Pasta with Shredded Chicken in Creamy Sauce
This column is about taking you on a food odyssey that provides you with simple recipes for what I call “student grub” but with a variety of tastes including Kiwi, Italian, Chinese, Indian and Mexican. The previous recipe was Mexican and below is a simple pasta dish that again uses easy to buy ingredients. A few simple hints that you must follow are:
First, prepare the sauce in a saucepan and add the cooked pasta to the sauce and not the other way round. Second, take a few tablespoons of the water used for preparing the pasta and add to the sauce. Third, the water used for the pasta preparation should have sufficient salt in it so that it tastes like sea water!
Ingridients:
1 500gm packet of pasta spirals
300mls of fresh cream
250gm shredded cooked chicken
1 cup frozen mixed vegetables
2 cans whole and peeled tomatoes
1 onion diced
1tsp garlic (chopped or paste)
2 Tbs olive oil
2 Tbs any mix of dried Italian herbs
1Tbs of chilli flakes
2Tbs Salt
Method:
In a saucepan, fry the onions in oil on medium heat for 5 minutes or till they are translucent, then add garlic, herbs and chilli flakes along with the tomatoes. Simmer for 15 minutes but keep stirring occasionally so that the tomatoes do not stick to the bottom of the pan. On another burner, empty out pasta from packet into sufficient boiling water along with the salt in a large dish and follow packet instructions till al dente.
Now back to the sauce - add the chicken and vegetables and cook on low heat for 5 minutes and add the cream. After one quick boil remove from stove, add the cooked pasta to the sauce and serve with any salad mix on the side.