Chicken and Pasta with Garlic and Balsamic Sauce

If you couldn’t tell, this house LOVES balsamic. And garlic. Oh, and chicken, too.
After buying the balsamic for my previous recipe, I realized I HAD to tap into my Life After Takeout book again, and make this recipe. I fell in love with it years ago, and I’m in love with it all over again! The sauce is tangy and perfect, the chicken is moist. The book doesn’t call to add pasta, but I made half the chicken it called for, and cooked up some shell noodles to add in. I felt like it needed something a little more than just…. chicken. So, here we are!

Oh, and I also served it (surprise!) with a side of roasted garlic and crusty sourdough.

Ingredients:
2 chicken breasts
flour for dredging
8oz (about) of shell pasta, cooked and drained
10 whole garlic cloves
1/4 cup Balsamic vinegar
1 cup & 1/4 chicken stock
1tbs flour
2tbs water
Salt and pepper, to taste
3tbs olive oil

Heat oven to 350 degrees

Heat large skillet on medium high heat, add olive oil.
Pat dry chicken with a paper towel. Spread flour onto a decent sized plate, and dredge chicken through flour to coat on all sides. Shake off any excess.
Lay the chicken in the pan and scatter the garlic cloves around. Cook the chicken, turning once, until it is golden. It should take about give minutes per side. Turn the garlic a few times so that it cooks evenly as well.
Once browned on both sides, transfer the chicken into a baking dish, place in oven, and bake until chicken is cooked entirely through (no pink!). It should take about 10 minutes, give or take, depending on the thickness of the breast.
Leave the garlic cloves in the skillet!

Pour the vinegar into the skilled and use a spoon or spatula to scrape up any browned bits that have formed from cooking the chicken and garlic in the oil. Heat to a boil, until almost all of the vinegar has evaporated and becomes a little syrupy, about one minute. Add the chicken broth, and once again bring to a boil.

Mix the flour and water into a slurry (it should form a thin paste) and whisk it into the broth until the sauce thickens.  Season the sauce with salt and black pepper, and add any collected juices from the chicken pan. I broke up the cloves of garlic by smashing them a bit, to help them disperse more through the sauce. If you’re omitting the noodles (and you can!) you don’t need to do this.

Place chicken onto plate, and pour a bit of sauce over each breast, making sure to place a few cloves on top of each. The remaining sauce should be mixed in with your cooked pasta shells. Serve shells on the side of each chicken breast.

Serve warm, and devour 🙂

If you  have any questions, comments, suggestions, or concerns… please leave a comment!

Like and share, and most important… TRY THIS RECIPE!!!

Crusty bread with goat cheese, green onion, red grape, and balsamic vinegar drizzle!

This is another ‘about’ recipe, because… pretty much ya just throw the stuff on there. BUT IT IS SO GOOD. God, it’s so good.

Last weekend my Starbucks store had a ‘girls night’ for the lady employees at one of the girls apartments. All of us brought an appetizer, and we enjoyed wine, herbal refreshments, and tasty food! There was a lot of fun conversation, story telling, gossip, and just general girlyness. It was so fun, and it was so great to get out of the house for a bit.

A friend, Erin, bought these delicious treats. And I could NOT stop eating them. Normally I’m a huge freak about food, and I’ll admit it. I love to cook for others, but I’m very strict on what I actually CONSUME myself (aside from taste-testing). I could NOT STOP devouring these! It took every inch of me not to steal them all and take the rest home, haha. But I decided a couple days after that I was going to give it a whirl! The man approved – and so – it has become a must have in this house! I’ve already made it twice, and it hasn’t even been a week! It’s a perfect ‘after school snack’ as I like to call them 😉 I promise, you’ll feel the same!

How to make a balsamic reduction from straight balsamic vinegar:

Basically all you’re doing is taking the vinegar and heating it up, to reduce it to a glaze. It’s really easy! You can always buy it already bottled, and the prices of balsamic vinegar vary, depending on ‘quality’. Personally, I have zero problem buying the store brand balsamic for 2.99 and making a reduction. I mean, I’m not going for exquisite taste, I’m going for tasty. And it’s tasty to me! You can use your own judgement, and decide what you’d rather! It’s up to you 🙂
Another fun thing about buying the vinegar and reducing it yourself, is adding stuff to it (for other recipes). Like garlic! Crushed cloves of garlic in the vinegar is diiiiiivine!
Moving on!

Put about 4x as much balsamic vinegar in a sauce pan, heating to a boil. Reduce to a simmer and cook, stirring frequently, until a sauce forms a little thinner than you’d like it to be (it will still reduce when removed from heat). Remember, this needs to have the consistency of a glaze. (2-4 minutes at a good simmer should do the trick.) Not goopy, but not runny. You should be able to control it nicely when you pour it (from a spoon or the pot).

