Chicken and Bowtie Pasta

I had my neighbours over for dinner the other night, so they could oooh at the gorgeous new paint and I could cook. This is a really good, really nice-looking dish that is mostly prepared before people show up at your door, and that's part of why I like it so much. It also has only one crazy ingredient (sundried tomatoes) and keeps well for leftovers. So go out and get: chicken (I used one breast for this example, which made two servings), a head of broccoli, garlic, bowtie pasta (farfalle, I think), sundried tomatoes (either in oil or, if dried, follow the hydrating instructions on the packet), and then some of the usual suspects: oil, butter, salt, pepper and dried basil. Oh, also parmesan, for serving.

Whatever cooking pot you choose, you need to make sure it has a fitted lid and can easily be used to brown meat and contain liquid -- you'll also need enough real estate on the bottom of the pan to shove all the meat to one side and cook all your broccoli, which can mean a biiiig pan. I have followed my Le Creuest fixation, obviously. Heat the pot on medium heat, then drizzle olive oil.

What is that odd tool? It's a garlic press, and it's another one of my favourite things. I have been known to travel internationally with only carry-on luggage, and pack this. I dislike chomping down on half-cooked, gummy garlic, and this stops it from happening. If you're not a devotee, just mince up two cloves of garlic per chicken breast you're planning to use. But here's the thing: you're going to want to just cook that garlic until it's a nice golden colour, and that doesn't take long at ALL. So BEFORE pulling out the press, make sure you've diced up all of your chicken into pieces about as big as the top joint of your thumb. That way you don't have to dither and chop while frantically trying to prevent the garlic from burning, because burnt garlic is really, really unpleasant.

Once the garlic is golden, throw in all your chickeny bits and stir until cooked. You can also add about a teaspoon of salt, teaspoon of pepper (hold back a bit on the seasoning at this stage, because you might have guests who hate salt -- you can taste it closer to the end). Grab hold of your broccoli and cut off the florets, rinse them in a colander and, when the chicken's no longer pinkish, push all the chicken to one side and put the florets in the pan to crisp up a bit. Watch for the broccoli burning, but generally this is a stir-frequently thing. While this is cooking, multitask: if you're serving to guests almost as soon as they arrive, start boiling water for the pasta stage.

I've also got the next steps on deck in the photo: white wine, dried basil and a packet of chicken boullion-stuff. Offscreen, I'm boiling half a cup of water in my electric tea kettle (for the chicken boullion).


I'm not sure if it's unfamiliar in the US or what, but this certain meal always makes a really good impression if I'm making it for guests. This is a totally typical dinner at my house growing up, by the way, but I've never been able to figure out if we're in the mainstream or some sort of mad outlier. I remember a high school friend coming over to pick me up on a Saturday afternoon, and he walked in to find my tiny nuclear family clustered round a table that had on it a baguette, a couple of cheeses, a bowl of grapes and I think a small salade nicoise -- you know, a normal weekend lunch. He was not just confused, he was sort of frightened. I'd been over to his for dinner and knew they had stuff like tuna casserole (a totally unknown dish in my house), but I think something in his head just refused to assemble our spread into a "meal". He ranted about it all afternoon, wonderingly. Like he'd walked in on cannibals or something.

With that in mind, check to see if they broccoli's done -- it'll be greener and a little bit crispy. If so, then pour in about a quarter cup of white wine. Stir everything about and let it soak in for a minute, then add a teaspoon and a half of basil, the chicken boullion, and about a quarter cup of water. Stir and leave on a medium-low heat to simmer while you eyeball the amount of diced sundried tomatoes you want in. Slice it up into bits, so it looks like confetti, then mix that in. Let this absolutely delicious concoction simmer for 10 minutes.

The really good thing about this is that you can make it, cover it and leave it to stand for a while if you want to have a good hour before eating. Once the pot's cooked down a bit, add a knob of butter (going by the side of the packet, maybe half a tablespoon?), stir, and then set the heat very low and COVER THE DISH. If you don't cover it, the entire thing will boil away, obviously. When you're ready to eat, cook the pasta, drain it and just tip it into the original pot. The butter/stock/wine acts as a sauce, toss everything together, and you're set.

