Tarragon Chicken and Tasty Cauliflower

Chicken dishes are probably one of the most searched for online. You can use chicken in so many different ways, and it just so happens to be an excellent lean protein. Well that should come with a disclaimer: chicken without the skin, trimmed of extra fat, is an excellent lean protein. That being said I hardly eat red meat anymore, and with fish being quite pricey, erin and I tend to eat quite a bit of chicken. We are also living with family during our move and chicken is a perfect (low cost) meal when it comes to feeding a group.

As I was performing my "daily recipe website check" and I came upon Tarragon Chicken on eatingwell.com. After perusing the ingredients and realizing that I had pretty much everything needed to execute, I took it on! The next question is always: what to serve along side... Normally you would want a starch of some sort to pair with dinner, however I wanted to try and keep the meal fairly low-cal and the way I eat my starches is never low-cal. I had a craving for mashed potatoes and I knew that erin wouldn't resist that suggestion. I then remembered a recipe I had seen awhile back that used cauliflower instead of potatoes. Crazy? NO! The orginal recipe I had found used half cauliflower, half potato, however I found a Creamy Cauliflower Puree that seemed to only require Cauliflower, even better! After a quick trip to the store I was ready to cook.

I must say that these were two simple recipes to execute. While I steamed my cauliflower (i doubled that recipe) I was able to trim the chicken and get that cooking. By the time the cauliflower was ready to assemble the chicken was simmering/cooking on its final step. Perfect. I did not add the oil to the cauliflower puree, and I subbed Brommel and Brown for butter. I figure that everyone can add butter/seasoning individually and control their own calorie intake. I also used Fat free sour cream for the chicken and whole grain mustard!

Both dishes were a hit! As you can see above in the pictures I cut the chicken up into smaller pieces (just a little trick I try so that getting 2nd's really just means finishing your 1st) and everyone put tarragon sauce over the puree as well. Reading about Tarragon I was a bit nervous because it mentioned a strong smell of licorice, which I do not care for, however I think the white wine really balanced all the flavors perfectly. The cauliflower was also a bit of a risk because as mentioned in previous blogs erin is a potato lover...but she thought these fed her mashed potato cravings to a tee.

Must try dishes all around. The dinner earned an 8.4 rating from Erin.

We tried to save her Dad enough leftovers...but frankly he didn't see the cauliflower pan before we started eating...so as far as he knows he got his share...shhhhh!