Cooking for Two: Lemon Rosemary Chicken, Roasted Cabbage, Bacon-wrapped Sweet Potato

Keith and I stayed in last night due to the snow. It looks like we got about 4-5 inches and its bright and sunny today. I'm just glad that we live in an apartment, so no need to shovel! Yesterday was all about comfort food. I improvised some stove-top chili for lunch and then we had this smorgasbord for dinner. It was a rather full Cooking for Two meal.

This Chicken and Shallots recipe is one of our go to meals. Its really simple and tastes great. The chicken is always juicy and the caramelized shallots (well, I usually use onions) look beautiful. We always have the ingredients on hand, especially because I used dried Rosemary instead of fresh. To change it up, last night I added some lemon juice and white wine to the chicken while cooking. I love lemon rosemary chicken.

Lemon Rosemary Chicken and Onions
altered from Paleoplan.com

2 Tbs olive oil
1 Tbs white wine (we used a Riesling, but use any you enjoy, or omit and use more olive oil)
1 Tbs lemon juice
1 clove garlic, smashed and minced
2 tsp dried rosemary
2 thick cut onion rings, sliced down center and separated into strips
2 chicken breasts
salt and pepper, to taste

Pull out your chicken breasts and salt and pepper each side. Set aside. Mix together olive oil, white wine, and lemon juice and pour into pan. Turn heat up to medium-high. When the liquid is hot, put in garlic, rosemary, and onion rings. Cook for a minute (seriously, just a minute) then turn the heat down to medium and place the chicken in the pan (on top of the onions). Allow to cook for 7-8 minutes a side (ours were very thick so they needed a bit more cooking time). These pair really well with sweet potatoes and a roasted vegetable. Find our recipes for bacon-wrapped sweet potatoes and roasted cabbage after the jump.

These bacon-wrapped sweet potatoes stole the meal. Crispy on the outside, soft on the inside. A mix of sweet, salty, smokey, and crunchy. Perfect. I could see making a ton of these and serving them as an appetizer or having them out as a munchie during a party. Because we had so much food at this meal, we found that we only needed a few pieces of sweet potato each. We also have some cabbage leftover from making coleslaw at our superbowl party, so I used my go to roasted vegetable technique to cook it up. They are crispy and salty, but pick up the flavor of the olive oil pretty strongly. Next time I might sprinkle some cumin or another spice over it to give it some flavor -- if anyone tries it let me know!

Bacon-wrapped Sweet Potato
as seen at My Paleo Lunch Boxes

1 sweet potato
Strips of bacon, as needed

Preheat oven to 400F. Spray your pan with nonstick spray and set aside. Wash your sweet potato and slice into thick rings. Cut larger rings in half, so they form half circles.  Cut your strips of bacon in half lengthwise. Wrap each piece of sweet potato in bacon and set into baking pan. We had extra pieces of sweet potato, so we just spread them out as well and dashed with a bit of sea salt. Place pan into the oven and bake for 40 minutes. Ours were kind of burnt on the bottom (but not burnt tasting), so I'd recommend flipping them halfway through.

Roasted Cabbage

Cabbage, sliced into thick rings (I'd recommend 2 rings/person)
olive oil
sea salt

Preheat oven to 400F. Prep pan by laying down a layer of tin foil. Put cabbage rings onto pan, spaced out. Drizzle with olive oil (use way less olive oil then you'd use when making roasted carrots or other veggies... the cabbage doesn't have much flavor of its own to balance the olive oil) and sea salt. Put in oven and roast for about 20 minutes, until the tops are lightly browned and some of the other pieces are quite browned.