Goat Cheese and Roasted Red Pepper Stuffed Chicken with Parmesan Baked Tomato

We eat a lot of chicken and keeping it interesting is always a challenge. For tonight's dinner I decided to go with a stuffed chicken. When you cook chicken this way it is usually really tender and is excellent with goat cheese. 

Prep time: 20 minutes (although some of the prep for the tomato can be done while chicken is cooking
Bake time: 60 minutes
Total time: 1 hour 10 mins


Ingredients
Stuffed Chicken
2 large chicken breasts
1 small log of goat cheese
1 green onion, finely sliced
1 full roasted red pepper, jarred and sliced in half
2 tsp garlic, minced...I used jarred
2 tbsp fresh parsley, chopped
salt and pepper to taste


Parmesan Baked Tomato
1 large tomato, cut in half
handful of croutons
1/8 cup parmesan, grated
1 tsp garlic, minced... I used jarred
a few sprinkles of dried rosemary


Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350 F.
2. Place the chicken breasts in a large ziplock bag and pound until they are about 1/4 inch thick with a meat pounder. The ziplock helps the chicken from tearing and the counter clean.
3. In a small bowl crumble the goat cheese and mix with green onion.
4. Take the chicken breasts out of the bag and lay them out on a plate. Put half the goat cheese mixture on each, then top with the red pepper.
5. Fold up the sides and ends of the chicken around the filling and fasten with toothpicks.
6. Place the chicken with the seam side down on a baking tray, then spread 1 tsp of garlic over each, sprinkle salt, pepper and parsley over top.
7. Cover with foil and bake for 45 minutes.
8. While the chicken is cooking, take the tomatoes and with the inside facing up, cut criss-crosses in them to allow the seasonings to seep in when they are cooking.
9. Spread 1/2 tsp of minced garlic on each, then sprinkle rosemary.
10. Crush up the croutons into crumbs (I used a mini chopper, but you could put in another bag and use the meat pounder).
11. Top the tomatoes with the croutons so the tops are covered, the top with grated parm.
12. Put tomatoes on a baking sheet, and put in the oven when the chicken has about 20 minutes left on the timer.
13. Once 45 minutes are up, uncover chicken and cook for an additional 15 minutes. Keep tomatoes in the oven as well.
14. Remove the toothpicks when you are ready to serve, and sprinkle some more parsley on top. If some of the cheese seeped out when it cooked, drizzle it over the top. Because there may be some chicken fat also in the bottom of the baking pan you may want to skim the cheese out.

Serve it up and enjoy! We wanted some more veggies, so we also included a mixed green salad.

Let me know what you think and leave a comment!