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Pasta with Pancetta, Chicken, Pecorino and Broccoli Rabe – A HANGOVER HELPER!

December 31, 2019 by Mary 3 Comments

Happy New Year to everyone!! Be safe out there celebrating. I wanted you to have this recipe of Pasta with Pancetta, Chicken, Pecorino and Broccoli Rabe as it can be a real hangover helper for tomorrow. Top it with an easy-over egg for extra protein, should you need it, and you’ll be in good shape to be able to enjoy New Year’s Day, 2020.

Pasta with Pancetta, Chicken, Pecorino and Broccoli Rabe

Comes together in only 40 minutes!

This dish comes together easily and quickly and should take no more than 40 minutes from start time to serving, even with a hangover. I use only one pot for the pasta and to blanch the broccoli rabe, in order to remove the bitterness.

Cooking for me now, is at once a pain and a joy. It is labor intensive – as I have to clean up too. However, when I do muster the energy, I find I get my mojo back and truly enjoy it! I can literally feel getting back in the grove. Because this recipe that I made up on the fly is really worthy of sharing with you, dear readers, I wanted to make sure you got it today, for help with tomorrow.

Admittedly, I LOVE to cook. I hate to clean. But I love to eat good, healthy food. So, there you have it; I continue to cook. It’s just that some things I make may last 4 – 5 meals. Which means I have to plan carefully, around dinner dates with friends or just needing the company of other humans as I frequent certain restaurants by myself and eat at the bar, hoping to have nice conversations with folks, besides of course, the bartender.

Toasted breadcrumbs are always a good addition.

I absolutely adore toasted breadcrumbs on top of pasta dishes, so I added them here as I had some leftover croutons (that I had sautéed in duck fat to make them divine!) that I just crushed to make crumbs. Genius, right? (heh)

I hope you enjoy this as much as I did.

Wishing you all health, happiness and everything you’ve dreamed of for 2020!! Another new decade!

PASTA WITH PANCETTA, CHICKEN, PECORINO AND BROCCOLI RABE – serves 3 – 4

½ lb. of pasta – Strozzapreti or fusilli
Coarse sea salt
2 Tbs. olive oil
1 ¼” thick slice of pancetta, cut in ¼” cubes
3 boneless, skinless chicken breasts, all fat removed and cut into ¼” slices
5 cloves of garlic, sliced
½ of a fresh serrano chile, thinly sliced with seeds and membrane
½ cup of chicken broth, preferably homemade or low salt if in a box
1 head of broccoli rabe, ends trimmed off and sliced in 11/2” sections
½ cup of Pecorino cheese, grated
Salt
Fresh ground pepper
Toasted bread crumbs or crushed croutons

The easy process.

Put a large pot of water on to boil. After it comes to a boil, salt liberally with the coarse sea salt. Salt only after it comes to a boil so you don’t pit your pot. Add the chopped broccoli rabe and blanch for 1 – 2 minutes. Remove the broccoli rabe with a strainer, leaving the water to boil to cook your pasta.

Meanwhile, warm the oil in a large skillet, on medium heat, large enough to hold everything. Add the pancetta and sautè for 5 – 6 minutes until nearly cooked. Then add the garlic and your chicken strips and cook, tossing until all pink is gone from the chicken. Slice the serrano chili over the skillet with a hand mandoline and toss.

Meanwhile, salt the boiling water again and add your pasta, cooking it 2 minutes less than the lesser number on the package for your cook time.

Add the drained broccoli rabe to the skillet with the chicken and toss and continue to cook.

When the pasta is nearly at its time, add the chicken broth to the skillet.

Drain your pasta and add it to the skillet. Toss everything together for about 2 – 3 minutes to finish cooking the pasta. Do a taste test for the pasta, keeping it al dente. Then add the grated cheese and a good amount of fresh ground pepper. Toss everything together and serve in warm bowls.

Top with toasted breadcrumbs and serve with LOVE.

Quick Pasta with Broccoli Rabe, Tuna, Olives & Slow Roasted Tomatoes

January 24, 2016 by Mary 16 Comments

So once again on a weeknight this past week, we got home from work late, starving, and of course wanted to eat something super quick. I had planned on a meatless dinner and yet again, my husband protested. (Does yours, all you women out there?) I acquiesced with a small can of tuna here, which is how I came to make this Quick Pasta with Broccoli Rabe, Tuna, Olives & Slow Roasted Tomatoes dish. It was delicious!!

Additionally, we were supposed to have a dinner party this week and I was going to serve this Spicy Beef Ragout but one of the guests messed up on the date and we had to reschedule, and I had already bought everything for the dinner. So I went ahead and made the stew and froze it. (It will be better! :)) But the roasted Roma tomatoes would not wait 2 weeks and I didn’t think would freeze very well. So the day before this dinner below, I slow roasted those tomatoes anyway, not really knowing how I would use them. They are so easy to make and super delicious!! You just need the time for the two hours. Slow roasting makes them super sweet and totally yummy! You’ll really want to eat them with anything so I knew it wouldn’t be a problem.

