Try this recipe- chickeny saucey goodness

My good pal, Rachel Williams, recommended this recipe to me and what a great recipe it is! It is by The Hairy Bikers and is easy to make and has normal ingredients so you don’t have to spend loads buying them in.  It is called smashed up chicken with chilli and garlic pasta. And it is really good served with a glass of white wine.

It serves 4-6 but I halved everything, although I didn’t halve the sauce as Rach recommended I didn’t and it was good with more sauce.

The chicken ready to be smashed

For the chicken you will need 2 large chicken breasts, 3 tbsp of flour, 2 tbsp of olive oil and 150g wild mushrooms (I couldn’t find wild mushrooms so I used mini Portobello mushrooms from Sainsbury’s which are GOOD mushrooms).

Put the chicken in cling film, or I used a sandwich bag, and whack it until it is squashed flat. Then season the flour with salt and paper and throw the mashed up chicken in the flour.  Then fry the chicken in the olive oil until brown, remove this and then fry the mushrooms- I added a bit more oil as it was dry. 

Sauce

 For the sauce: 150ml white wine, 75ml chicken stock, 2 garlic cloves, crushed,  1 tbsp fresh tarragon (I used dried thyme!), 1 tbsp lemon juice, zest of one lemon, 2 tbsp capers and 2 tbsp crème fraiche. Put the wine and chicken stock (I used Knorr stock cubes) in together. Boil and reduce down then add the garlic. Add the thyme in my case and lemon juice and zest.  Cook for two minutes and add the capers (I forgot to rinse them so remember to do this!) Remove from the heat and whisk in the crème fraiche (I just stirred it in).  And add the mushrooms and chicken and heat through. It said to add parsley but I didn’t.

For the pasta take 250g pasta (I used rigatoni) and boil it until al dente. Then in a little bit of olive oil fry 1 tbsp of chilli flakes and 2 crushed garlic cloves and toss the pasta in this. I also added tinned sweetcorn to the pasta for my five a day.

It then says to add parmesan cheese but I didn’t. I put the pasta in a bowl and the chicken sauce on top.

The result: delicious! The chilli pasta adds a real kick to the chicken and the sauce is so creamy but not too rich- you can really taste the lemon so it tastes really summery and fresh. As I said it is an easy recipe but tastes great. Make it now!!

The final dish