Hi! I am Chef Amy Riolo. Today, we are making Caprese Style Chicken Breasts with a Mixed Pepper Medley. In this segment we are actually going to be making our mixed pepper medley. So let’s get started.
So the first thing that we will need to do is to heat our pan over a medium-high heat and then we are going to add a few tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil. And then we are going to coat the bottom of our pan and you can see how nicely that coats the bottom when it’s already heated. Once you are able to start smelling the olive oil, we are going to add our peppers, now these are about two pounds of mixed peppers that I have got red, orange and yellow all together. You could also add green you could add olive wine, and whatever you like. You can see their skin is nice and shiny, it has no brushes and they are very firm. And this is what we want for this type of dish because we want them to really hold their integrity.
So we want the peppers to be as fresh as possible. This is not a recipe that you want to use if you have old peppers that are going bad. So I am going to go ahead and add our slices right into our hot oil. Now this mixture is known as peppernota in Italian and its a very common condiment in Southern Italy that they use, in the late summer when you have a lot of peppers in season because it is a dish that they would make to take advantage of all of those peppers. As you can see the colors look so beautiful.
But with vegetables colors are not only visually appealing but they are actually known to help strengthen our vision and our skin. So keep in mind that orange and yellow colored vegetable is very good to vision and very good for the skin. That’s okay if they splatter a little bit. If you are at home and you want to put a lid over them to let them cook, that’s absolutely fine. We are going to cook for a few minutes on each side.
What I am going to do now is add in our freshly chopped garlic. And you can add anywhere from two to five cloves of freshly cut garlic. As we know garlic is very good for lowering our cholesterol and helping our bodies to fight infections. So if you like garlic, I would add as much as possible and we are also going to add in some kosher salt, we don’t need a lot of salt in this recipe. Most of our flavors are really going to come from the peppers and salt and some of the garlic. And from our ingredient which is about a quarter cup of pitted green olives that we have just chopped up. Because the olives are so full of lime they have a little bit of salty flavor so you don’t need too much extra salt when you are doing this.
So just add these in. This smells absolutely wonderful and this is something that you can make in large quantities and freeze so that later on when peppers aren’t in season you have it already on hand. You can keep it in your refrigerator for about a week. Its great for everything from a simple weeknight meal to entertaining, everybody is going to love this.
And now for the last thing I am going to increase the temperature to high. And I am going to add a little bit of our H.T Traders balsamic vinegar, this is nice imported Italian balsamic vinegar that I got at Harris Teeter. I am just going to add a few tablespoons onto the top and this acidity is really going to help caramelize, the peppers and it is really going to soak in and give them a nice little extra shot of flavor. So we have some fruitiness in there from the olives and the olive oil and then this concentrated grape flavor of the balsamic vinegar makes a really nice kind of sweet and sour accompaniment for our peppers.
So I am going to let these cook for about five to 10 minutes until they are nice and soft. And we are going to check on our Caprese Style Chicken Breasts and see how they are cooking and when we come back we will plate it up all together.