I made this sauce up in my head as I drove home from work this Thursday- and it was so good that I would actually order it in a restaurant! I love when that happens.  The creamy basil sauce with the added zing of good Gorgonzola really work well with the texture of the chickpeas and juiciness of the chicken breast!

• Two chicken breasts
• One large palm full of crumbled Gorgonzola cheese
• 1/2 can of drained chickpeas (low sodium Goya is my favorite)
• 2.5 Tbs of butter
• 2 Tbs of flour
• 4 oz of low sodium chicken broth
• 4 tbs (or just a big splash) of your favorite white wine (mine is Robert Mondavi Chardonnay for cooking and Sauvignon Blanc for drinking!)
• 1/4 cup of milk (at least 2%)
• 2 tbs basil paste (found in the fresh herbs isle… or sometimes in the canned sauces area)
• EVOO

• Okay so to start off we need to brown the chicken a bit so we can get it in the oven. Preheat your oven to 350 degrees and in a skillet on medium-high heat drizzle some EVOO and when it’s hot, carefully add in chicken.
• Turn chicken often and watch to make sure that it browns evenly.
• When the chicken has a nice golden hue all over it, drain chicken and place on a tin foiled baking sheet and toss into the oven. Set the pan you used to cook the chicken off to the side to cool. The chicken should cook for around 15-20 more minutes – which is just about the amount of time it will take to make the sauce.
• Set a separate burner than the one you already used to low-medium heat. You don’t want the burner to be too hot and mess up the sauce.
• To get the sauce started, we’re going to make a rue. In the same pan that you cooked the chicken in, melt two tbs of butter. Using a soft spatula, scoop together all of the brown bits left over from the chicken to add to the flavor of the sauce.
• Once butter is melted, add 1 tbs of flour and stir quickly with a whisk as mixture thickens. Add second tbs and repeat whisking process. Now you have a pasty mixture in the pan, and this is your rue. .
• Add in half of your milk while whisking until sauce combines and smooths, and then repeat with the rest of the milk.
• Drop in two tbs of basil paste and whisk thoroughly.
• At this point, add half of your chicken broth and whisk until smooth.
• Slowly take palm-full of Gorgonzola cheese and add to the pan. The thing with this cheese is that the clumps can be rather slow in breaking up on their own. I use a fork to mash the larger lumps a bit and help make the sauce uniform.
• Once cheese is in the pan and melting, add your splash of white wine and let sit as you whisk it for a minute or two to let the alcohol cook out.
• At this point, check out the amount and the creaminess of your sauce, if it’s too thick, add some more chicken broth slowly until you are happy with the consistency. If you find that the opposite is true and that it’s too runny, add a bit more flour, very slowly and whisk until it thickens.
• Once you’re happy with the sauce, add half of a can of drained chickpeas and fully coat them in the sauce. Let sit on low heat for a few minutes until the chickpeas are nice and warm.
• Check on your chicken – cut one piece open in the middle to make sure that there is no pink on the inside.
• Once chicken is done, set on serving plate and with a ladle, spoon over creamy sauce and chickpeas.