Simple Pasta Salad
>> Wednesday, May 14, 2008
The time has come -- recipe time. As a general rule, everyone should know that I do not measure things, I use my clean hand for all my measuring needs, or eye ball it. Its much easier and saves time, you don't have to be precise for food to taste good.
This recipe was inspired by my co-worker and wonderful friend Jackie. Its perfect to make the night before and take with you to work or party, wherever you deem worthy.
Simple Pasta Salad for 1 (obviously double, triple etc. for more)
Ingredients
- 1 Chicken Breast (I really love Perdue Perfect Portions. Yes, the name fits. They are perfect)
- 1 palm full of pasta shells
- 1/4 - 1/2 of a roasted red pepper (see, that tip came in handy :) )
- Feta cheese (as much as you like)
- Italian dressing
- Olive Oil
- Salt
- Pepper
Directions
- In a skillet over medium-high heat add enough olive oil to cover the pan. Salt and pepper each side of your chicken breast and add to pan (2-3 minutes on each side to brown, and then cook for 6-8 minutes more).
- While chicken is cooking, add water to sauce pan for pasta. Salt the water (this is the only chance to give pasta any salt flavor so dont forget!) and cover till boils then add pasta. Let cook for 8-9 minutes or until desired texture.
- Drain pasta and place in bowl and set in refridgerator to chill (I'm sure this is wrong, but I throw mine in the freezer sometime to make it cool down faster). Basically the point of this is to not have hot noodle when you add the other ingredients.
- Once pasta is cool, dice chicken into cubes and mix with feta cheese, red peppers and enough italian dressing to coat the pasta (as I general rule I go in a circle around the bowl as a good measure).
- Either eat then or let it set over night for all the flavors to mesh together.
Well there you have it, the best, simple pasta salad ever. Enjoy!!
5 comments:
Sounds good, too funny you don't measure, that's very "Italian" of you. Not a big fan of feta unless it's sounded by huge Greeks and they are whipping pita bread at me from the over. Try subsitituing camambert for that feta...magic!! Keep em coming! I'm hungry reading this!
This sounds so easy and delicious!! Do you have a preference for the Italian Dressing to use??
Any Italian Dressing will do. I like Kraft because its affordable and has a simple great taste. If I had the time I would make it myself...but for now Kraft will work :)
Last night Rachel and I made this, and it was DELICIOUS and very easy to do. We were hard-core and even roasted the pepper on the stove, even though we were a little scared about setting our apartment on fire. Luckily that didn't happen, and we came out with a few tips of our own: First, when turning the pepper on the stove, use tongs or an oven mitt. As I learned from experience, the pepper gets VERY hot. We also found turning the flame down (or off)while rotating the pepper reduces the chance of burns. These tips may seem like obvious observations to some, but hopefully they'll save the rest of us from learning the hard way. Renee, I can't wait to try the next recipe!
Post a Comment