I threw this dish together in literally 30 minutes and it was terrific!! My husband even talked about it the next morning and you know it’s really great when they’re still remembering it at breakfast.

A quick minute in the microwave revives the tomatoes and rather than chopping and mixing them in, which I considered, I thought it was much more elegant to just position them on the side, so you could decide to have a bite with or without them. Much nicer.

At any rate, this whole combination is super satisfying, quick, easy and full of flavor. Using the same pot of water to blanch the broccoli rabe (which removes the bitterness) and cook the pasta in is the real time saver. I hope you’ll try it and maybe always keep some slow roasted tomatoes on hand. I’m thinking I should do that. Serve with LOVE and enjoy!!

QUICK PASTA WITH BROCCOLI RABE, TUNA, OLIVES & SLOW ROASTED TOMATOES – serves 4

½ lb. spaghetti
1 large bunch of broccoli rabe, stalk ends trimmed, chopped in 1” pieces, washed in a water bath
1 Tbs. coarse sea salt
5 large cloves of garlic, thinly sliced
3 Tbs. olive oil, plus 1 more Tbs. for finishing
1 5 oz. can white Albacore tuna, packed in water and drained
¼ cup pitted Kalamata olives, drained and chopped
2 Tbs. fresh grated Romano cheese
8 – 9 slow roasted Roma tomatoes
1 Tbs. olive oil
Thyme leaves from 4 sprigs of thyme

TO MAKE THE ROASTED ROMA TOMATOES: DO THIS THE DAY BEFORE. Line a rimmed baking sheet with aluminum foil. Pile tomatoes on top, add 1 tablespoon of the oil, season with salt and pepper and toss. Add leaves from 4 sprigs of the thyme, toss again. Spread the tomatoes in a single layer on the foil-lined baking sheet, skin side down. Roast on the top shelf in the oven at 300 degrees for 2 hours. Let cool and store in a closed container in the refrigerator.

In a large pasta pot, place the washed broccoli rabe. Fill the pot with water to be at least 2 inches above the broccoli rabe. Add in the salt and stir to combine. Place the pot on high heat.

Meanwhile, warm the 3 Tbs. olive oil in a large skillet on low heat, (large enough to hold the broccoli rabe and pasta too), add the garlic and stir. Do not let it brown.

When small bubbles appear around the edges of the pot with the broccoli rabe, remove the rabe with a slotted spoon into a colander over a bowl and let drain. Let the water in the pot come back to a full boil. When that happens, add the pasta and cook for 3 minutes less than the lower number on the package directions.

While the pasta is cooking, (be sure to stir every once in a while), put the broccoli rabe in the skillet with the garlic. Cook a bit more, and toss. Add the tuna, flaking it as you stir.

When the pasta is near the end of cooking, take a large coffee mug and scoop out some pasta water. Drain the pasta and add it to the skillet with the tuna and broccoli rabe, stirring with tongs to combine. Add about ¼ cup of pasta water and the grated Romano cheese to make a loose sauce. Stir and taste until the pasta is done. Stir in the black olives to combine and finish with a drizzle of a tablespoon more of olive oil.

Taste to your liking with more salt or more cheese and some fresh ground black pepper.

Warm the tomatoes in the microwave for a minute or two. Serve the pasta in warmed bowls, with the tomatoes on the side as pictured above.

A complete meal in a dish and so delicious!!

We just had the leftovers for lunch today – still yummy!

The fettuccine recipe

July 28, 2012 by Mary Frances 6 Comments

UPDATE: Thanks to Jenny Dechico for helping us find a new and improved name for this dish!

There was an article in the NY Times a week or two ago about the wonderful fresh bounty available now at farmer’s markets and because everything looks so good, the propensity to overbuy and then how do you store and use so many vegetables? I confess I am guilty of this, and because I am the daughter of a mother who grew up during the Great Depression, (and not to mention our own depression now), I hate to waste food.

So I made this one dish pasta meal, chock loaded with vegetables. I was going to make this a meatless meal until I discovered a little bit of spicy chorizo and some sweet sopressata that needed to be used up as well. I loved incorporating the dried sausages. First of all, when you sauté them, you release the fat from the meat so use just a tiny bit of olive oil and that sausage fat adds a lot of flavor! Also, I personally loved the chewy texture the dried meats provided – different and delicious. Now I just threw this dish together on Wednesday evening and we were ravenous so I’m sorry to say I did not measure or weigh the ingredients, but I did take pictures along the way! I hope you like this dish as much as we did.

