Tuesday, September 23, 2008

First Recipe Entry!

Hello! I've been doing some pondering lately, about what I can do to get us to post on this blog more. Most of my day (currently) is consumed by household chores and my favorite one of these chores is cooking and exploring recipes. I've decided that I will now start randomly sharing yummy recipes I find or make with you (this may be more for my enjoyment than yours..)

One of our new-found favorite restaurants to eat at lately is Arizona Pizza Factory. They have excellent gourmet pizza's, cal-zones, pasta, salads, and breads of all sorts. My favorite dish to get from there is the Chicken Penne with Garlic, Sun-dried-Tomatoes, Spinach and Feta. It is absolutely DIVINE! I decided recreate my favorite dish at home last night and it turned out very yummily, and it was VERY simple. My recipe is as follows (by the way, I am not a measuring cooker, so all ingredients are eyeballed..)

What you will need: (will feed 4-6 people, depending on how
much you eat)
  • Extra Virgin Olive Oil (or as Racheal Ray says, EVOO...I will just call it Olive Oil)
  • Finely Chopped Garlic (I used 6 cloves, I LOVE garlic and since there is no sauce in this dish, the garlic adds LOTS of flavor)
  • 2-4 boneless skinless chicken breasts
  • 1 Box of Penne Pasta
  • Salt, pepper, garlic powder
  • Spinach (you can use frozen spinach, or a bag of salad mixture spinach leaves)
  • Chopped Sundried tomatoes (if they are dehydrated you will need to re-hydrate them by soaking them in olive oil for a couple hours)
  • Feta Cheese (crumbles, or a block cut into cubes)
  • 1 Lemon
Directions!
  • First, you will need to cook the pasta in salted water. While the pasta is cooking, cut your chicken into bite sized cubes and season with salt and pepper and garlic powder then set aside. Then, use the olive oil from the sun-dried tomatoes and put a spoonful into a small skillet on medium high heat, and about 1/3 cup into a large skillet on medium heat.
  • In the small skillet, cook the chicken. In the large skillet first add the spinach (if using fresh spinach, allow it to wilt while stirring it). Lightly salt the spinach, then add the garlic and sundried tomatoes along with lemon zest.
  • When the chicken is done cooking, add it to the large skillet.
  • Drain the pasta, then add that to the large skillet and squeeze 1/2 of the lemon's juice into it. Mix everything well, then add the feta cheese and mix that too (it won't melt.)

Voila. Very very simple and SOOOO tasty.


2 comments:

Jasonmrazfanluv said...

Wow that looks yummy!!!
Love your blog to!
Love ya,
Gina

deyoungsters said...

oh my goodness- YUM! I will have to try this for sure!

I'm sooo excited that we can keep up with you guys on your blog! : )we miss you!