Chicken Breast with Goat Cheese

I love love love goat cheese and even more so when it's served warm and melty. It has this great creamy texture and a little bit of tang, and you'll often find it as a salad topper, spread on crostini, sprinkled over mussels, etc. For Christmas I received several cookbooks (of course) and one of them had a recipe for "Legit Prosciutto-Wrapped Chicken with Shallot Sauce." Um yum. When I read that the chicken was stuffed with an 8oz log of goat cheese, I could feel my mouth watering.

To start, preheat your oven to 350 degrees. Let the goat cheese sit out on the counter for at least 30 minutes to come to room temperature. Take 4 large chicken breasts and create a pocket down the center of each one, spreading it open with your fingers. Then stuff with that goat cheese!

Season the chicken with salt, pepper, and fresh thyme leaves, then wrap with a slice or two of prosciutto. My prosciutto wouldn't cooperate with me and kept peeling off in weird uneven strips when I was trying to remove it from the package so it's okay if you have to get a little artistic! Make sure you wrap it around the opening with the goat cheese as much as possible to keep it contained. You don't want to lose a drop of that beautiful cheese!

Lay your chicken breasts in a greased baking dish and bake for 15 minutes. Depending on the thickness of your chicken you may need to adjust this! Let me tell you a story. I baked mine for the time listed in the recipe, made it all pretty and photographed it, then proceeded to eat it for dinner before heading to work. After two bites I noticed the texture seemed a bit off. Lo and behold the whole top layer was still pink! Ack! So gross! I immediately threw it all back in the oven at 400 for another 20 minutes, so be aware you may need to adjust your cook time!

Once your chicken is done baking, top with a dollop of shallot sauce, which you will make while the chicken is baking.

To start, warm two tablespoons of olive oil over low heat in a skillet. Whisk one tablespoon of flour with 1/2 cup of low-fat milk in a small bowl. Once the olive oil is heated, add two to three thinly sliced shallots to the skillet and saute until soft. Then add in 1/2 cup of dry white wine and 1/2 cup of chicken broth. Add in the milk-flour mixture and stir. Let the sauce simmer for a minute or two to become thick. Garnish with cracked black pepper.

I loved this dish and hope to make it part of our dinner rotation. The tang from the goat cheese goes well with the saltiness from the prosciutto and the creamy, sweet shallot sauce. It was a very good dish for a cold winter day!