Winner winner, chicken dinner - cleaning out my pantry

Fig and Goat Cheese Stuffed Chicken Breast with Balsamic Honey Reduction

Many of my most delicious creations come from cleaning out what I have in the fridge and pantry.  I find that my creativity works best when I have little structure in what I am going to do, but also constrained by what I have available to me.  This dish I did today is not so creative, but it was delicious and let me get rid of dried figs I had sitting in my fridge, half opened package of chevre I used for salad the day before and forced me to butcher the chicken I bought because I wanted to use the bones for stock.  So here it is: Fig and Goat Cheese stuffed Chicken Breast with Balsamic Honey Reduction.

Ingredients:
2 Skin on, boneless chicken breast
6-8 dried black mission figs - halved and stemmed
1 teaspoon of juniper berries
1 teaspoon of whole black peppercorns
2 cloves
1/2 cup balsamic vinegar
1/2 cup water
1 tablespoon of honey
1 tablespoon of butter
1 teaspoon of dijon mustard
1 cup chicken stock
salt and pepper
1/2 package of soft goat cheese (its about 4 tablespoons)

1) Put vinegar, water, cloves, juniper berries, peppercorns, honey into pot and bring to a boil.  Put figs into pot and let it gently simmer for 5 minutes.  Take the pot off the heat, cover and let it stand and cool for 30 minutes.

2) Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

3) Drain the figs and set to the side.  Pour poaching liquid through a sieve to remove any solid bits.  Put the pot of poaching liquid back on to the burner and add in the cup of chicken stock. Bring this to a boil and lower the heat to medium and let it continue to simmer and reduce until you are left with about 1/3 cup of sauce. (You can go to step 4 while you let this simmer, it will take awhile).  Once reduced to 1/3 of a cup, finish the sauce by whisking in 1 tablespoon of butter and dijon mustard. The sauce should thicken slightly and emulsify into a silky smooth reduction.

4) Slice a pocket into the chicken breast by cutting a horizontal cut along the thick side of the chicken breast.  Stick your finger in there and widen it to give yourself a 2 - 3 inch pocket inside the chicken breast.  Stuff each chicken breast with 2 tablespoons of goat cheese and half of the figs.  Season the whole chicken breast with salt and pepper.

5) Heat an oven-safe, heavy bottomed saute pan (i.e. cast iron skillet) to medium-high. Add olive oil and bring it up to heat.  Put chicken breast skin side down first.  Let it sear and brown (about 2 minutes).  Turn the chicken breast over and immediately put into pre-heated oven.  Bake for about 20 minutes or internal temperature reaches 165 degrees.  Take it out of the oven and let it rest for 5 minutes.

6) Serve with balsamic honey reduction.

This turned out really well for a brand new recipe. I'm sure many people have made a similar dish at some point but this was a good way to clean out stuff I already had and I will definitely add this to the repertoire. Hope you enjoy it as much as K and I did.