August 26
Grilled Chicken and Pesto Pasta
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- Grilled Lemon Chicken [View Recipe]
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Ingredients
- 1.5 pounds chicken
- 2 large lemons
- 2 cloves garlic (coarsely chopped)
- 1 tablespoon oil
- salt & pepper
- 1/2 teaspoon basil
Instructions
We start off tonight by making the quick marinade for the chicken. We rinse and dry the lemons and zest them onto a piece of wax paper using our microplane grater. Then we cut them in half and squeeze them into a measuring cup, removing the seeds. The two lemons give about 3 tablespoons of juice. We add the zest, garlic, olive oil, salt, pepper, and basil and stir.
On a large piece of wax paper we place our 4 rinsed pieces of chicken breast halves. We cover with another large piece of wax paper and using the flat side of our mallet, we pound the chicken pieces to an even thickness.
We place the chicken into a resealable plastic bag and pour the marinade in. We move the chicken pieces around to coat well and then seal the bag. We place the bag into a large bowl and refrigerate for about half an hour. We could have just started the grill and left the chicken on the counter for a few minutes, but we have some time so we refrigerate. We immediately wash and sanitize our hands and work area.
We pre-heat our gas grill and then place the chicken on the grill, discarding the marinade. After a few minutes, we turn with tongs and continue to cook until the chicken is just cooked through. The total cooking time was 6-8 minutes, depending on the size of the piece of flattened chicken.
- Basil Pesto Pasta [View Recipe]
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Ingredients
- 1/4 pound pasta
- salt
- 1/4 cup [object Object]
- 1 small tomato (diced)
Instructions
We place a large pot of water on the stove over high heat for the pasta. When the water boils, we add some salt and the pasta. We stir and cook according until al dente, about 15 minutes.
Just before draining the pasta into a colander, we remove about 1/4 cup of pasta water. We drain the pasta, put back in the pot, and then stir in the pesto and a little water at a time to create a sauce (we do not use all of the pasta water). We serve and top with tomatoes.
- Basil Pesto [View Recipe]
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Ingredients
- 2 cloves garlic (peeled)
- 2 tablespoons pine nuts
- 1/4 teaspoon salt
- 3 ounces basil (cleaned, dried, and stemmed)
- 1/2 cup oil (divided)
- 1/4 cup cheese (grated)
Instructions
The most time consuming part of making pesto is cleaning and gathering the basil. One large bunch of basil from the farmer's market yesterday, after cleaning and stemming, weighs in at 3 ounces. This is a little more than 3 cups of basil, gently packed. This recipe yields about a cup of basil pesto.
In our food processor, we put the garlic, actually just 1.5 cloves since the garlic is a bit old and we need to cut off a bit, the pine nuts, and the salt and grind up for about 10 seconds. Next, we add the basil and pulse about 10 times until the basil is chopped. Then we turn on the processor and stream in half the oil. We turn off the processor and scrape down the pesto. We drizzle in another 2 tablespoons of oil with the machine on and then we are ready. We put half of the pesto in a resealable plastic container and stir in the cheese. The remaining pesto we put in an ice cube tray for future use. We want to freeze it without any cheese, and then when we defrost the cubes we will need to add parmesan. We pour the remaining 2 tablespoons of olive oil over the pesto in the ice cube tray and the plastic container. We refrigerate the container to be used over the next week and freeze the ice cube tray. When the cubes are frozen (we only have the tray half-way filled), we place them into a freezer bag.
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