Grilled Chicken with Chard and Cheese

I recently found myself at one of our local grocery stores, Nob Hill.  Nob Hill has sister stores, which are Raleys and BelAir, and they put out a complimentary quarterly magazine which highlights dishes which can be made from ingredients found in their stores.  While I wasn’t there looking for recipes per se, I came home with my magazine, and found myself looking through the pages and thinking that some of them looked pretty good.  This was one of them, though I confess I’ve never tried chard before, because it looks a lot like rhubarb, which doesn’t seem to me to be good for much besides jams and pies (hence another name for it, ‘pie plant’).  Anyway, I came across this recipe, and for some reason I felt the desire to stretch our boundaries a bit, try something we might not normally try, etc.  You know what? We all loved it.  I think we’ll have it again.  And as a matter of fact, we had quite a bit of chard left over, as well as ingredients for the dressing, so we had it as a salad a few nights later.  Yay for frugal cooking!

Here’s the recipe, compliments of the store magazine, Something Extra.

Grilled Chicken with Chard and Cheese

Ingredients

1 cup boiling water
4 cups 1/2-inch thick red chard strips
3 tbsp. white balsamic vinegar
3 tbsp. sun-dried tomato spread*
Garlic salt and pepper to taste
4 small boneless, skinless chicken breasts, flattened slightly
4 ripe tomato slices
2/3 cup shredded Kerrygold Blarney Castle Cheese (in our Deli)**

Directions

Prep time: 15 minutes, Cook time: about 15 minutes
Pour water over chard and drain immediately. Stir together vinegar and sun-dried tomato spread in a small bowl. Season chicken with garlic salt and pepper; grill chicken over medium-high heat for 5 minutes on each side. Transfer to 4 squares of extra-strength foil and top each with a tomato slice and equal amounts of chard. Drizzle with vinegar mixture and pile cheese on top. Cook over low heat for a few minutes more to melt cheese.

Makes 4 servings.

* We already had some Buitoni pesto with sun dried tomatoes around (I use it to make yummy sandwiches…shredded chicken, fresh basil, tomato, and provolone cheese on a sweet or sourdough roll. Spread some pesto on roll, add other ingredients, put under the broiler to toast and melt cheese, and enjoy. It’s a really quick, easy meal, and it’s a hit!), so I didn’t look to see if they were trying to sell me something different or not.

** In keeping with my theme of using what we already have, I used some provolone cheese for this dish. Or maybe I used four cheese Mexican shredded cheese. I don’t remember. Either way would be good. The cheese they mention is very similar to a Gouda, so I think I used the Mexican, thinking the Cheddar was kind of Gouda-ish)