Chicken, creamcheese and spinach

Another simple and fast recipe that I like to make sometimes is Chicken, creamcheese and spinach.

Because that’s basically all there is to it. Grab these three ingredients and cook, done! .. and cook some pasta. Or rice, potatoes, bread, honestly it goes well with a lot of things. It’s incredibly simple and great when you want something simple and tasty you can also experiment a bit with.

But I guess I can also expand on that a little and give some variation examples

Base version

The base version is really just:

• Chicken
• Frozen creamed spinach (or something similar)
• Herb/spice garlic cream cheese (Something like Paturain or Boursin or Garlan)
• Pasta (depending on the chicken chunk size you might want to go with some small pasta like macaroni or fusili)

Preparation:

1. Microwave the frozen spinach so you can use it instantly later
2. Get some pasta cooking, turn off and drain whenever done and let it wait, optionally add a little olive oil to keep the pasta from sticking together while it waits in the dry pan
3. Dice and bake the chicken until tender in some oil (you can add extra ingredients/spices here)
4. Put the defrosted spinach and creamcheese in, and stir on medium heat to get it to almost boiling point
5. Turn off all heat, grab some pasta and some of the chicken-spinach-creamcheese sauce, and enjoy!

the ‘I-changed-my-mind’ version

Take the base version and add the following:

• Canned (diced) tomatoes or fresh tomatoes
• Onion

During step 3, before adding the chicken, saute the onions, then bake then chicken, then add the tomatoes and bake/cook to get some of the water out before adding the creamcheese/spinach. Surprisingly, tomatoes and creamcheese is pretty tasty combined and does not curdle.

Oven dish version

Take the base version and:

• Forget the pasta, cook some potatoes or buy pre-coooked sliced potatoes for oven dishes
• After baking the chicken and other ingredients of step 3, put the whole thing in an oven dish with the cream cheese, normal cheese, and the cooked + sliced potatoes.
• Bake at 175c/350F for about 35-45 minutes (keep an eye on the crust, don’t overdo it)

Things you can add at step 3

• Garlic
• Onions (Saute before the chicken)
• Any random imaginable vegetable or hearty flavored fruit (Broccoli! Paprika/Bellpepper! Beans! Tomatoes!)
• Nuts and seeds (Bake them before adding the chicken to roast them properly, but not too long)
• You can replace the chicken with something like Tofu or some other soy product, but you may want to also add other ingredients and spices to compensate (e.g garlic and carrot for example)