Insalata Caprese aka Caprese Salad

It's been a while since I shared any recipes with all of you, so I figured I'll just share something really quick and easy to make. This is the perfect summer time salad, when fresh tomatoes are in season. Insalata Caprese (or better known as Caprese Salad here in the States) originated from the region of Campania in Italy. An interesting fact that I found from Wikipedia is that this salad is sometimes called Insalata Tricolore, referring to the three colors of the Italian flag. Interesting. Anyways, I simply love this salad because it's really yummy to eat and really simple to make. It takes less than 10 minutes to put everything together. Here's how you make it.

Start off by washing a few large tomatoes. It's always good to choose the juicy ripe ones. Slice up the tomatoes and set them aside.

Next, you would need some fresh buffalo mozzarella cheese. Remove the cheese from it's packaging (it's usually sold, soaked in water) and slice it into pieces.

Then, it's time to put it all together. Arrange the tomatoes, fresh mozzarella cheese and fresh basil leaves on a plate. Just alternate the tomatoes and cheese, with random basil leaves all over. Now, traditionally, one would just drizzle extra virgin olive oil on top and you are set to go. I changed it up a little and combined 1 part extra virgin olive oil to 1 part balsamic vinaigrette. Drizzle that over the salad and top it up with some freshly cracked black pepper and some salt. All done! Now, wasn't that easy? =)

Pan Fried Balsamic Chicken Breast

Since I had the Balsamic Chicken Breast at Farm 2 Bistro last month, I have been searching for a good Balsamic Chicken Breast recipe. At last, I think I found it! The original recipe is actually for oven roasted whole chicken but I changed it up a little and it worked out great! I was really happy with how it turned out. I'm proud to say that this recipe is definitely a keeper.
First things first. We need to make the marinade. It's a pretty simple marinade actually. Start off by adding 2 tablespoons of lemon juice to 1/4 cups of Balsamic Vinaigrette. Then, add in 2 tablespoons of mustard followed by 2 chopped up cloves of garlic. Add in some freshly cracked black pepper and mix everything up. Voila! The marinade is done.
Next, chop up about 1 and a half lbs of chicken breast into small pieces.

Place the chicken pieces into a zip loc bag and pour in the marinade. Allow it to marinade for at least 4 hours. It is best to let it sit in the fridge and marinade overnight. I allowed my chicken breast to marinade over 24 hours. The bag on the left is the before and the one on the right is after 24 hours. You can definitely see the difference.

Spray on some non stick cooking oil into a frying pan. Pour in the chicken breast from the zip loc bag. Put it on high until the starts to get bubbly. Then, turn it on simmer and allow it to cook and for the sauce to reduce.

After about 20 minutes on simmer, your Balsamic Chicken Breast is ready to be served. Just make sure that the chicken is cooked by checking to see if the juices run clear. Let me tell you something. The smell of this dish while cooking is just amazing. Kevin could even smell it from the living room. So so so good! It's really simple to make but super yummy to eat! I served it up with some of the Caprese Salad that I made earlier on.