Easley Resident's Recipe Featured In Popular Magazine

Spending time in the kitchen is relaxing for some people.

A teaspoon of pepper here, a little whipping cream there, cube some boneless chicken breasts and you've got the beginnings of a great home-cooked meal.

When Easley resident Brooke Icenhour leaves her full-time job at Tanglewood Middle School in Greenville each afternoon, she goes home to her family and to prepare a nice meal.

Icenhour loves to cook, but even more than that, she loves to improve upon recipes. And you'll find her latest creation, Pesto Chicken & Asparagus, in the April/May issue of Taste of Home magazine.

"I found out through the mail," Icenhour said in a phone interview. "When I received the April/May issue, it was in a larger envelope and there was a letter stating that I was a contributing editor."

Icenhour said she was "thrilled" with the news and now with her first recipe published in a magazine with 16 million subscribers, she's hoping to publish many more.

A regular subscriber to Taste of Home since her senior year of college, Icenhour said tweaking a recipe to suit her own taste is fun, but seeing her family enjoy it is much more rewarding.

With this particular dish, it was the way she got her son, Barret, to eat his veggies.

"It's the only way I can get him to eat asparagus, or anything green," Icenhour laughed.

Icenhour said that she found the recipe several years ago while trying to stick to a low-carb diet. She said the recipe was full of carbs, so she had to strip it down to the bare minimum and then add her own twist.

She came up with this:

Pesto Chicken & Asparagus

In large skillet, sauté 1 lb. cubed boneless skinless chicken breasts in 1 Tbsp. olive oil until no longer pink. Remove and set aside. In same skillet, sauté 1 lb. cut fresh asparagus (1-in. pieces) until crisp-tender. Stir in 1 cup whipping cream, ½ cup prepared pesto and 1/8 tsp. pepper. Return chicken to pan; heat through. Serve with cooked couscous. Makes 4 servings. 

Icenhour said it's been a hit with family and also for dinner parties.

"You can serve this dish over anything really," Icenhour said. "It doesn't have to be couscous, you could use pasta or whatever suits your taste."

Icenhour said she had sent at least two recipes to the magazine. She said the first was never published and this particular one had been entered for a contest the magazine was running one summer.