Recipe - Olive Marinated Chicken Breast

I had my chicken breast cubed to put with a salad after I made it but you can surely use this recipe for other ways to have your dinner, whole or in pieces. Typically I like to make everything from scratch but I had to cheat a little bit on this one just because the product was so good. We had picked up a small container of "Sandra's Olive Mix" from the Home Maid Ravioli Company when we went to the Great Park Farmers' Market a while back. We'd heard about it after meeting a distributor (the company is actually based in San Francisco) at an event and decided we just needed to try out their stuff. This was just one of three containers we bought, and they definitely have plenty of varieties to fit your fancy; check them out at the Great Park! The recipe itself is ridiculously simple since their product did all the work.

Step 1: Ingredients (yields 4-6 servings)

• 4 boneless skinless chicken breasts, sliced lengthwise into 8 pieces
• 5-7 oz Sandra's Olive Mix

Step 2: Marinating
The olive mix we used was citrus-oriented so there was plenty of complementary flavors with the chicken breast. It contained pitted oil cured olives, pitted Kalamata olives, pitted black and green olives, garlic, blood orange, sundried tomatoes, red chile, mixed herbs and spices, a 50/50 blend of olive oil and canola oil, lactic acid, and sea salt. Sound tasty to you? We dumped about 5 ounces of this into a bag with our chicken breasts to marinated overnight. You could do the full 7 ounces but we wanted to save some for drizzling on afterward.


Step 3: Baking
Preheat oven to 350°F. Lay out foil to wrap a baking sheet. Place marinated chicken breasts, making sure to spread all juices and marinade on the surface of the chicken breasts. Bake 30-40 minutes depending on the thickness of the meat.


Step 4: Finishing
When done, remove from heat and let sit. It will cook a little longer as it rests. I cubed mine to add to a salad but this would be great with anything else that enjoys citrus notes and the saltiness of cured olives. We drizzled the remaining olive mix onto our salads as "dressing" too! Enjoy.

Photography by Duc Duong.