flewellyn | Cooking With Flew: Buttered Chicken and Noodles with Tomatoes

Last night, I took friend Lynn out for dinner, then grocery shopping. While we were eating at Friday's (shut up, I wanted potstickers and steak), we discussed the idea of doing some cooking today. As you readers may know, we often cook together for fun, and we enjoy inventing recipes. So, we started noodling about what kind of food we might put together. I hit on the idea of egg noodles tossed with butter, garlic, and chives as a nice light snack or side dish, and then she said "if you add chicken, you could make it a meal". So, a bit more pondering, and some shopping, and we had our plan.

So, here is our result: Buttered Chicken and Noodles with Tomatoes. It's a quick dish, took us about 20 minutes to prepare, and is very versatile; you could easily make small substitutions of ingredients, while keeping the base the same.

You will need these ingredients:

Pasta, obviously. We used egg noodles, but you could also use some other kind of short pasta, like farfalle or rotini, or even penne. It should definitely be a short pasta, though.

Chicken or turkey. We used chicken breasts.

Tomatoes, preferable cherry tomatoes or small romas. They should be nice and ripe.

Butter, lots of it.

Extra-virgin olive oil. Really, there is no other kind of oil that you need, anyway.

Chives. Fresh or dried is fine, but we used dried.

Dill weed, fresh or dried. We used dried.

Garlic. You could use fresh cloves, or minced garlic in a jar, like we did. Don't recommend using garlic powder or salt, though.

Parmesan cheese. This is to top the pasta with.

White wine. You can use cooking wine (we did), or drinking wine.

Salt. Well, you might need it, or not. We used a small amount for the pasta.

Tabasco or some other pepper sauce, just for a slight kick. You won't use much.

Equipment needs are minimal: stove, of course, along with a skillet, pot to boil noodles, stirring utensils, and a couple of bowls. Tongs for serving are helpful, but not strictly necessary.

So, first, start the noodle water boiling. If you're cooking a lot of noodles, this may take some time, so get it going while you do the rest of the prep work.

Now, cut the chicken into small cubes. It doesn't matter if they're all the same shape, but they should be close to the same size. Heat up the skillet, pour in a few tablespoons worth of olive oil, and then put in the chicken to start browning. Stir them around until they're all nice and brown. Halfway through this, add some dill to the chicken. When it's done, you should remove it from the pan (leaving in the oil) and set it aside in a bowl for a moment.

Your noodle water should ideally be boiling now. Put in the noodles, and get them cooking.

Now deglaze the pan using the white wine and garlic. Mix this together until the wine's boiled off, then add butter and more wine. When the butter's nice and melted, add the chives, then a shot of tabasco. Stir this around until the wine's boiled off, and then check your noodles. If they're ready to drain, drain them and put them in a big mixing bowl. If not, set the pan with the sauce in it to simmer on low heat until they're ready.

Once you've got the noodles in the mixing bowl, pour the sauce over them, and mix it up. Mix in a bit of parmesan cheese at this point. Then, add the chicken and stir it into the noodles. Cut up the tomatoes into sections (quarters for cherry tomatoes), and put them onto the pasta and mix it together. Don't remove the seeds and juice from the tomatoes, you want that to mix in.

That's it! Top with more parmesan, and serve with a side of veggies, like asparagus (our choice) or broccoli. I can't recommend a particular wine or anything, but I drank pomegranate lemonade with it, which was a really nice accompaniment.

Thanks for joining me for Cooking With Flew, and remember: less time cooking means more time eating!