Spinach and Chicken Bake

A few weeks ago, I told hubby, “I wish there was a way to save all these recipes and blog posts I see all over the Internet, other than just bookmarking every damn thing.” Then along came Pinterest. I gave in quicker than I would have expected. I resisted briefly because it seemed so gimmicky, but it didn’t take long. And now I am more willing to use recipes from anywhere since I can save them all in a central place. Unless they don’t a picture, like the ranch baked chicken recipe. Dumb.

So, unlike about 99% of the posts I’ve made so far, this one is not based on an allrecipes.com recipe. It’s from about.com, which seems pretty weird to me, but it’s the recipe that popped up when I did a google search for chicken and spinach (the two things I had plenty of in my kitchen). So here we are.

Start with lots of fresh baby spinach in a big ol’ casserole dish.

Salt and pepper it.

And add chicken broth. I used low sodium.

It called for either Creole or Cajun seasoning. I had a huge container of Tony’s creole seasoning, or this, Penzey’s Spices Cajun blend, which was a Christmas gift. I went with the Penzey’s blend.

Sprinkle it liberally all over your chicken breasts and put them on the bed of spinach. I was using thin-sliced cutlets (which I’d nuked to defrost – ignore the white pieces on the edges where they got cooked!).

Sprinkle on some chopped green onion.

The recipe said to top with chopped tomato. I didn’t have fresh, so I opened up a can of Italian-seasoned diced tomato. They were in large chunks, which worked well, I think. I just spooned out a bunch.

Cover and bake for a while.

Then make some boxed potatoes au gratin. Love them. Sue me.

Maybe I’ll make these from scratch someday.

After a while, I pulled the chicken out of the oven and removed the foil.

Sprinkled on some Parmesan cheese and put it back in the oven.

Fin!

Yep, pretty good. I think if I make it again, I might add more spinach, as it cooked down so much that I regretted not having made a vegetable side dish. There just wasn’t much spinach for each piece of chicken, and I love spinach so I missed it. I think I might also add a bit of lemon juice to the spinach to give it a little tang, as the chicken broth was good but missing something.

The spice mixture on the chicken was a little bit odd, slightly out of place, but yummy all the same. I do like the idea of topping with tomatoes, as it gave it flavor and moisture.

Yeah, I think I’ll make it again. It was certainly easy enough. Here’s the recipe, if you’d like it. I didn’t really change much, except that I used canned tomatoes and thinly sliced chicken (reducing the cooking time), plus the addition of the cheese.