When in doubt, go chicken

The scene: on my own with the two kids this evening, one of whom eats the same amount as his big sister

The cast: Baby1 (now 3 years old), Baby2 (now 10 months), myself.

The situation: with 2 little ones tugging at me and running rampant, I've got to get something on the dinner table fast - but I still want to use raw materials and not go with a processed dish, pre-made concoction, or delivery.

Mutually exclusive priorities? Not necessarily.

I thought back to my college days. Two guys in my senior-year house would always go to the local megamart and buy a ton of frozen chicken breasts - and one of the best creations they made was garlic chicken. It seems easy enough, so I figured...hell, I could probably throw dinner together using the dish title's basic ingredients - and add a little twist of my own to the basic recipe. The instructions below are the actual steps I used to make this dish this evening - from frozen to cooked in about 45 minutes.


Garlic Chicken with pasta
4 garlic cloves, pulverized
Olive oil
1 chicken breast (I precut the chicken breast into 8 3/4"-thick strips)
Chicken stock
S/P to taste

Tomato paste
Mozzarella cheese

Pasta of choice (I used medium shells)

1. Set a pot of water to boil for the pasta.
2. Saute the garlic in olive oil (I used about 3T) until fragrant. Do not burn. Turn the heat to low.
3. Add 1/2" of chicken stock to bottom of pan to deglaze.
4. Add frozen chicken (mine was a frozen block) to the stock, and season top with salt and pepper. Cover pan, cook for about 20 minutes.
5. At the end of the 20 minutes of continual steaming, the block should be able to separate into the individual strips. If not - turn the block of frozen chicken over and continue steaming until the strips separate. Make sure that all pieces get equal exposure in the stock.
7. While the garlic chicken sauce cooks, cook the pasta and drain - but you want the pasta to remain hot. Time the cooking of the pasta to finish just as the sauce finishes.
8. Making sure the chicken has cooked through, season the mixture with salt and pepper to taste.
9. Combine the hot pasta with the hot chicken sauce. Add a spoonful of tomato paste. Cover the pasta/chicken/tomato paste with an abundance of shredded mozzarella cheese.
10. Stir to combine thoroughly.

The sauce, with the tomato paste, coated the pasta well. I was able to singlehandedly get dinner on the table in the total of about an hour, with several moments of playtime with the kids interspersed between the cooking/steaming/boiling processes going on in the kitchen. If I had more time, I would have added vegetables to the chicken mixture for a better balance, or add a squeeze of lemon to the chicken sauce. Either way, this dish was a winner this evening: both kids loved it, I thoroughly enjoyed it, and even Hubby is enjoying his second helping of the dish - and he didn't even want to heat it up.