Chicken & Artichoke Pasta

The best word I can find for this dish is "refreshing."  It's not a pasta dish with thick white alfredo sauce or typical red marinara sauce...it's just chicken, bacon and the almighty artichoke.  Sound good?  Keep reading.  My first two ingredients were the starting points: pasta and artichoke, so my Google search led me to this cute blog with an appealing recipe.  Currently on their blog, they have a feature for Grilled Fish Tacos with Cantaloupe-Pineapple Salsa.  Umm, hello??!  Yes, please, now, thanks.  And I hate fish.  EDIT - looks like recipe actually originated from So Tasty So Yummy (and so true)

I digress, let's get back to business.  The total cook time was about 45-60 minutes, so a tad long for a week night but definitely still doable because it gives you leftovers for lunch.  Try it out for yourself with the recipe below, but my two cents is to add less lemon because it takes away the flavoring from the rest of the dish.  Plus, canned artichoke already gives a little citrusy twist.  And if you're like me, you love some delicious bacon, so why not add more slices?  The decision was okay in my book because we subbed it with turkey bacon anyway, score!  Can we make this again, soon!??

Ingredients

• 12 oz spaghetti
• 3 slices bacon
• 2 skinless, boneless chicken breasts, halved and pounded to 1/4-inch thickness
• 1/4 cup all-purpose flour
• Salt
• Pepper
• 1 can artichoke hearts, drained and quartered
• 2 tsp capers, drained
• 1/2 cup white wine
• 1 cup chicken broth
• 1/3 cup fresh lemon juice
• 1/3 cup heavy cream
• 1 Tbsp butter
• Fresh parsley, chopped, for garnish

Instructions

1. Cook pasta in salted water until al dente, according to package instructions. Drain and set aside.
2. Cook bacon to a crisp in a large pot over medium heat and remove, setting aside, leaving the rendered fat behind.
3. Whisk together the flour, salt, and pepper in a shallow plate.
4. Dredge the chicken in the flour mixture and shake off any excess.
5. Add the chicken to the pan and fry until cooked through and golden brown, ~5 minutes per side.
6. Transfer the chicken to a paper towel-lined plate and let rest.
7. Add the artichokes, capers, and wine to the pan, scraping up any browned bits from the bottom of the pan and cooking for ~2 minutes.
8. Add broth and lemon juice, cooking for another 2 minutes.
9. Add the cream and the butter to the pan, stirring until the butter has melted and incorporated.
10. Season to taste with salt and pepper.
11. Slice the chicken into 1/2-inch slices and add to the caper-artichoke sauce.
12. Add the bacon, pasta, and then gently toss the mixture. Serve immediately.

Yields: 4 servings
Estimated time: 45 minutes

The Grill

I'm marking May 13th as the start of summer in our home.  Why?  Because it's the first time we put use to our BBQ grill.  I don't want to turn this into a product review, but after the two hours it took me to assemble it in Dec (Christmas present from my parents) and the hour it took today for my husband to ignite the gas (still didn't work so we had to use a lighter), I can finally say that it worked wonderfully.  If you check out the photo below, you can see that I didn't use any non-stick product before cooking so that's something I've learned but this thing is a work-horse and is really strong for the small, convenient product that it is.  We still don't know why it doesn't ignite and will now always have to use a lighter, but better than having to return it for another one.  I despise returns/exchanges.

Our summer kick-off dinner consisted of corn, a hot link, and chicken drumsticks.  The corn was brushed with melted butter, garlic, salt and pepper then wrapped up in foil and grilled for about 30 minutes, rotating every 10 minutes.  The hot link was easy and just tossed on for about 30 minutes as well.  And lastly, the chicken was marinated with a recipe by my girl Giada.  Everything was really easy and super tasty and I'm counting down the days until our next BBQ adventure.  P.S. Close the lid when grilling.  I left it open the whole time to admire the meats so everything took a tiiiiiny bit longer to cook than directed =)

Five Spice Chicken and What Is a Star Anise

Five Spice Chicken is a dish I learned about through eating numerous times at a restaurant near work, Pho Garden.  Our team likes to caters from there because it comes in easy-to-serve plated portions and their Five Spice Chicken with Steamed Rice is a pretty popular choice.  On a whirl, I decided to Google the recipe and discovered it wasn't too hard.  The speed bump came when I had to search for tumeric and star anise because I had no idea what those ingredients were.  Tumeric is a ground yellow spice that you can actually find at Target and Star Anise looks like this...

Luckily, my mom had both so I did a little shopping in her kitchen and took those supplies home with me.  The rest of the recipe was pretty easy and straight-forward although I blame myself for a minor screw up.  The instructions said to add toasted star anise powder into the chicken which I completely missed so I threw the whole chunk into the mixture then to fix my mistake, I crumbled it up with a spoon and tossed in tiny bits of star anise.  Once we ate it, I realized this was a boo-boo because the bits stuck to the chicken when we grilled it so when you ate chicken, there was a chance you ate a star anise bit.  The taste is overwhelming.  The chicken itself was pretty good although I would reduce the amount of spices added.  The sodium notch was turned way high and it also makes for pretty smelly leftovers when you have to heat it up in the office kitchen!

To accompany the chicken, I found a simple and somewhat-tasty garlic noodle recipe to eat on the side.  I ended up substituting the sherry and rice wine for a teeny bit of Pinot Noir which seemed to work out okay.  Next time, I want a darker outcome like some garlic noodles I've seen and enjoyed in the past.  Overall, good experience and plenty of yummy (and easy) food.

Coq Au Vin

My French cousins visited last summer and made this amazing dish, Coq Au Vin.  It's chicken cooked in red wine.  Don't let the name scare you off, it's actually a really easy dish to prepare.  I found a couple recipes on Allrecipes.com and ended up going with the one that I was easily able to alter and make my own (and also with ingredients that were easy to find).  For instance, I didn't use cheese and subbed the cornstarch with flour, didn't add in any tomatoes, and added in mushrooms and baby carrots.

Gotta say, I was pretty impressed with myself but I'll need to tip the bottle of wine a little more next time.  The heavy cream came on a little too strong so it'll help with add more flavor and just more sauce overall.

Peter gave the thumbs up so we'll give this another try in a couple of weeks!