Thursday, August 16, 2012

balsalmic chicken and bruschetta

Yesterday I had a chicken defrosting in the refrigerator and basil to use up from our backyard. What could be better (read: easier) than chicken on the grill topped with bruschetta? With tomatoes as delicious as they've been this year, not much. So I hit the market for tomatoes (three red, and a box of yellow cherry tomatoes for color), threw in an onion, and grabbed some fresh mozzarella.
 
The trick was figuring out how to roast the bruschetta and melt the mozzarella without transferring everything from the outside grill to the indoor oven broiler. (Which doesn't work at our house right now anyway. More on that later.) I found the solution in our steel grill griddle by lining it with aluminum foil.
Ingredients:
1 chicken breast, pounded thin
1/4 c. plus 3 T balsamic vinegar
2 T olive oil
1 T light brown sugar
6 cloves fresh garlic, minced
salt & pepper, to taste
3 red tomatoes, chopped
handful of yellow cherry tomatoes, chopped
handful of fresh basil, chopped
onion, chopped
fresh mozzarella, sliced thin or shredded

After pounding the chicken thin with a mallet, put it in a zip-lock bag with 1/4 cup balsamic vinegar, 1 T olive oil, brown sugar, three cloves of minced garlic, and a generous amount of freshly-ground sea salt and pepper. Marinate in the fridge for about an hour. For the bruschetta, in a medium bowl combine the remaining vinegar, olive oil, and minced garlic with the tomatoes, basil, and onion. Salt and pepper to taste, set aside. From there I put Jon to work on the grill with the chicken. When the breasts were about five minutes from being done, we transferred them to a grill-safe mesh pan lined with aluminum foil, and topped each breast with a few generous spoonfuls of bruschetta and the sliced mozzarella, and closed the grill top for about five minutes so that the mozzarella could melt. Any tomato bits that fell off the chicken were caught and roasted by the pan, and the sugar and vinegar kept the chicken moist. Hope this simple recipe can work for you in a pinch, too.
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