Posted by Ethne~
The other night we were cooking with leftover chicken. We often do this, and our go-to is
quesadillas or fajitas, but the girls advised me they weren’t interested in
Mexican. O-KAY.
So I Googled “what should I cook with my leftover chicken?”
and got some great results. [Much
improved from when I asked my phone to find the phone number for suburb’s city
offices the other day and it had no idea what I was talking about.] One of the recipes was minty pesto-pasta,
that you make with fresh mint and a box of fresh peas, neither of which I
had. I did have fresh (frozen)
basil, a ¼ cup of fresh (frozen) peas and fresh (frozen) spinach – along with the
rest of the required ingredients.
DECISION DONE. (Sorry I
didn’t save the original recipe.
If you find what I’m referring to, feel free to let me know the link in
the comments.)
So here’s how I made Pesto Chicken Pasta.
I chopped up the equivalent of about one pre-grilled/cooked
chicken breast pretty small.
I steamed my frozen fresh basil (about 2 handfuls of
fresh leaves), frozen fresh peas (1/4-1/2 cup) and frozen fresh
spinach (about 2 handfuls) with a little water in a frying pan over medium
heat on my stovetop. Watch very
carefully. These will cook very
quickly – just a few minutes. You
really only want to thaw them, not cook them. I immediately put them into a colander immersed in ice water
to stop the cooking process. [Note: you can use these things fresh and un-cooked if you have them un-frozen, but I needed to thaw mine, hence the quick steam.]
 |
| Frozen stuff into the pan with a little water |
In the meantime, I boiled up some spiral pasta in
salted water until it was my desired tenderness. We prefer ours slightly past al dente. Once drained, stir with just a little
olive oil and the chicken and set aside with lid on to keep warm.
 |
| My pasta have sneaky veggies in them too. |
As the pasta boiled and greens cooled, I grated ½-1 cup of parmesan
cheese (whatever kind you have is fine), measured out 2 T water and
2 T olive oil.
In my food processor, I placed the parmesan cheese, drained
greens and ¼ t salt and pureed it.
When the mix was smooth, I stopped, pushed down the sides with the
spatula, started things up again and through the top of the lid, slowly poured
in the water and olive oil.
 |
| Green = Healthy! |
That’s it.
Super easy. You couldn’t
taste the spinach or peas at all.
They pretty much just made the consistency right since I didn’t use pine
nuts, which are what help with the consistency of traditional pesto sauce. (Good to know for anyone out there with
nut allergy concerns.) Plus, of
course, a sneaky vegetable!
I did not use all of the pesto in my pasta dish. Probably ¾ of it. I just spooned it into my pasta and stirred
it around until it tasted good.
Then I put the lid back on the pasta pot and set the dish aside for a
few more minutes to let the pesto warm up. I refrigerated the rest of the pesto and plan to use it this
week as pizza sauce. Yum!!!!
 |
| KD's green grin of approval. |
The girls, particularly Easy Mac, thought this was
EXCELLENT. I recall specific “oh
my gosh’s” and “this is amazing’s”.
Rock on crouton.
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