Cheesy Mexican Chicken

This dish is awesome, and not as unhealthy as I first imagined. It's taken from "America's Most Wanted", which is a great recipe book that aims to recreate dishes served by the main US restaurant chains. I have to admit I bought it partly for the section on the Cheesecake Factory! I've never even heard of most of the chains featured in the book but the recipes look great nonetheless, and I think the idea of being able to cook a near-replica of something you would get in your favourite restaurant is brilliant. It's cheaper than eating out, especially if you have a whole family, and sometimes it's just nicer to cook at home.

I had to adapt it quite a bit as I used a small supermarket and couldn't get hold of some of the ingredients. Also, neither my boyfriend nor I really like (bell) peppers so I used some but not as much as the recipe suggested. I made it again a few weeks later when I did have some more of the right ingredients so I am combining both recipes - both heavily adapted from the original still - into this one blog post.

In the recipe book this dish is called TGI Friday's Sizzling Chicken and Cheese; I have no idea how close my recipe is to the original as I don't think I've ever eaten at a TGI Friday's.

Mix 2 tbsp crushed garlic, 1/4 cup olive oil, 1 tsp dried chilli flakes, sprinkling of salt and pepper.

Marinade two chicken breasts (to serve two) for three hours in the fridge. In the meantime cook some potato and mash it.

Fry onion, red pepper and the chicken breasts

Remove the chicken, peppers and onions from the pan and spoon the mashed potato into the pan, flattening a little.

 Return the peppers and onions to the pan on top of the mashed potato. I just did it on one side as my boyfriend doesn't like peppers or onion.

Place four slices of cheese (eg Kraft cheese slices) on to. The recipe actually calls for 1/2 cup shredded chihuahua cheese and 2 slices American cheese, but I couldn't get anything even remotely similar to chihauhua cheese from my small local supermarket.

Finally place the chicken breasts on top and serve.

The cheese melts beautifully onto the mashed potato and the flavour combination with the marinaded chicken is delicious.

So delicious in fact I decided to make it again.... this time I managed to get hold of some spicy Mexican-style cheese.

I also used red, green and orange peppers this time

I marinated the chicken in oil, chilli flakes and garlic as last time, but used mini chicken fillets instead. I then fried them with the peppers

After making some mashed potato I removed the chicken and peppers from the pan, pressed down the potato and left it for a few minutes, then sprinkled the grated Mexican-style cheese over the top.

Then some slices of American cheese

Return the chicken and peppers to the top and serve. I'm not sure cooking it this way with the spicy cheese made all that much difference but it was fun to try and this is a tasty meal however you cook it. I wonder if TGI Friday's dish is anything like this?