Recipe #5 - Brandon's Chicken Florentine

Ingredients:

• 2 ounces Uncooked Spaghetti
• 1 ounce Baby Spinach
• 1 4oz Chicken Breast (Boneless/Skinless)
• 1 teaspoon olive oil
• 1 Tablespoon Parmesan Cheese 

 

Directions:

First, clean chicken breast of all excess fat that may be on the meat.  For this recipe, I wanted to give my chicken a nice garlic flavor.  I minced up a handful of garlic cloves and placed the raw chicken breasts in a freezer bag with the garlic and some olive oil.  After making sure the chicken was covered with the oil and garlic mixture, I let it sit in the refrigerator for around 2 hours.  Once I removed the chicken from the freezer bag, I wiped off all of the garlic from the chicken before cooking.  Now, sear chicken breast in hot skillet with non-stick cooking spray briefly on both sides just to get a nice golden brown color.  Finish chicken in the oven at 350°F until an internal temperature of 165°F or above is reached.  Chicken and any other kind of poultry must be cooked to this internal temperature for safe consumption.

While chicken is in the oven, boil the 2 ounces of uncooked spaghetti until done (approximately 7 minutes).  I use a little olive oil in my boiling water so that the pasta doesn't stick together.  Also while the chicken is finishing up in the oven, take this time to wilt your spinach.  Get your pan hot and spray with non-stick cooking spray (I like using the spray because it has zero calories).  Once hot, add your spinach in and just cook until wilted.  Lastly, drain the pasta.  If you are making large quantities, note that 2 ounces of uncooked pasta equals out to approximately 5 ounces cooked.

Now that all items are cooked, mix together the pasta, spinach and olive oil.  Sprinkle the top of the dish with the Parmesan cheese and top with the chicken cut into desired sized pieces.  This dish is also great with grape tomatoes mixed in as well, I just didn't happen to have any on hand.  Also, the reasoning for the large ingredient quantities shown in the pictures is because I made this recipe for 5 servings, my lunches for the rest of the week.

I hope y'all enjoy this light little lunch as much as I did!

Serving Size = Entire Recipe     Calories per serving = 377

Happy dieting everyone!