Chicken Florentine

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Chicken Florentine simply means chicken cooked with spinach, and in this case I've used the microwave to produce a quick result from a slightly longer than usual preparation process.

A microwave roasting rack is very useful for this dish, but not essential. You could use one of those long vegetable steamers and turn the breasts over half way through the cooking time. That's a good idea anyway, even if you are using a rack, so it's really no extra effort.

The 4 chicken breasts need to have the fillets removed, which you can easily do simply by pulling them away from the main breast. Use these for another dish, such as a warm chicken salad. Gently flatten out the remaining breasts slightly, using a rolling pin or similar, so that they are of a more even thickness.

For the rest of the ingredients, you need the following:

• 1 small carrot, grated
• 250g cooked, frozen or tinned spinach, squeezed dry and chopped
• 2 crushed garlic cloves
• 20g toasted pine nuts*
• 1 tbs roughly chopped tarragon
• freshly ground black pepper
• 1 egg beaten with 1tbs of water
• 2 cups breadcrumbs seasoned with nutmeg

*    .Click the button for a top tip

Make sure that the spinach is as dry as you can get it. The best way I've found to do this is to squeeze it in a teacloth or similar. Mix the first 5 ingredients together and spoon a little into the cavity of each chicken breast, where the fillets used to be.

Fold the breasts over the mix and then either tie them or use wooden skewers to hold them together.

Dip the stuffed breasts into the egg and then the breadcrumbs, making sure they are throughly coated. Cook in the microwave as above for 10 minutes on high.

You can serve these breasts straight from the oven, or you could allow them to cool, slice them and serve them cold with salad.

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