Baked Chicken Stuffed with Avocado

This is so easy and healthy to make. The resulting stock from this dish, we used to make chicken noodle soup with the leftover fettucini. =)

A tip: NTUC sometimes has Avocadoes from Mexico in a bundle of 4 for about S$4, which is the cheapest I've found Avos in Singapore. Most places sells them for about S$1.50-S$1.90 each. Cold Storage retails the Australian Avos for S$2+!

Baked Chicken Stuffed with Avocado

http://video.about.com/homecooking/Avocado-Stuffed-Chicken.htm

Ingredients:

8 chicken breasts/legs, pounded flat

4 avocados

6 tablespoons lime juice

1 teaspoon pepper

2 teaspoon garlic powder (You can also use fresh minced garlic)

16g fresh, minced basil leaves

400g diced cherry tomato (You can also use normal tomatoes, but dice them smaller to make it easier to stuff)

150g chopped sweet onion

pepper mill

Method:

1. Slice the Avocados
2. Preheat the oven to 180 degrees Celsius. Cut the avocados lengthwise all the way around. Twist the halves and using your knife, strike and remove the pit.
3. With a large spoon, scoop the avocado out of its peel. Then, with a small paring knife, slice the avocado lengthwise.
4. Put the lime juice on the avocados to prevent them from turning brown.
5. Place the avocado slices in a mixing bowl. Add the pepper, the garlic powder, the minced basil, the diced tomato, and the chopped onion. Mix this all together.
6. Divide this mixture into two parts, so that you will stuff the chicken with one part and retain the other half as an accompanying salad for your meal.
7. Lightly oil a deep baking dish with cooking spray. Make sure that the baking dish is deep to hold all the chicken stock that will be produced by the chicken.
8. To stuff the chicken, lay a piece of chicken out on a flat surface. Scoop out a spoonful of the mixture and lay it onto the chicken. Roll the meat over the mixture and tuck in the ends.
9. Place the stuffed chicken in the dish. Do this with all of the chicken. Then sprinkle the top of the chicken with the cracked peppercorns.
10. Bake the chicken in the oven for 45 minutes.

Serve the chicken with the carbohydrates of your choice. We like it with Aglio Olio fettucini, as we can drizzle the resulting chicken stock over the fettucini.

Fresh Tomato Soup

This soup is soooo good, you'll never want to have Campbell's version of tomato soup again! The beautiful fresh taste of tomatoes is preserved, while the smooth creamy texture of the soup will make you crave for more. =)

Original recipe from Allrecipes, and can be found here:

http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Garden-Fresh-Tomato-Soup/Detail.aspx

Fresh Tomato Soup (serves 10)

Ingredients

1.5 kg skinned fresh tomatoes (approximately 2 large tomatoes per bowl of soup)

1 and a half large onion, sliced

6 whole garlic cloves

1.5 L chicken stock (or 1.5 L water, with 2 Knorr Chicken cubes)

3 tablespoons butter

3 tablespoons all-purpose flour

1 tablespoon white sugar, or to taste

Optional:

Finely chopped fresh basil and croutons for garnishing

Directions

To skin tomatoes:

1. Boil a pot of water.
2. Lightly cut through the skin of a tomato and then immerse the tomato into the boiling water for about 20 seconds, or until you see the skin of the tomato start peeling off. The tomato shouldn’t be in the boiling water too long as you don’t want to cook it. You just want the tomato’s outer layer to soften so that the skin can come off easily.
3. Using a slotted spoon, transfer the tomato into a large bowl of icewater.
4. Use your fingers to easily remove the skin of the tomato.
5. Now cut the tomato into half and remove the hard stalk bit, and then cut the tomato into smaller pieces and put it aside for the soup.

To make the soup:

1. In a large pot, combine the tomatoes, onions, garlic and chicken stock. Boil for about 10 minutes until the tomatoes and onions soften.
2. Blend the soup in a blender until smooth.
3. In the empty pot, melt the butter and stir in the flour to make a roux. Gradually whisk in bit by bit of the blended tomato soup so that no lumps form. Once there is a good amount of smooth tomato soup in the pot, you can just pour the rest of the tomato soup in.
4. Season with the sugar or add in salt if you wish to taste.

I used a thermal pot for step no. 3, so that after bringing the soup to boil, I put it into the thermal pot for the soup to ‘rest’ and its flavours to blend.

I then serve the soup with fresh chopped basil, which brings out the very bright tomato flavour of the soup. I also throw some homemade croutons into the soup as garnish. Yummy!