Chipolte Chicken & Creamy Spinach

4 oz canned mild green chiles

1.25 cups heavy cream

4 large boneless skinless chicken breasts

1/4 cup chicken stock

6 cups fresh spinach ( must be fresh, not frozen)

my additions: 1 tsp sugar or splenda

1/2 tsp nutmeg


Pound chicken out flat or slice horizontally into halves

Put chicken, cream, and chiles into a heavy duty Ziploc bag. Marinate in fridge minimum 2-3 hours.

In the original recipe, only 2 Tbs of the cream goes in the marinade. The chicken is broiled in a baking dish 6 inches from the heat until the chicken is brown, about 4-5 min. The remainder of the cream is added after the chicken is turned over. The chicken is then cooked for 4-5 min more. Then, you put the chicken on a plate and scrape everything out of the baking dish into a sauté pan, add the stock and spinach and cook until wilted. This works, but I don’t like cooking in the broiler and you end with another dirty pan.

I find it easier to sauté the chicken on the stove. Here’s how it works. All of the cream goes into the marinade. Put a little butter and oil into a sauté pan. When you’re ready to cook the chicken, pull each breast out of the bag, using the bag to scrape off the marinade into the bottom of the bag. The idea is to get the chicken into the pan relatively dry, or it will boil instead of sauté. Cook on med-hi heat as you would any chicken. Remove the chicken to a warm plate.

Leave all the brown stuff in the pan. Turn your heat to hi and dump in your raw marinade. You need to cook this for a few minutes, then add the chicken stock and spinach. Stir and flip constantly. The spinach will wilt very quickly.

Serve the spinach with the chicken. This also reheats well.