Chicken Creole!

My bloggy friend Lacey made this recipe last night and it looked awesome!!! She is so creative, by using things from her pantry instead of buying new stuff. Anyway, I'll let her tell you ;-) Thanks again Lacey!

I mentioned in yesterday's post that I had leftover Creole Chicken for dinner. Dave and I have been trying to do this new thing for meals called, "hey-let's-use-stuff-that-we-already-have-in-the-pantry-so-we-can-stop-being-wasteful-and-stop-buying-things-that-we-didn't-need". It's a crazy thing to do, right? Well, to start it all off, we have about 10 cans of the tomato variety, from stewed, to diced, to pureed, etc. So what do you get when you plug "chicken" and "diced tomatoes" into allrecipes.com? Chicken Creole!

Ingredients:

1 tablespoon olive oil

1 clove garlic, minced

1 onion, thinly sliced

1 stalk celery, sliced thin

1 green bell pepper, minced

2 (16 ounce) cans diced tomatoes

1 bay leaf

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/8 teaspoon cayenne pepper

4 skinless, boneless chicken breastsDirections

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C).

2. In a large skillet, heat the oil over medium heat. Add the garlic, onion, celery and bell pepper. Cook, stirring occasionally, until tender (about 4 minutes). Add the tomatoes, bay leaf, salt and cayenne pepper. Cook this Creole sauce 3 minutes longer, stirring often.

3. Arrange the chicken breasts in an 8 x 11 inch baking dish. Pour the Creole sauce over the chicken.

4. Bake 15 to 20 minutes, until the chicken is tender and white throughout.

The only ingredients that I needed to buy were the fresh veggies, and some garlic, so I would call this first venture into using things from our pantry pretty successful!I thought it was weird at first that you only cooked the chicken in the oven with the Creole "sauce", and didn't start cooking it beforehand, but after I tasted it, I didn't care how it was cooked. This chicken was so tender and juicy, and cooking in the tomato based Creole sauce gave it such a good flavor. Also, both of the cans of diced tomatoes that I used were pre-flavored, and I think that added a lot to it.

After Dave tasted it, he insisted that we had it to the "rotation" of stuff to make for dinner, even though we really don't have a rotation, per say. When I asked him just now how he liked the chicken, he said, and I quote verbatim,

"It was like having New Orleans klezmer band parading around on my palate."Oooooooook then. But yes, make this chicken. The pictures don't do it justice, but it was delicious, even a second time around.