Balsamic Chicken with Pesto Gravy

I'M BACK! I know, random unexplained absence. Suffice it to say that Thanksgiving and the events thereafter made it quite difficult to focus on my cooking adventures.

That said, I'm back with some good ol' Rachael Ray recipes again this week. Enjoy!

INGREDIENTS:

2 tbsp balsamic vinegar

3 tbsp EVOO

4 small boneless chicken breasts

2 tbsp butter

2 tbsp flour

1 1/2 cups chicken stock

1/3 cup heavy cream

1/4 cup store-bought pesto

DIRECTIONS:

-In a bowl, combine the vinegar, 2 tbsp of the EVOO, and salt/pepper to taste. Add the chicken and turn to coat.

-Heat a large skillet over medium-high heat with 1 tbsp of the EVOO. Add the chicken and cook for 5 minutes on each side.

-Remove the chicken to a cutting board. Add the butter to the skillet, and when it has melted, add the flour and cook for a minute or so. Whisk in the chicken stock and cream and bring up to a simmer to thicken. Remove from the heat and stir in the pesto.

-Pour the pesto gravy over the chicken and serve.

COMMENTs:

-First, I don't know what planet Rachael was on, cooking that chicken for only 10 minutes. We had ours cooking 20 minutes easily. One thing to watch for: the balsamic vinegar burns when its left to cook that long. We had to turn the chicken a lot in order to prevent this.

-Before the pesto is added, the gravy tastes a lot like regular old gravy. (I've never made "regular old gravy" before so I was excited to find this out.) I ended up adding a little more than the 1/4 cup of pesto Rachael suggested. The pesto gravy was really tasty, made it more interesting than normal gravy.

-Rachael suggests serving with an arugula salad; we went low maintenace with some canned corn. Yum!