Oven Roasted Chicken Breast with Brown Sugar, Ginger Glazed Carrots and Portobello Mushroom Ravioli

A contemporary classic dish with some new twists. This chicken dish is sure to please even the most discriminating palette. It is easy to prepare, and the flavor complexities in this dish are worth the effort. Items needed:

4 Bone-in skin-on chicken breasts
2 cups carrots sliced on a bias
½ shallot
2 tablespoons minced garlic
Salt and pepper to taste
6 tablespoons unsalted butter
2 tablespoons brown sugar
½ teaspoon ground ginger
1/8 teaspoon crushed red chilies
¼ cup shaved parmesan cheese
¼ cup crumbled Gorgonzola

2 cups half & half chopped parsley for garnish
20 portobello ravioli
1 container baby Bella sliced mushrooms
¼ cup rice wine vinegar
2 tablespoons olive oil
2 tablespoons Italian seasoning
6 oz pineapple juice
1 cup spring mix
5 heirloom tomatoes sliced in half lengthwise
instant-read meat thermometer

First, mix the pineapple juice, olive oil, rice wine vinegar, and Italian seasoning, then in a Ziploc bag, place your chicken breasts inside and pour the marinade over the chicken, seal your bag, and put in the refrigerator overnight. Preheat your oven to 375 degrees, place your chicken on a wire roasting rack, and place it in your pan, elevating the chicken helps it cook more evenly. Place in preheated oven and cook uncovered for approximately 45 minutes, start checking the temperature after 30 minutes and pull from the oven and let it rest when it reaches a minimum of 160 degrees, carryover cooking will get it to 165 in a few minutes.

Put 6 cups of lightly salted water in a pot to boil, in another pot, place 2 cups of water to boil. Once the pot with 6 cups of water boils, add your ravioli to cook, add your carrots to the other pot and bring it to a boil, then reduce to a low simmer. In a sauté place two tablespoons of butter, ½ a minced shallot and sweat it, add your garlic, and sweat it for about 3 minutes, add the mushrooms and cook them down in the butter. You should see a beautiful mushroom sauce begin to develop. Add the ravioli and toss them in the mushroom sauce. Once that is done season with salt and white pepper and add your half & half.

Start taking temperatures on your chicken and look for a minimum of 160 degrees before you pull it from the oven, that is your pull temperature and 165 is your final temperature and should reach that within 5 minutes after you pull it from the oven due to carry overcooking.

In a separate sauté pan, melt two tablespoons of unsalted butter, add two tablespoons of brown sugar and your ground ginger, when the syrup comes together, add the cooked carrots, and toss in the sauce. Cook the brown sugar and ginger syrup down by half. Season with salt and white pepper, cover, and set aside while you finish the ravioli. To the ravioli you are going to add your cheeses and stir so that it melts evenly. When I am doing roasted chicken, I always choose bone-in, skin-on chicken. Whether it is chicken breast, chicken thighs, whole chickens, or leg quarters. The reason for choosing the bone-in, skin-on chicken is quite simple, flavor. The skin helps protect the meat from drying out as it cooks, the bone releases flavor into the meat and if you roast it on a rack, the fat under the skin, the only real fat to deal with, is prevented from saturating the meat, making this an extremely healthy choice for a protein component to any meal. Boneless, skinless meats, like thighs and breast are great for stir frying, battering, and deep-frying, and for doing dishes that contain diced meats, like fried rice, pasta dishes, etc. It is important to choose the right meat for the right cooking process, and with this being a roasted dish, bone-in, skin-on chicken is the best. When doing roasted meats of any kind, it is important that you have your thermometer on hand. Time and temperature are critical to a perfectly roasted meat. Now that we have all the components to our dish made, it is time to plate. Place the spring mix on the plate and set the chicken breast on top, garnish around the chicken with the heirloom tomatoes, plate the carrots and garnish with parsley, plate the ravioli and garnish first with gorgonzola and then shaved parmesan, the ambient temperature of the ravioli and sauce will begin to melt the cheeses and garnish the rest of the plate with parsley. When doing roasted meat dishes, several things are done in the process to help make the flavors stand out. One is marinating the meat. Marinades do several things, they break down muscle tissue allowing them to absorb flavors from the marinade, the fat structure of the meat is altered in a way that allows the fat to render out better, and in the case with poultry with the skin-on, it helps the skin better protect the meat by forming a barrier to the heat to prevent the surface from drying out because of the insulating layer of the skin and subcutaneous fat layer that will render out during the cooking process. All these steps are worth doing because the final product is so amazing and full of flavor. The beautiful color of the roasted skin, the way your plates are lain out, the garnishes, may seem unnecessary to you, but believe that the extra 5 minutes you take in plating has a profound impact on the people you are serving. People eat with their eyes. The food could have the most amazing flavors in the world and be cooked well, but if it does not look appetizing, people will not have a memorable dining experience. They may remember that you are a great cook, but the food will not be memorable, and part of getting the cooking process right, is the dining experience. After working so hard to perfect the cooking technique, you want it to be just as appealing to the eye.

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