Tag Archives: main dish

Chicken Cellentani with Goat Cheese and Lemon

My friend Cassia has a blog full of lovely, lovely recipes. A while back she posted a recipe for this creamy pasta dish with lemon and basil, and I started hankering to make it the moment I saw her pictures. So on a lovely Sunday afternoon while Heidi and Baby James were staying with us, I whipped it up.

My first reaction: it was okay. Fine. Not bad, not awesome. I wanted to love it but was a little underwhelmed, so I decided not to blog about it because of my commitment to myself (and to you!) to only share recipes I truly love and would make again.

Then a couple days passed. Tuesday night my husband and I immersed ourselves in baking chocolate chip cookies and lemon cream bars, so I decided that it was time to eat the leftovers from Sunday so that we could focus our culinary efforts on the baking side of things. I wasn’t too excited about the leftovers, but I can’t stand to waste perfectly good food, so I pulled the pasta out and reheated a bowl for my husband and a bowl for myself.

And we dug in.

Oh my. It was like a dish transformed! “Wow, this is really good,” I said to my husband between mouthfuls. “Yeah,” he agreed. “You should blog about it.” “Yeah,” I said, engulfed in the wonderment of each bite.

I don’t know what happened to this dish as it sat in the refrigerator for a day and a night, but it was something magical. It got . . . creamier. Tastier. Really friggin’ delicious. So: know that on day #1 it’s a perfectly acceptable pasta dish. But also know that on day #2 and day #3 it becomes a marvellous concoction. Conclusion: if you are cooking for yourself and need something that will stay good or improve in the fridge over time, this is it!

Musical interlude: This is it! Ooooooh, I’ve finally foooooouuund someone, someone to share my life, I’ve finally foooooouuuuund someone . . .

Who the heck sings that song and why is it playing in my head with such clarity?

Ingredients

3 chicken breasts
1 cup flour
Salt and pepper
3 TBS olive oil
1 lb cellentani pasta (or any other small ridged pasta)
1 white onion, diced
6 cloves garlic, sliced thinly
28 oz can diced tomatoes, partly drained
Juice of 1 lemon
12 leaves basil, 10 minced and 2 chiffonade
1 T dried parsley
3/4 cup heavy cream
4 oz goat cheese

Mission #1: let’s get that pasta started. Boil some salted water, and dump it in!

When it’s al dente, drain it and set it aside for later.

While the pasta is cooking, cut the chicken breasts lengthwise into strips. Pat the chicken dry with a paper towel and season the strips liberally on both sides with salt and pepper. Then dredge the chicken in the flour and shake off the excess.

Heat 2 TBS of olive oil in a pan over high heat. When very hot, add the chicken strips.

Lower the heat to medium-high and don’t touch them for about 3 minutes. When browned on one side, turn them over and continue to brown until cooked through.

Look at that lovely, golden crust!

Remove the chicken to a plate and cut the strips into bite-sized pieces.

Gather the remaning ingredients to your bosom.

Yes, that picture is terribly blurry. But I have a very small and convenient scape-goat–one with poofy cheeks and a little fuzzy head. You can blame my photographic failure on the distractions provided by Baby James in the arms of my husband.

Oh, that Baby James. I miss him so much!

And no, I can’t manage to call him just “James.” He’s Baby James and that’s just that.

While the pasta is cooking and the chicken is frying, apply yourself by dicing the onions and slicing the garlic. Multitasking makes everything go faster.

Add another 1 TBS of olive oil to the pan and cook the onion and garlic until over medium-high heat until soft, about 5 minutes.

Mince up the basil while the onions fry:

And squeeze the lemon too.

By now the onions should be exactly where we want them, so add the partly-drained can of tomatoes, the minced basil, the lemon juice, and the parsley.

Bring the mixture to a boil, then lower the heat and simmer for 10 minutes.

Things are smellin’ oh-so-fine ’round these parts.

Add the cream and chicken pieces, and stir to coat. Then add the goat cheese and stir the whole creamy mess over low heat until melted.

You’ll notice I didn’t cut my chicken into bite-sized pieces. But I darn well will next time! That Baby James. My culinary focus was totally shot.

