Baked chicken slathered in pesto and lemon zest

Posted by monicajane in Food, Main Course, Poultry, Recipes on September 8th, 2009

Wandering Coyote gave me the idea of basil and lemon for flavoring chicken yesterday.

I had some chicken breasts in the freezer which I took out yesterday and I decided to modify the recipe WC had because I needed to make another huge batch of pesto today, just like I did here.

So today once the pesto was complete I took out a couple two or 3 tablespoons before freezing the rest and added the zest of one large lemon and some lemon juice. Probably about 1 tbls of lemon. I mixed it up into a paste and smeared it all over the chicken. I added some fresh black ground pepper.

Stuck them in the oven and this is what emerged later:

chik

I’m don’t think this picture can begin to suggest how delighted I was with the flavor of this chicken. The lemon zest in concert with the basil and garlic (and cheese and pine nuts!) was to die for. I have never used this flavor combination with chicken. And the pesto made a very good paste that stuck to the chicken so that the flavor was very rich. YUM! Thanks Wandering Coyote you just grew my chicken world!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 8th, 2009, 5:56 pm and is filed under Food, Main Course, Poultry, Recipes. You can follow any responses to this entry through RSS 2.0. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

#1 by Tina - September 8th, 2009 at 21:16

Sweet…I’m first I love a roasted chicken and this looks wonderful. Can you imagine not liking chicken? It’s not too awfully expensive and you can do sooo much with chicken. So many possibilities.