Cooking for Beginners: Chicken & Zucchini Pasta

Once again, I plan a recipe for Cooking for Beginners (CFB from now on) and it doesn't turn out perfectly, so I decided that it was meant to be that way. How often do you go to cook something and realize your missing an ingredient? (Please tell me I'm not alone!)

Then I realized, even beginner cooks should know what to do when you forget that key ingredient or want to change up a recipe a bit. Ready to get started?

Chicken & Zucchini Pasta
Servings: 4
Adapted from: www.allrecipes.com

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Ingredients:

1/2 package pasta (I used Penne)

4 slices of onion (it rolled out of the picture)

2 tsp. garlic

1 zucchini

1/2 tsp. oregano

1 cup mushrooms

1/4 tsp. red pepper flakes

1 1/2 cups chicken broth

3 chicken breasts (or tenders or precooked chicken)

2 tbs. cream cheese

parmesan cheese

basil

salt

pepper

olive oil

Directions:

1. Cut the chicken into strips and season with salt and pepper. If you are using precooked chicken then just skip this. 

2. If you forgot to buy chicken broth (which is really weird for me since its a staple in the pantry), you can use bouillon cubes. Add about 1 cup of water per bouillon cube in a small saucepan and heat over medium high heat until boiling and the cube has dissolved. However, if your like me and couldn't manage to find bouillon cubes in the grocery store and had to settle for the packets from the international aisle, then add one packet to 1 1/2 cups of water and heat as instructed above. The picture below would obviously be before it dissolved.

3. In a medium sized saucepan, add 3 cups of water and lightly season with salt. Put over medium high heat. (This is for the pasta.)
4. Cut the zucchini into thin slices, dice up the onion and cut the mushrooms into bite sized pieces.
5. In a large skillet, add a little bit of olive oil over medium heat. Add the chicken and cook for approximately 10 minutes, flipping over once, or until the chicken is cooked through and browned on all sides.

6. Transfer the chicken to a plate. (I always use paper plates for this, there is no point in dirtying up another dish)

7. Add a little bit more olive oil to the skillet. Turn down the heat to low because the pan should be pretty hot by now. Add the garlic and onion and cook for about a minute or until the the garlic is lightly browned and fragrant.

8. Add the mushrooms and zucchini. Season with salt, pepper, red pepper flakes and oregano. Cook for 8-10 minutes or until the zucchini is soft. By now the water should be boiling for the pasta. Add in 1/2 box to the salted water and stir to make sure the shells don't stick together. I usually spend the 10 minutes loading the dishwasher with everything that I've used, cleaning off the counters and putting away any ingredients that I'm done with.

9. Pour in the chicken stock and add the cream cheese. Stir until the cream cheese is combined.

10. Add the chicken to the skillet and cook for 5 minutes more until everything is heated through.

11. Drain the water from the pasta (the kind I used took 12 minutes). Spoon the pasta onto plates and add the chicken mixture. Season with basil and Parmesan cheese and serve. Enjoy!

Tom wasn't a big fan of this recipe, he thought that the sauce tasted funny. I thought it was pretty good and would definitely add it to my list of things to make again, but I don't think the zucchini did anything amazing for the recipe at all. It kind of just blended in. I wouldn't have had any problems omitting it entirely.