Couch Cooking: pesto chicken with caramelized brussel sprouts

As you can see, my plating skills are like abc, but nothing can stop me from cooking, not terrible plating skills and definitely not the horrible weather of Delhi!!
Fresh basil always inspires me to make pesto. Today I will make pesto chicken and caramelized brussel sprouts for dinner, you can replace the side with some other vegetables of your choice.

Pesto chicken

what you will require

chicken breast
pesto
toothpicks

You can buy pesto in the store but I have made my own pesto using

Basil (half of what you see in the picture)
Garlic (3-4 cloves)
Olive oil (1 tbsp)
walnuts and almonds (you may even use pine nuts or cashew), handful.

First I made my pesto using the ingredients above, it yields a cup but I need only one spoonful of it for my chicken breast. Put all ingredients together and add some sea salt/ regular salt and blend it to make a paste.

Now, using a sharp knife, gently slice your chicken breast 3/4th of the way to make a pocket to stuff the pesto as shown below.

Using some wooden toothpicks, seal the chicken.

After this, you can grill it or pan sear it like me on low heat in some olive oil. Use a lid so that the chicken remains moist and juicy. It took me around 20 minutes to cook it and I kept sprinkling small amounts of water to the chicken to help it cook. (do not use large quantities of water at once...it just wont work)...see the amount of water i used each time below in the picture.

Let the chicken rest for 10 minutes. Slice and serve !!

caramelised brussel sprouts

What you will require.

Brussel sprouts
pancetta/bacon
one small onion

Cut the pancetta/ bacon as shown. (you may use a scissor for bacon)

In a pan, fry the pancetta in 2 drops of olive oil (just to help in rendering the fat from the meat)

Remove the meat, get rid of excess oil and throw in the onion and let them brown for about a minute before adding in the brussel sprouts. Keep the heat on medium and put a lid on for about 2 minutes.

After that, mix in the meat you fried before and put a lid on till the sprouts cook (for a crunchy texture, I kept mine on medium heat with the lid only for about 4 - 5 minutes.