Balsamic Fig Chicken with Fresh English Peas & Cucumber Dill Salad

Like most people in America, most night's I don't have time to sit down and ponder what I'm going to make for dinner, shop for specific ingredients and intricately plate each piece into a spectacular masterpiece. My goal is to maintain my creativity, but find something relatively quick and simple to prepare that's not overly time consuming.  Sound familiar?  Last night being no exception, the compilation of ingredients in my refrigerator lead us to balsamic fig chicken, steamed English peas and a quick salad of Persian cucumbers, white onion, fresh dill and lemon.  If I do say so myself... the result was quite delicious.

We started with chicken tenderloins and sliced Turkish smyrna figs.  The marinade was a combination of 12 year old Modena balsamic, grapeseed oil, dried herbs de Provence, stevia, chardonnay, and a touch of black truffle oil.  Just pour evenly over the tenderloins and fig slices and bake for 20 minutes at 350 degrees. 

The peas couldn't get much easier... steam them.  I actually steamed about 3 times as many as I needed for dinner because I had a plan for the leftovers.  We'll touch on that later. 

The salad was a simple combination of thinly sliced Persian cucumbers, white onions, fresh baby dill, lemon juice and just a tiny sprinkle of stevia to offset the acid.  I did cut a few extra cucumbers and onion slices to help me get my "leftover" recipe jump started. 

All in, dinner was really fantastic.  We paired it with the leftover Portuguese Dao that we had opened 2 nights ago.  It worked fabulously with the sweet acidity of the chicken, but honestly, I would not pair it with a strong onion dish again.  The flavors just didn't marry as well as I would have liked.  That's part of the art of wine pairing though, you can't learn what doesn't work without trial and error.

Now to fill you in on my "leftover" plan.  I love fresh peas.  They're loaded with vitamins and I feel like they have this distinctive, bright "spring" flavor to them.  So to prepare my lunch for tomorrow, I combined the extra steamed peas, sliced cucumbers and onions, fresh mint leaves, red Hawaiian sea salt and white pepper in a food processor to make a chilled minted pea soup. Perfect for spring and absolutely delicious!