This is where the genius of Le Creuset comes in again -- if you've not been a total mess, you get to put the entire pot down on the table for people to serve themselves. Ahhhh, lazy cookware, how I love you.


The very last thing you need is parmesan cheese. Doesn't matter what kind, and you could grate it or slice it thinly, but it really completes the whole dish. My mom used to add it before serving, but then again we rarely had leftovers. I wait until after serving, because parmesan is really quite gross once it's been in tupperware and nuked. Without the cheese, the chicken/veg/pasta combo works out just fine.
The one thing I'd close with is: use better wine than I did. I've always been of the opinion that cooking wine can be crap wine, and while I'm still convinced that's true, I forgot that you should also make sure you can drink the remaining wine WITH your meal. And the stuff at the upper right is disgusting. If you're looking for something nice, go with Monkey Bay, both affordable and awesome.
To the kitchen!

Curry Chicken & Veg

Time to use that chicken from earlier in the week. Surprisingly, the summer squash is still going strong, but the parsnip's faded (note the wrinkly bits starting), and I have an entire bag of carrots to demolish, so I'm doing the root vegetable thing again. I've also still got that half of a butternut squash. Crank the oven up to 350, and start with the peeling and chopping.


Today's Hulu feature: The Tick! I love this show. The prep time for this meal is less than the 20-something minutes a Tick episode runs, too, so that's convenient. (Surprisingly, I am not sponsored by Hulu.) I'm also feeling spectacularly lazy today, and am going to try and limit myself to cleaning one pot: a Le Creuset dutch oven.

Batmanuel has reminded me that I'm already putting two sweet-tasting vegetables into this pot (the two carrots and the giant parsnip), so why add butternut squash? Wise Batmanuel. So I've shelved the squash for another day --it looks like it can wait -- and instead pulled out a medium yellow onion, which I chopped into rough eighths. I also added three cloves of garlic, which will get very savoury as it cooks. Everything gets mixed together with 1.5 tablespoons of olive oil, a teaspoon of salt, a teaspoon of pepper, and a good three-quarters tablespoon of rosemary needles. All of this goes into the preheated oven uncovered for 20 minutes.

The chicken bit's easy. It turned out the last two breasts in the packet weren't separated, so I didn't bother cutting a pocket, I just folded the single piece along the breastbone after peppering and salting it all over. Two slices of lemon inside, which could be fixed in with skewers, I guess, but I'm not that fussy. But then I remembered I just got a new blend of curry powder (with cardamom and saffron in), and decided to add that in. Curry can be powerful, and I am a wimp, so I just sprinkled a dusting on the inside and outside of the chicken and rubbed it in well. I know that the photo makes it look like the chicken's the colour of a butternut squash -- don't worry, it's still good, that's just curry.

When the 20-minute buzzer goes, pull out the vegetables and mix them up. Place the chicken on top of the vegetables, keeping the lemon tucked inside. If you don't like lemon in this recipe, it's not key, you can leave it out.

Cover your dish, either with a lid or with tin foil (obviously, be careful if putting on tin foil). Back in the oven, set the timer for 30 minutes.

Damn, Tick's over. Find alternate viewing option, though hopefully not "The Biggest Loser", which will make you feel guilty about oil and starchy vegetables, and likely make you lose your appetite for what's in the oven.

After 30 minutes, remove the lid of the dish and flip the chicken to the other side. If you've got the room, shove the veg around a bit. If not? Eh, whatever. Everything, back in the oven! Keep the cover off for the last round of cooking, because we want to counter the steam session everything just went through and get everything slightly crispy again. 20 minutes this time, so you can run off to find the wine you'll be drinking with dinner.

Once you're back from the wine cellar (for the former investment bankers out there), the buzzer should have gone. Ahhhhhh, dinner! And let me tell you, this was definitely delicious. It also probably had a little too much oil on the vegetables, which is why I'm suggesting 1.5 tablespoons, rather than the excessive amount I think I ended up putting in there.

But the chicken (that's one breast on the plate, the second's joining the rest of the veg as leftovers) was absolutely fantastic! I love curry! And of course, as always, this would go really well with rice -- not at the same time as carrots and parsnips, clearly, but if your supermarket's got better green beans than mine does, you're in business.
To the kitchen!