FARMER’S MARKET PASTA WITH SAUSAGES AND PECORINO ROMANO CHEESE

– serves 4 – 6 as a main course

1 tbs. olive oil
8 cloves of garlic, minced
1 medium-sized eggplant, cut in 1/2” slices, each slice cut in 1/2” strips
Peanut oil
Fine sea salt
Coarse sea salt
1 head of broccoli rabe, ends trimmed, thoroughly washed and cut in 2” pieces
7 ripe plum tomatoes, quartered or cut in 6th’s, then cut in 1/2” pieces
4” piece of spicy chorizo quartered lengthwise, and then sliced 1/4” thick
3” piece of sweet sopressata, sliced 1/8” thick and then each slice cut into 4 strips
Pecorino Romano cheese, freshly grated to taste
1 lb. dried fettuccine
4 – 6 tbs. pasta water

Okay, so this may seem like a lot for you to do but a lot of these things can happen concurrently and it really is easy.

Preheat your oven to 450 degrees. Place your cut eggplant in a colander in a single layer and salt generously with fine sea salt. Stack additional layers of eggplant and salt on top of each layer. Let sit and drain for at least 20 minutes or longer. This takes the bitterness out.

Put about a tablespoon of peanut oil on a rimmed baking pan. Spread all over with a small paper towel. Pat dry each piece of eggplant and put on the prepared pan with space in between. Place on the lowest rack in your oven and bake for 25 minutes, until the bottoms are nicely browned.

When it is done, scrape off with a metal spatula and place on a plate.

Meanwhile, place the broccoli rabe in a large pot. Cover with cold water, and salt with coarse sea salt. Place the pot on high heat. As soon as you start to see bubbling along the edge of the pan, remove the broccoli rabe with a slotted spoon to a strainer or colander. DO NOT DRAIN THE POT, You will use this water to boil the pasta in a little bit.

Cut your tomatoes and put in a bowl. Salt with fine sea salt. Toss and let sit.

Heat 1 tbs. olive oil in a large skillet. Put the minced garlic in and sauté on very low heat for 5 minutes.

Have your sausages and grated cheese ready.

Add the sausages to the garlic and oil, raise the heat to medium and sauté for 6 minutes more. Add the broccoli rabe and toss and cook through until tender.

Reboil the broccoli rabe water, adding more if necessary. Boil the fettuccine 2 minutes less than the package instructions and then test to your liking. I like it al dente. Save some pasta water. Drain the pasta.

Put half of the fettuccine, half of the eggplant, half of the tomatoes, half of the broccoli rabe /garlic/sausage mixture, some cheese and 2 -3 tbs. pasta water together in a large bowl and toss. Finish with the remaining ingredients. Toss thoroughly to combine. Serve and top with more cheese if needed.

Salted eggplant strips draining – removes bittterness

Parboiling broccoli rabe – removes bitterness

Chopped, salted plum tomatoes

Garlic!

Sausages

Romano cheese on a wooden cutting board.

Pecorino Romano cheese – I just used the piece on the right

Broccoli rabe, sausage and garlic in a skillet.

Broccoli rabe, sausages and minced garlic sauteing

Dinner last night

July 26, 2012 by Mary Frances Leave a Comment

Coming soon, I promise!! I’ll post the recipe for this fantastic pasta dish I made last night. It was so delicious! It’s fettuccine with garlic, roasted eggplant, sauteed broccoli rabe, fresh plum tomatoes, sausages, and pecorino Romano cheese. We both had seconds. Yikes!

Father’s Day!

June 19, 2012 by Mary Frances 4 Comments

Hope all you Dads out there had a great day!! Because our youngest left on Friday for a seven week vacation in Poland and Eastern Europe, our Father’s Day came early. They surprised my husband on Thursday evening, He came home from work to a beautifully set dining room table and both boys busy in the kitchen. I made cocktails for all and we had a grand time.

Here’s what they made. They started with a salad of arugula, topped with thinly sliced radishes and carrots, followed with avocado and a white wine and olive oil vinagrette. The meal was scaloppini of veal poached in a homemade vegetable broth with tarragon, dill and parsley, (a Mark Bittman recipe), served over parboiled broccoli rabe that was then flash broiled, and finished with a tossing of olive oil and chopped garlic, with mandoline sliced potatoes, coated in clarified butter and baked, (a French Laundry recipe). I am not making this up. They did it all and it was amazing and delicious!!!

Mark Bittman's recipe of veal poached in vegetable broth on red and white plates.

Father’s Day finished plates

One dish meals

October 15, 2011 by Mary Frances Leave a Comment

I was just thinking how much I love one dish meals for weeknights. What could be simpler? You’ve got your carbohydrates, vegetables and proteins all in one. You can serve it in a lovely flat soup bowl and hopefully the recipe will only cause one or two pots to be dirtied, so clean up is a breeze as well. The Pasta with Broccoli Rabe and Chicken Sausage recipe in my last entry is a good example but there are so many. Gnocchi with Shrimp and Snowpeas, Veal Stew with Rosemary and Lemon on Polenta, Orecchiette with Shrimp and Broccoli Rabe, all listed earlier here are other great ones. Think of the many combinations you can make – use your imagination. Combine things you love and you won’t go wrong. Remember to relax, have fun, and pour love into it!

Farfalle with lamb sausage and escarole.