Saturday, January 9, 2010

Rigatoni with Chicken Alfredo


Regular readers know well my fondness for homemade pasta. Well, this Christmas I was blessed with a pasta press attachment for my mixer, and last night I decided to put it to use and make some homemade rigatoni along with a chicken alfredo sauce.

I didn't do anything different with the basic pasta recipe, so if you're curious about that, check out this post. The only difference here is that the pasta needs to be broken up into walnut-sized balls in order to work properly with the press.

I've never made homemade tube pasta before, so this was new for me, and the results were pretty great. Consider this a hearty recommendation for this particular Kitchenaid attachment.

As for the alfredo? Well, it wasn't particularly fancy, but it sure was good.

Chicken Alfredo

Ingredients:

2 skinless, boneless chicken breasts
4 cups chicken broth, separated
2 cups heavy cream
1 cup half & half
2 tbsp butter
1 1/2 cups freshly grated parmigiano reggiano
5 cloves of garlic, minced
8-10 basil leaves, chiffonated
2 tbsp fresh parsley, chopped
1 leave fresh sage, chopped
1 tbsp salt
2 tsp freshly ground black pepper

Directions:

To start, pound out the chicken breasts between two pieces of wax paper. This helps them cook more evenly as well as making them easier to cube later on. Set aside 1 1/2 cups of chicken broth for the alfredo sauce, and heat the rest in a pot and bring to a boil. Cook the whole chicken breasts in the broth.

In a heavy-bottomed sauce pan, melt the butter and add the minced garlic. Add the 1 1/2 cups of chicken broth and bring to a boil.

Reduce the heat and add the heavy cream and half & half, as well as the basil, parsley, and sage. Bring the sauce to a soft boil and add the salt and pepper, stirring frequently. Add the cheese and let the sauce simmer, stirring frequently while it melts and the sauce thickens.

Remove the cooked chicken from the broth and let cool on a cutting board. Dice the chicken and add to the alfredo sauce.

That's it! A very simple and tasty chicken alfredo. You can let the sauce simmer while you cook your pasta, just be sure to keep stirring it from time to time. Once you've cooked and drained the pasta, combine it with the alfredo and stir it all together before plating.

I steamed some broccoli to go along with it, as you can see.


For dessert, we had a few slices of an amazing stollen my stepmom made for Christmas. It turned out to be a great dinner on a frigid night, and there were absolutely no leftovers, which is always a good sign.

1 comment:

Christina & Scruffles said...

DANG I missed out! :( I'm there at your next dinner party fo sho!