What does one do with a chicken breast that you took out of the freezer and had no plans for. My wife had mentioned stuffing chicken with feta last week so I guess that was my main influence. This was a real cook from the gut, open the frig and see what I have kind of creation. Boy you would think that with our new plan of a theme a day cooking I would be a little more organized but then some of my better meals came from the gut. Ok feta, red pepper, onions, mushroom, red wine, lemon and cherry tomatoes. Here we go!

Ingredients

• 1 Chicken breast bone in with skin
• About ¼ cup minced red bell pepper
• About ½ cup feta crumbled
• About 1 Tbsp. Dried Greek oregano
• About 3-4 mushrooms roughly chopped
• Fresh ground pepper (for my wife the pepper head)
• 1 small onion quartered
• 12 cherry tomatoes
• 2 Tbsp. Lemon juice
• About 1 cup red wine
• Cornstarch and water combined.

How

Preheat oven with rake in middle to 450^◦

In a small bowl mix pepper, feta, oregano, pepper together well.*

Rinse and thoroughly dry chicken

Sprinkle salt (lightly) and pepper all over the chicken

Gently loosen the skin on chicken with finger or fat end of butter knife to create a pocket.

Stuff the feta mixture into the pocket and then stick mushroom under skin on top of the feta.

Place in roasting pan (I used a corning ware dish) and drizzle olive oil over chicken.

Add the onions and tomatoes, enough red wine to cover the bottom and lemon juice.

Place in oven and turn heat down to 350^◦

Cook until instant thermometer reads about 165^◦ about 40 minutes. I started checking around 20 minutes because I was paranoid of drying out the chicken.

I crisped the skin by turning on the broiler for about 8-10 minutes still on middle rack.

Watch it though I kind of…what do they call it now on TV when the burn something. Oh ya look how beautifully caramelized it is!

Set chicken aside, pour the drippings into sauce pan add cornstarch bring to boil reduce heat slightly and simmer until thicken.  When it boiled I had to add more cornstarch to thicken a little more. Pour over chicken when plated.

*Steve note: You could mince the mushroom and mix with feta but to tell you the truth I forgot them and stuck them in after. That’s what happens when you empty from frig to counter then move to preparation area and forget something.