil, like Bella Sun Luci)
½ cup pitted green olives, sliced
2-3 TB prepared basil pesto
½ cup freshly grated Parmesan
Directions
Preheat oven to 375 degrees.
Season chicken thighs with Tony’s or another equivalent spicy seasoning, salt, and pepper. Heat oil in an oven-proof pan. Brown chicken thighs for 4 minutes on each side and remove to a plate.
Quickly soften minced garlic in a hot pan, stirring quickly for about 30 seconds, and do not allow the garlic to burn.
Add in chicken broth and cream and stir to get the brown bits off the bottom. Bring liquid to a simmer.
Add red pepper flakes, lemon juice, zest, sundried tomatoes, green olives, basil pesto, and Parmesan and simmer for about 5 minutes.
Add chicken back into oven-proof pan and spoon sauce over each piece. Move pan to the hot oven and cook for 15 minutes or until chicken is cooked through.
Be careful removing the pan from the oven, and warn anyone who comes near not to touch the handle.
Allow chicken to cool and sauce to thicken for about 5 minutes before serving. Garnish with basil leaves and additional Parmesan, if desired.