Pesto, pasta, pesto, pasta .... try saying that 5 times fast.

farfalle pasta with chicken, pine nuts, olives, tomatoes, parmesan and pesto

Today's post is about a delicious pasta dish.  Mark and Celine are the grandparents of my son's girlfriend.  He eats at their place with some frequency, and one of the dishes he always enjoys having there is Celine's penne pasta with chicken.  She passed along the recipe to me and I've tweaked it just a small bit to fit my preferences, but otherwise this dish comes from her.

Cook a pound of farfalle (bowtie) pasta.  I always like to cook it past the al dente stage since I prefer my pasta very soft.  While that's happening, cook (or reheat if it's already cooked) about a pound and a half of chicken.  You can use breast meat or dark meat.  It's up to you.  Dark meat has more flavor.  And if you cook chicken on the bone and then pick the meat from the bone you have added flavor as well.  But no matter which way you do it, the chicken meat will be delicious.  I like to have the chicken cooked ahead of time but kept warm so it's ready when the pasta is drained but still hot.  You can cook it in a skillet, roast it, braise it, whatever, just as long as the chicken is hot and ready for the pasta.  The pound and half measurement is for meat only, not bone.  You can use less meat, but more is better (in my opinion).

Combine the hot pasta with the hot chicken and add 6 or more ounces of pesto.  Add more or less according to your preference.   I always like lots of extra sauce no matter what kind of pasta dish I am having.  Add 1/4 cup to a 1/2 cup of grated parmesan cheese at the same time that you add the pesto.  Again, the amount doesn't have to be exact.  And I always use more rather than less when it comes to parmesan in any cooking endeavor.  (Same with cinnamon and baking -- lots of cinnamon and you can never go wrong, in my opinion - but that's another recipe for later.)

Stir in about 1/2 cup, maybe 3/4 cup, of roasted pine nuts.  Roasting them is easy:  350 oven for about 5 minutes on a cookie sheet.  You can put in raw pine nuts, but roasting them makes a difference.  Roast them ahead of time, of course, so that your hot pasta and chicken are not cooling off while waiting for the pine nuts.

Toss in a 15-ounce can of pitted black olives, drained and sliced.  Toss in about a pint of cherry tomatoes, sliced in half.  Mix the whole thing together.  I would do all of this in a very large bowl so you have plenty of room to combine it without sending things flying out of the bowl.

After dishing out servings, dust each portion liberally with more parmesan, maybe a little chopped parsley, and you are set to eat.  This dish can be reheated as well, although much of the pesto will have have been absorbed by the pasta, so I always heat extra pesto to add be stirred in.

An added note:  traditional pesto is the norm, but I especially like sun-dried tomato and basil pesto in this dish.

So there you have it:  a delicious pasta dish all thanks to Celine.  Mark and Celine have enthusiastically eaten many things that came from my kitchen over the past few years.  So thanks for that as well.  I always love sharing with people who appreciate good food.