Mix the cooked pasta with the sauce, and serve!

Garnish with the basil chiffonade.

And just remember: this dish improves greatly after a night in the fridge!

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Gouda Stovetop Mac and Cheese

In my quest for the perfect stovetop mac and cheese, I absolutely had to try Tracy’s recipe from Tasty Kitchen as soon as I saw it. I’ve never tried using Gouda in my mac and cheese, and was very interested to see how it went down. So after adjusting the recipe to add more onion, more cheese and more cream, here’s how it went down:

Oh baby oh.

Look no further.

Let me break it down for you: I’ve made stovetop mac and cheese at least 4 times in the past few months. I photographed all my efforts so that I could share the recipes with you in the event of success, but none of them made the cut. Until this recipe. Point #2: my husband normally doesn’t even like mac and cheese unless it’s baked. But he loved this recipe. Need I say more?

Ingredients

(Serves 5)

1 lb campanelle pasta (or any other kind)

5 slices bacon

1 whole sweet onion, chopped finely

1 cup heavy cream

1 cup shredded Gouda cheese

Salt and pepper, to taste

First, boil some salted water and cook the pasta until al dente.

Set it aside.

You can really use any shape of pasta–elbow macaroni, penne, farfalle, etc.–but I love the campanelle because the little shell-shaped swirls are perfect for capturing the sauce inside. Check it out:

I shall rename this pasta shape “Ye Horne of Plenty.”

While the pasta is cooking, you can focus on the very simple sauce–it all starts with the bacon.

Fry the bacon slices until they’re starting to get crispy, then remove them to a paper towel and pad off the grease. Roughly chop them and set them aside.

As you can see, I used my trusty kitchen scissors for this task.

While the pasta is cooking and the bacon is frying, there’s plenty of time to mince up the onion. First I halve it, then I slice each half like so:

Then I cut in the opposite direction like so:

Thank you photography for saving me from a confusing verbal description of what just happened to that onion.

These little morsels of sweet onion are going to be perfect in that cheesy sauce. Yup.

Take a piece of Gouda . . .

. . . and grate up 1 cup. Or grate up more and eat the extra; the choice is yours.

Can you tell that I grated significantly more than I needed? On purpose? It’s called ‘the cook’s prerogative,’ and I claim that authority. Plus, the packaging says “Great for Entertaining,” and I was in sore need of entertainment after a frustrating day at work.

Nothing like melted cheese to make the stresses of the day melt away. Hmmm–that rhymes. I think I’ll write a song about that. The chorus will go “The stress is melting like cheese in fondue/with this kind of goodness, who could feel blue?/Give me that mac and cheese any old day/cause baby my worries are falling away.” And it will top the charts.

Remove most of the bacon grease from the pot (leaving about 1 TBS) and fry the sweet onion in the bacon grease over medium heat for about 5 minutes, until translucent and slightly soft.

Season the onion with salt and pepper as it cooks.

Add the bacon back into the pot along with the heavy cream.

Simmer over medium-high heat for a few minutes, until the mixture has reduced and thickened a little.

Mmmm!

Turn off the heat and stir in the Gouda cheese.

As soon as it has melted into the sauce (this will only take a minute), it will look something like this:

Add in the cooked pasta and stir the whole mess around until each and every Ye Horne of Plenty is coated in the sauce.

Taste and re-season, adding salt and pepper as needed. I added a healthy pinch of salt.

Voilà!

Quickly gather the troops, because this is best served hot.

A word to the wise–like most mac and cheese type dishes, this doesn’t reheat extraordinarily well, so chow down! And then thank the Dutch for the miracle of Gouda.

The next experiment: how would it taste if I used smoked Gouda?

Though I don’t know if I want to experiment–it’s so perfect just as it is.

If you need a little more protein, you can always grab that piece of salmon that’s been skulking around in your fridge and give it a quick fry.

Flake it up a little with a fork or two . . .

. . . and toss it in the bowl right along with the creamy pasta goodness.

Also quite choice. Either way, this recipe is fabulous. If you’re a lover of mac and cheese, you will not be disappointed.

Click here for printer-friendly version: Gouda Stovetop Mac and Cheese