Week #18: Chicken with Olives and Artichokes

Hey, there! Remember me? I believe the last time I contributed to this blog the leaves were just beginning to change. And now, an obscene number of weeks later, we are covered in snow. I am trying to get back to blogging in the new year. I have kept up with the cooking part of our challenge but have fallen short on following through with sharing what I made.

So without further ado, here is my first recipe of the new year:



Chicken with Olives and Artichokes
Adapted from: Weight Watchers Now and Later page 60

(Note: the idea behind this cookbook is that you cook extra of one ingredient on the first night and then use the leftovers to make a different dish later in the week. For the purpose of this blog, I will share the recipes seperately as I try them. If you wanted to make one recipe without the second night meal you would just adjust the ingredients accordingly)

6 5oz boneless skinless chicken breasts
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp black pepper
2 tsp olive oil
1 8.5oz can artichoke hearts drained and quartered
1/4 cup low sodium chicken broth (I upped this considerably to 3/4 cup more on that later)
Juice of 1/2 lemon (I used an entire lemon)
8 kalamata olives chopped (I subbed black olives to appease my husband who is anti-kalamata)
2 garlic cloves minced
1 tablespoon chopped fresh basil (oops. I just realized I forgot this)

1. Sprinkle chicken with salt and pepper. Heat oil in a large skillet over medium high heat. Add chicken and cook until lightly browned 3 minutes on each side (okay, so this is where things started going off the rails. The chicken breasts I purchased were mutant sized and so I had to throw timing out the window and add more of the other ingredients to compensate)

2. Stir in the artichokes, broth, lemon juice, olives and garlic. Bring to a boil. Reduce heat, cover and cook until the flavors are blended and the chicken is cooked through, 5 minutes (or in my case 20 minutes because of the mutant chicken breasts)

(Optional: transfer 2 breasts to a container to be used in future recipe)

3. Remove skillet from heat and stir in basil (oops) Serve the chicken with the sauce. (Note: In part because I had to add more broth to compensate for the mutant chicken breasts, my sauce was really thin at this point so instead of serving right away, I removed the chicken and returned the sauce to the stove to cook down for a few minutes) We served the chicken and sauce over a bed of whole wheat egg noodles.

Review: This was okay. Much like any recipe made to be low fat and healthy, there were many ways I could think of to make it taste better but all of those methods would reduce the "low fat and healthy" aspect. I think feta would have been a nice touch here. Would add a little bit to the WW points total, but I think it would have worked well with the existing flavors.