Party in my mouth

I'm planning the Thai lettuce wraps for tomorrow night's dinner, but the hubs wanted to use chicken for tonight. Then I'll hopefully work in the pot pie recipe for this week. Unfortunately, we haven't had many nights to cook at home.

I came across this recipe through the What's Cooking? board on The Nest. It is a blog update from "Confections of a Foodie Bride". Can I just say wow?!
Here's the original recipe from her blog, and I have to say I didn't make any changes.

Chicken Relleno
1/3 cup pistachios, shelled
4 oz goat cheese, softened
juice from 1/2 lime
2T cilantro, chopped
1/2 roasted red bell pepper, chopped (reserve other 1/2 for another use)
1/2 roasted poblano pepper (reserve other 1/2 for sauce)
salt and pepper to taste

4 5-oz chicken breasts (I used the chicken tenders the hubs took out of the freezer already)
1T olive oil

1 bunch cilantro
1 in. piece of ginger, peeled
1 clove garlic (I used chopped garlic from a jar and just used a small spoonful)
1/2 roasted poblano
juice and zest from 1/2 lime
dash of curry powder (I didn't have any, so this wasn't added.)
fat-free half and half (I used light cream, since I needed it for another recipe this week.)

Preheat oven to 425. Process pistachios in the food processor for ~10 seconds, until mostly ground. (I think I'm the only person who loves food this much and doesn't own a food processor, so I just used my blender. It seemed to work okay. I just made sure to chop things smaller before putting them in.) Add goat cheese and lime juice and process until thoroughly mixed. Add cilantro, the chopped bell pepper and poblano peppers and pulse to just combine. Salt and pepper to taste.

Pound chicken breasts to an even thickness. Season both sides with salt and pepper. Place 1/4 of goat cheese mixture in center of each chicken breast. Roll the ends up and secure with toothpicks. (not to self: need to buy some that aren't dyed fancy colors. All of my chicken had fun blues and greens running through the middle. oops!) Heat olive oil in an oven-safe saute pan until very hot. Place chicken breasts in pan (toothpick side up) and sear 1-2 minutes, until nicely browned. Flip (toothpick side down) and transfer to the oven for ~8-10 minutes until cooked through.

While the chicken is baking, make the sauce: Cut the bunch of cilantro so that most of the stems are left behind. Place all ingredients except the half-and-half in a blender. With the blender running, slowly stream in the half-and-half until you reach a nice, saucy consistency. Transfer toa small sauce pan and heat on low. Salt and pepper to taste.
Serves 4.

I served mine with linguine and it was amazing! It had a really unique pepper flavor, but it was so creamy thanks to the sauce and goat cheese. This is definitely a recipe going into my rotation. Unfortunately, I found out that the hubs doesn't so much like pepper flavor. I thought it was more of a texture issue. Oh well. I guess this recipe will be a girl's night only.

Have a great weekend!