Lemon Chicken Packet

Okay, this started off as just regular lemon chicken. But I went grocery shopping today, and -- well, things got out of hand.

First, rediscover your chicken, now thawed through the marvellous magic of putting it in the fridge for 24 hours. Yay! I also discovered that my plan of using the rest of last night's roast vegetables might have a flaw; namely, I've been nibbling on them all day. So there's not much leftovers left. Whoops. Hence the sudden addition of the onion, yellow pepper, zucchini (or "courgette" if you're feeling fancy) and tin foil.

Something in your head is now saying "Wait a second, those flavours don't really go together with sweet potato...." You're right. If you're making this from scratch, then make a cup of rice to replace the roast vegetables. If you're me, damn the torpedoes and full speed ahead.

Alors, to the oven! 375 degrees again, please.



Put this together on a cookie sheet, preferably one with a raised edge (I think some people call them "jelly roll tins"). Lay out a piece of tin foil; you're going to be wrapping this around a chicken breast and lot of veg, so make it big. Take your thankfully-thawed chicken breast and slice a pocket in it. Mix half a teaspoon of salt with half a teaspoon of ground pepper, and rub this all over the outside of the chicken breast AND the inside of the pocket. Take an angled slice of lemon and put it in the pocket, and you're done with chicken-wrangling.

Now get busy with the veg. I cut the zucchini and the yellow pepper in strips, but left the onion a little chunkier. Place another slice of lemon right on top of the chicken, and then pile the rest of the vegetables on top. If you're a salt nut, you might want to sprinkle more on at this point, and this could also be pretty good with rosemary or some other herb. But generally, everything in this is pretty clean and bright, so just having lemon and salt and pepper will keep it that way.

The wrapping is a bit tricky, and one of the big reasons I like doing this in foil rather than in parchment. The easiest way is to bring the longest opposing sides up vertically, so it's almost forming a sling, then roll and crimp down towards the chicken. Then crimp the sides up to make it watertight. However you do it, it should sort of look like this.

Why include that photo of the unused bits? Mostly for thinking. Right now, I'm thinking that the yellow pepper half and the onion half would be really good in an omelette. The zucchini's probably the easiest of the bunch, because zucchini grilled or sauteed with garlic or onion or squash is incredibly delicious as a side. The lemon... I don't know. I'm leaning towards using it to make iced tea. Yeah, it's winter, and yeah I could probably use the lemon for drinks OTHER than tea... Hm. Well, I'll think about the lemon. The omelette's totally happening, though. (Chicken, obviously, can be almost anything, but also needs to be used ASAP, given it's from frozen.)

Hey, 30 minutes is up! Time to de-mummify the chicken....

Tongs are useful things. For one, they will stop you from getting burned horribly by the steam coming off of this packet (wafting, at left). They will also allow you to pick up all the veggie bits out of the lemony chicken juice left at the bottom of the tinfoil. Sadly, the juice is not delicious.

If you forgot to cook the rice, then STOP UNWRAPPING THE CHICKEN! It'll stay hot for a while if still wrapped (see: steam). Go make rice.

Transfer the chicken and bits to a plate. Leave the watery tin foil.

And now you're either ready to eat, or you garnish with the rice of your choice. The chicken is lovely and moist, everything is lemony (though don't bite into the lemon or you'll be sorry), the vegetables are perfectly steamed, and the only thing I'd really think of adding is maybe some sort of garlic. Possibly in the form of garlic salt, because I really can't see how garlic would do well being steamed in a packet. That just seems a recipe for evil.

Anyhow, it's a good base for further experimentation. For obvious reasons, when choosing vegetables to add in, stay away from anything that you can't readily eat raw, like potatoes (though carrots in this could be very nice.... hm). There's a possibility that you could use only the pocket lemon, then do thin strips of carrot and leek with rosemary and some balsamic vinegar.... Hm. Point is, it's relatively easy, pretty inexpensive, pretty damn quick.

And can even look nice, unless you do what I did, which is offensive to the eye (but delicious nonetheless).

Ah, roasted vegetables. You are a blessing and a curse. Check back for a chicken recipe that WILL go with root vegetables later.
To the kitchen!