Chicken Breasts with Pancetta Cream and Peas

We were so impressed with this recipe that we thought it qualified as a special Sunday dinner. The sauce tastes as rich and creamy as a Béchamel, but actually it’s just a white wine and chicken broth based sauce made from the fond left in the pan from browning the chicken and thickened with a small amount of mascarpone and a bit of flour. Baby English peas are scattered across the top for color and additional flavor.

Both the chicken and sauce come together in under 45 minutes and would be a welcome addition to your list of dinner party recipes or would come in handy when you have a house guests. I served it with tomatoes Provençal, link to recipe here.

It’s one of Cooking Light’s most popular recipes ever. Feel free to substitute bacon for the pancetta and for the mascarpone I used cream cheese because I had it on hand. Don’t pass this one by.

Chicken Breasts with Pancetta Cream and Peas
Adapted from Cooking Light’s The Weeknight Chicken Book – serves 4
Printable Recipe

1 tablespoon olive oil
4 small garlic cloves, thinly sliced
1 ½ ounces pancetta or bacon, chopped
4 6-ounce skinless, boneless chicken breast halves
Kosher salt
Freshly ground black pepper
½ cup dry white wine
1 cup unsalted chicken stock
2 tablespoons mascarpone or cream cheese – I used low fat cream cheese
2 teaspoons all-purpose flour
2 tablespoons water
1 cup frozen green peas, thawed (unthawed worked fine)

Heat a large skillet over medium heat. Add oil to pan; swirl to coat. Add garlic; cook 2 minutes, stirring frequently. Remove garlic from pan using a slotted spoon, and then set aside. Increase heat to medium-high. Add pancetta and sauté 4 minutes or until crisp. Remove pancetta from pan using a slotted spoon and reserve.

Sprinkle chicken with salt and pepper and sauté 4 minutes on each side. Remove chicken from pan. Add wine; bring to a boil, scraping pan to loosen browned bits. Cook until the liquid almost evaporates (about 3 minutes). Return chicken to pan. Add stock; bring to a boil. Reduce heat to medium, cover, and cook for 6 – 8 minutes or until chicken is done. Remove chicken from pan and cover to keep warm.

Add mascarpone or cream cheese to pan and stir with a whisk until smooth. Combine water and flour, stirring with a whisk. Add flour mixture to pan. Bring to a boil and cook 2 minutes or until sauce is thickened and creamy. Stir in reserved pancetta, garlic, and peas. Cook 1 minute. Spoon sauce over chicken.

Cook's notes: If you don't serve this with something red such as the tomato Provencal and want to add a bit of color, you can add some red bell pepper, cut up in small pieces and sauteed until crispy to the sauce. We did that with the left-overs and it was delicious as well as pretty.

For better viewing, click photos to enlarge.

I’ll be sharing this with Foodie Friday at Rattlebridge Farms and Miz Helen’s Country Kitchen’s Full Plate Thursday.

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Onto an another note - Life is full of surprises. One minute you're on top of your game & the next minute you're flat on your face. That's exactly what happened to me. The other day I was flying high and feeling great and before I knew what happened, I tripped on a step and found myself flat on my face on the concrete - literally flat on my face. Needless to say that has definitely taken the wind out of my sails.

Add to that - we depart in a matter of days for a 2 month adventure in Provence and the South of France. Consequently those two things have altered my plans somewhat for the blog. I thought I would have time to prepare some preplanned posts for you and have them come on automatically while we were gone, but that plan flew out of the window with my fall. I'm black & blue (add to that a black eye and bruises on my face), am very sore and quite frankly just not up to the task. But I do know I lucky I am and how much worse it could have been. We are still excited about the trip and I do have a new post scheduled for next week to tell you about our trip and where we're going. 

For those of you who follow My Carolina Kitchen on Facebook, you can catch me there while we're gone. I plan to post some pictures from time to time while we're away. Click here to follow on our trip on Facebook. 

So I'll leave you with an à bientôt (see you soon) and lots of promises for many fun-filled posts about Provence & the South of France when we return near the end of June. Next week I'll explain where we're going and some of the things we plan to see. 

In the meantime, take care everyone and I hope you have a lovely spring.

Sam & Meakin