Parmesan Chicken and Rice Casserole

A nice at home meal is what I had in mind when I picked Parmesan Chicken and Rice Casserole paired with Green Beans in Warm Bacon Dressing and Broiled Plum Tomatoes. It was all listed together in Cooking Light magazine. I began by preparing all the ingredents while the oven preheated to 450. I chopped a white onion and bulb onions and snapped and washed the green beans. I started the casserole by cooking onions and garlic in a skillet and then adding a bag of boil in bag rice. It is the type of rice you can cook in a pot of boiling water. It looked like whole wheat Rice Krispies. I emptied the bag into the skillet and cooked it for 30 seconds and then a splash of white wine. After the wine burned off I spooned the rice into the bottom of a casserole dish. I placed the chicken thighs on top of the rice and seasoned them with thyme and salt. then I poured a mixture of chicken broth and whipping cream over the casserole and in the oven it went.



I quickly sliced the plum tomatoes and placed the on a cookie sheet and they also went into the oven to broil. I began cooking the bean in boiling water and bacon in a skillet. When the beans were done I drained them and focused on the bacon. After the bacon finished I removed it from the pan and added my sliced bulb onions to the bacon grease. I need to stir them constantly as to not burn them. In the middle of cooking the onions the timer when off for the casserole and I had to quickly open the oven and sprinkle Parmesan on the chicken. When I returned to the onions they were burnt. I added white wine vinegar to finish the warm bacon dressing and and smoke rushed at me and quickly filled the whole kitchen. I continued to stir with gusto for thirty more seconds and finally added the beans to coat them. I served them with crumbled bacon on top.

The dinner came together very nicely and it almost did not all fit on one plate. The beans tasted great despite the overdone onion because of the bacon grease and the tomatoes turned out nicely. We will make it again and add a few changes to spice up the chicken a little bit and we will probably use white meat instead of dark.