Chicken Pasta with Parmesan Lemon Sauce

This is a dish I found on Tastespotting while searching for chicken recipes that wouldn't require a long-listed trip to the store. The only extra thing necessary was a lemon, which is simple enough. As I had the breast from a whole chicken (meaning two half-breasts), I doubled the recipe, assuming 1/2 cup chopped chicken per breast. While I had spaghetti noodles, I had a serious surplus of macaroni and opted to utilize it, which may have been the downfall of my Chicken Pasta outcome.

Chicken Pasta with Parmesan Lemon Sauce
adapted from Dianasaur Dishes

1 c dry macaroni noodles
1 c chopped raw chicken (1/2 inch pieces)
kosher salt and pepper
2 tbsp canola oil
juice of fresh lemon
1/2 c milk
1/2 c parmesan cheese
1/2 c frozen peas

Bring a large pot of water to boil. Sprinkle the chopped chicken with salt and pepper.

Add canola oil to a skillet and turn heat on medium high. Add the seasoned chicken.

Cook pasta according to package instructions; anticipate adding frozen peas during the last two minutes.

Cook the chicken for about 5 minutes, or until completely white, stirring occasionally. Bring heat up to high to brown chicken to a golden color, cooking another 2-3 minutes.

I cooked the chicken another 2-3 minutes but it didn't become golden. Worried the white meat would simply dry out, I didn't persist.  Next time, I'll use the cast iron.

Add lemon juice, milk and parmesan to the skillet of chicken and stir well. Reduce heat to low.


Add peas when appropriate and let the water return to a boil.*

*While my pot of salted water (covered) gets to a raging boil within a decent amount of time, once the pasta is added a full boil is not easily achieved. Thus addition of frozen peas will require 30 minutes to yield a full boil. I simply cooked the peas and pasta an additional two minutes, boiling water or not.

Drain peas and pasta completely.

This looked so good in real life that I considered scooping some into a bowl, adding a pat of butter, and chowing down.

Add the pasta and peas to chicken and sauce; combine thoroughly.

While my results weren't the greatest, I believe that if I'd carried out this dish more carefully using spaghetti as the original recipe called for as well as timing the pasta cooking time properly, the dish would be spot on. Macaroni is tubular, thus able to suck up more sauce. Too many tubes apparently = too little sauce.

As it was, I made a slightly-overcooked-macaroni-and-scarce-cheese-plus-peas dish.

Though it tasted decent, it was on the dry side (and coming from me, a person who prefers to avoid over-sauced dishes, you can believe what I say). Looking back on it, I should've reserved some of the pasta water, but additional milk (warmed) would've been a good pinch-hitter.

Though this dish didn't turn out that well for me this time, I'm sure it will next time when I use spaghetti or linguine or fettucine as well as cast iron to brown the chicken.

Cost:

• pasta: $0.50
• chicken breasts: $2
• lemon: $0.32
• milk: $0.19
• Parmesan cheese: $0.50
• peas: $0.25

Total: $3.76 or $0.59-0.94 for each of four large or six small servings.  This would very likely work on a food stamp budget, just like Dianasaur Dishes says.

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