The best part of cooking in the restaurant is:

1. there are plenty of ingredients prepped and available
2. no dishes.

The first night I cooked at home after opening Catelli’s I was reminded of the challenge we face in our home kitchens (especially on week nights). Time is of the essence. I want something delicious and healthy on the table but I don’t want to be bothered with tons of prep or clean up. That’s when a one-dish dinner never sounded or tasted so good!

I threw my oven to 450 degrees and got moving on dinner. First I put a bunch of organic chicken tenders in a large Ziploc bag, gave them a couple hits with my meat pounder (cuts down the cooking time and a quick stress reliever), zested a couple lemons into the bag and then squeezed the juice….added some kosher salt, extra virgin olive oil, and a few twists of cracked pepper. I let the chicken do a quick marinate in the bag while I washed two bunches of asparagus and snapped the ends off. I then spread the chicken out on one side of a large rimmed sheet pan. On the other side of the pan I spread out the asparagus and drizzled them with extra virgin olive oil and salt and pepper. I cooked this in the oven for about 7-9 minutes. While it is cooking I chopped up a a few tablespoons of fresh basil. When the chicken and asparagus are done, I sprinkled them with the fresh chopped basil.

Protein and vegetables are done in about 15 minutes! You could serve this with rice, potato, couscous, quinoa, or pasta. There are all sorts of recipes here on bemomalicious.com that are healthy and quick. You can use this same method and change up lemon and basil for lime, cilantro and cumin. You can also do this with beef. It’s a quick, delicious and easy weeknight meal.