Recipe: Chicken Stuffed with Spinach, Prosciutto, and Goat Cheese

So, I got too much prosciutto when I bought the ingredients for my ziti dish the other night and, too lazy to find a recipe that included it, I made up my own for dinner last night. I'm warning you now: when I share the recipe, I'm estimating just about every measurement, because I was comfortable guessing at the amount of things I needed, but it should work out great and you should trust yourself to know how much is enough (or how much is too much...if the stuffing is pouring out all over the place, you've probably made too much).

The chicken, fresh out of the oven

Ingredients (for the chicken)

• 2 chicken breasts
• 6-8 oz. prosciutto, chopped
• 2-4 oz. goat cheese, crumbled/chopped
• 1/2 cup spinach, chopped (you can use fresh; or thaw out frozen spinach, squeeze it dry, and use that) 
• 1 clove garlic, minced
• Salt and pepper
• Cooking spray or butter

Directions
Mix together the prosciutto, goat cheese, spinach, and garlic. Now, there are two ways you can stuff the chicken: a roulade, in which you spread the mixture on one side of the chicken (after the chicken has been pounded into about a 1.5 inch thickness) and roll it up, or a stuffed breast, in which you cut a pocket into a chicken breast and stuff the pocket. Whichever method you decide on, make sure you put a few toothpicks in the chicken to hold it together. Sprinkle the chicken with salt and pepper and add a drizzle of olive oil, then place in a greased, oven-safe dish and bake at 350* F for 45 minutes, or until chicken is no longer pink inside.

So, it's certainly not a magazine-worthy picture, but here's the finished dish

Stuffing chicken is a great way to get rid of some extra veggies or a leftover hunk of cheese and you can put pretty much anything inside chicken and make it taste great. As you can see, I used spinach, prosciutto, and goat cheese, but combinations like basil, sun-dried tomatoes, and fontina cheese or arugula, blue cheese, and bacon work well with this dish too, and any number of ingredients can be put together to make a stuffing. I served a basil and goat cheese polenta and oven-roasted asparagus on the side for this dish, but potatoes or pasta and any kind of vegetable would have worked well with this dish. Overall, this meal was well-balanced, flavorful, and filling, so try it out and experiment with different ingredients for the stuffing!