Rosemary-Lemon Chicken with Roasted Cauliflower

Share with:

After a run to our local Sam’s Club (well, 45 minutes away/ two states over… Sam’s Club, take the hint….we need you closer), I found myself needing to cook a couple of chicken breasts. Jim had just shown me that the groundhogs had managed to miss chomping on my rosemary and some of the lettuce, so I grabbed those up, along with a head of cauliflower I’d picked up at Sam’s today, and decided on a THM-E-friendly (I sure hope) dinner of rosemary-lemon chicken with roasted cauliflower, with a side of brown rice with some wild rice tossed in for good measure.

While the oven preheated to 400, first I popped the brown rice / wild rice medley into the pressure cooker for its 20-minute cooking. While that came to pressure, I washed and cut the head of cauliflower. In case it helps you to see how I cut it:

So from above, I cut straight down into it (pardon the little green thingies lingering all over…I’d already stripped and chopped the rosemary):

Then I cut one half of the large head into “steaks” … (This is easily enough for four of us, or leftovers for me)

I gave the pan a spritz of oil, laid out the “steaks,” then gave them a quick spritz — all staying under the allotted fat amount for my eating plan. A quick bit of salt finished this off, then I popped this pan into the preheated 400F oven and set the timer for 25 minutes.

While the cauliflower began to roast, I thinly sliced 1 1/2 lemons…

Then made a bed of lemon slices and freshly chopped rosemary. I used a silicone pan liner so I didn’t need any oil. The chicken breast slices went atop that (these were really thick, so I sliced them horizontally in half), and I topped those with another layer of lemon and rosemary. (In hindsight, this was a lot of lemon and rosemary, so I would probably just do the lower lemon and rosemary, then just put the salted/peppered chicken atop and maybe sprinkle with a bit of rosemary, next time.)

That took about 5 minutes or less to prep, so the chicken pan joined the cauliflower pan in the oven for the remaining 20 minutes.

The salvaged romaine lettuce got a thorough rinsing and then a chiffonade with my new Pampered Chef ceramic Santoku knife (I had to try it out, right? And no, I didn’t leave the icky bottom parts on–they’ll go in the compost.)

The chicken breast was served atop a bed of the lettuce chiffonade. The rice got a sprinkling of nutritional yeast to add a cheesy, nutty flavor, and a few bits of chopped tomato add some color and vitamins.