For the bread:
A handful of grapes, thinly sliced (how many you slice depends on how much bread you have, and how many grapes you want per slice of bread)
A bunch of green onion, sliced very thin (again, amount depends on how much you’d like on your bread)
A log of plain goat cheese, let it sit out while you prepare the rest of the ingredients, it makes it easier to spread!
I used sourdough bread, but any french/italian bread would also do. Slice it up, about half an inch to an inch thick, depending on your preference.

Toast bread in the oven for a few minutes at 375
Remove from oven and spread a good layer of goat cheese on each slice (a quarter inch or so thick, more or less to taste)
Then sprinkle green onions and grapes over bread slices. I piled them on, because, UH YUM… THE MORE THE BETTER. But it’s really up to you (I told you this was an ‘about’ recipe!)
And same goes for your balsamic glaze. I spooned it out of my sauce pan in zig zags all over the plate, letting it drop on the bread and onto the plate (for extra yummy dipping, duh!)

This was seriously SUCH  great addition to my ‘appetizer’ selection. I sincerely suggest trying it, and playing around with the recipe! Goad cheese pairs well with so many foods. Give it a try! And leave me your feed back!

Quick Beef Chili & a little history!

I was gifted an amazing cook book back in ’08, from a few family members (hey Chavez fam!) that was basically the beginners guide on how to be a great cook. The book is separated into types of food as well as appetizers, breakfast, etc. Not only does it have AMAZING recipes, cover to cover, it also teaches you basic kitchen knowledge. Be it knife skills, how to properly store and stock produce and meats in fridges and pantries, what parts of animals are used for what types of meat, etc. It also gives you advice on how to throw a dinner get together, what kind of glasses to use for certain drinks, silverware, and so on. Basically, It’s the greatest cook book, and it taught me so much. I probably never would have fallen in love with cooking if I hadn’t received this book. Over the years I’ve used it so much that the binding is broke, there’s food and oil spills all over it. I know that book like the back of my hand, and the majority of the recipes in it as well.
Last Summer a group of women and I all got together for a week on the beach. One of the girls had recently gotten married, and wasn’t exactly the biggest fan of the idea of rockin’ the kitchen. The day before we left for the shores, I gave her my copy of this book. Tearfully, I’ll admit. I was bawling like a huge baby. For me, this was like passing it down to a daughter or a younger generation. Sharing with someone else the joy and the love I found, because of this book, was a huge deal to me. I made her promise to keep it safe, and to UTILIZE it. I hope that she is, just as I still am. Every day. I ended up buying a new (well, it was used) copy to have for my book collection. But there was something really meaningful about giving MY original gifted copy to her. Passing of the torch, I suppose. ANYHOO. Sappy can end – I’ve decided that over the next couple weeks I’m going to break out this awesome book and make the dishes I first made, in my very first kitchen – for my main man. Back when even I didn’t know how to properly boil water.

So to kick off this rewind week, I decided to make one of the first recipes I tried from this book. CHILI! However, I have to admit that over the years MY personal recipe no longer reflects the books. I’ve added things and omitted things and my personal recipe is a lot more tedious and contains a hell of a lot more ingredients. BUT. I wanted to do it Food Network’s way. Simple, easy, and back to basics. And I’d almost forgotten how AMAZING it was, just as is.

1 medium yellow onion, chopped
5 cloves garlic, minced
1 chipotle chile en adobo, with 1 tablespoon of sauce
3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
1 tablespoon kosher salt
2 teaspoons chili powder
1 teaspoon dried oregano
1 tablespoon tomato paste
1 pound ground beef chuck
1 cup Mexican lager-style beer (about 3/4 of a can)
1 15oz can kidney beans
1 14 1/2 oz can whole peeled tomatoes, with their juices (I didn’t have whole tomatoes, so I just used a can of diced. You squish them up anyway, so it doesn’t make a huge difference. Just less chunks of tomato, and more dispersed throughout the chili.)
1 cup chicken broth (about 1/2 a small can)

Peel and chop the onion, and mince the garlic. Finely chop the chipotle peper.

Heat olive oil in a sauce pan or large, heavy skillet over medium high heat. Once hot, throw in the onion, garlic, salt, chili powder, and oregano. Cook, stirring, until fragrant (about 3 minutes). Stir in the tomato paste and the chipotle chile, with it’s sauce. Cook for about one minute, and then add the beef, breaking it up with spatula or spoon. Cook the meat until it loses it’s raw colour, and then add in the beer. Simmer until it is reduced by about half (should take 5 minutes).

During the simmer, go ahead and rinse your beans. And then, once the beer has reduced, add the beans and the tomatoes to the chili. If you are using whole tomatoes, crush them with your hands, directly into the pot and add the juices from the can. Then add the chicken broth, and bring the chili to a boil. Cook uncovered, stirring occasionally, until it has thickened. It should take about 10 minutes, give or take.

Ladle/spoon the chili into a bowl and serve with the garnishes of your choice! I choise sour cream, monterey jack cheese, cilantro, and a side of chips and homemade guacamole!

Eat and enjoy 😀