chicken with poblano cream sauce and antojitos

This is our Chicken with Poblano Cream Sauce from Great Food Fast. The side is Cilantro Lime Rice from Everyday Food Light.

This dinner is fantastic. Took a while from start to finish and made a mess with 2 different sauces in the blender. But it was so worth it! We've recently discovered that the boneless skinless chicken from Costco make for the most moist chicken with the best sear. Believe it or not, many other brands of chicken out there (including several major brand names) seems to give a sear that turns out like a thick paper-like crust and a fiberous texture. To think all this time I didn't like boneless skinless chicken because I was sticking to the same 2 brands. Live and learn. 

Anyways, this poblano cream sauce is wonderful. The stores are now carrying poblanos (I guess they are seasonal), which is wonderful. This recipe requires you to roast your poblano and remove the skin (this is my latest kitchen trick/tip about roasting peppers under the broiler - super easy to accomplish now!). And we can't get enough of the cilantro lime rice. It's pretty much our standard go-to as a side for all our Mexican dishes. I'm starting to think I'm going to make huge batches of the cilantro-lime sauce and freeze them so that half the work is already done in the future.

I went out for lunch earlier in the day to Montanas where they sell a starter called Antojitos. I've never had them before but as I was gazing at the menu I thought this was a perfect toddler food, so I wrote down the list of ingredients and then reworked it for this dinner as something special for Owen.

To make these antojitos blend cream cheese, finely diced red bell pepper, shredded cheese (cheddar, munster, monterey jack - anything melty), poblano cream sauce, diced chicken and cilantro lime rice. Roll and grill (I used the same pan the chicken sauteed on). Slice and serve. These are very nice and mild so they are perfect for kids. Delicious warm or cold, I'll definitely make these as appetizers or for potluck in the future.

Something that I particularly love about this dinner combo is how versatile it is to rework. All the parts of this could make great burritos, quesadillas, chicken salad sandwich or salad. I actually used the leftover rice and diced an avocado into it for Owen's lunch the next day and he went nuts for it.