Grilled Chicken and Pesto Sandwiches with California Salad

This recipe will make four hearty sandwiches. The crisp, clean taste of the salad is a nice complement to the rich pesto sauce.

Pesto Chicken sandwich ingredients:

• 2 boneless skinless chicken breasts
• Salt and pepper
• 8 slices sourdough or other firm white bread
• 4 slices Mozzarella cheese
• Grilled red pepper, sliced thin
• 4 teaspoons pesto sauce (my easy basil pesto or my recipe for parsley pesto)

Preparation:
Prepare the salad ahead of time and place in the refrigerator to chill.
Pound the chicken slices between two pieces of plastic wrap with a meat mallet.
Cut each pounded piece in half.
Spray an indoor cooking grill with cooking spray and preheat it.
Salt and pepper the chicken, then place on the grill and cook for three minutes.
Spray a cooking pan with cooking spray and preheat it.
Lay the bread slices out and place a slice of Provolone on four of them and a tomato on top of the cheese.
Lay the grilled chicken on the other slices and top with pesto sauce.
Put the sandwiches together.
Cook the sandwiches until brown on both sides and the cheese is melted.
Serve piping hot.

California Salad ingredients

• Spring salad mix
• ½ cup of walnuts, chopped
• ½ cup of craisins or raisins
• ½ a navel orange, peeled and sliced
• Raspberry vinaigrette
• (Optional) Crumbled bleu cheese or feta cheese as a garnish

Salad preparation:
Toss all the ingredients together with a dash of vinaigrette.
Top with bleu or feta cheese if desired.

Photo/roboppy on Flickr
 
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Chicken Roulade with Spinach and Pesto Stuffing

Wine Pairing: Chardonnay

This elegant meal looks difficult to make, but it’s not. The hardest part is squeezing the liquid out of the spinach. If you don't like the taste of basil, try using parsley instead, as I do in my parsley pesto recipe. Served with a side of wild rice, it’s delicious.

Ingredients:
¼ cup Italian dressing
¼ cup chopped fresh basil leaves or 1 tablespoon dried basil
¼ cup grated Parmesan cheese
1/8 teaspoon pepper
½ teaspoon sea salt
1 pound of fresh spinach, cooked, chopped, and squeezed dry (You may substitute a package of frozen spinach, squeezed dry)
1 cup of Italian style bread crumbs
4 boneless, skinless chicken breasts
1 cup of wild rice

Preparation:
Lay the chicken breasts between two sheets of cling wrap and pound with a cooking mallet until they are ¼ inch thick. Sprinkle lightly with salt.
Mix the Italian dressing, basil, cheese, and pepper in a blender.
Pour this mixture into a bowl with the spinach and add the bread crumbs.
Lay some of the spinach mixture onto each breast.
Roll up and secure with wooden picks.
Brush a small amount of Italian dressing over the chicken breasts.
Place in a baking pan and bake at 375 degrees for 45 minutes to one hour, depending on the size of the chicken breasts.
Cook the wild rice according to package directions.
Serve the chicken sliced over a bed of rice.

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Find more recipes and menus with the Sacramento Easy Meals Examiner and wine pairings with the Sacramento Budget Wine Examiner.

Easy Basil Pesto Recipe

Why buy pesto sauce in a jar when it's so easy to make? It has a special flavor when it's fresh. You can whip this pesto sauce together in a few minutes. Of course, pesto sauce in a jar is still handy to have on hand for times when fresh basil isn't available. Either way, pesto is a delicious accent for chicken and pasta.

Basil Pesto

2 cups of fresh basil leaves
¼ cup olive oil
3 cloves of garlic, crushed
¼ cup of pine nuts (Almonds are fine if pine nuts aren’t available.)
1 tsp lemon juice

Put all of the ingredients into a food processor or electric chopper.
Blend until it is creamy.
Refrigerate until ready to use. If it sits overnight the flavors will be more intense.

Use this pesto sauce within a week for freshest flavor.

Photo credit: Marco Carlini.