Christmas Chicken Tortellini

You might want to take away my woman card for saying this, but I do not like alfredo sauce. I do not like it from a jar, or in a restaurant, or even made by my own hand. I don’t know why — maybe it’s too salty or too heavy or maybe I just got sick of it in high school when I thought it was fancy and ordered it at every possible opportunity.

I’m not saying I can’t eat it. I can, and I will. It’s just that I don’t crave it, I don’t seek it out, and I don’t make it at home anymore. But I do like an occasional departure from Sunday Gravy, and am constantly looking for ways to make a cream sauce that doesn’t feel like a heart attack on a plate or come across as one-dimensional and boring.

Recently, I made a trip to Restaurant Depot with a friend who is a member. This is not your average Costco, friends. Not just anyone with 50 bucks and a desire to sample frozen foods can get a membership. This place is reserved for restaurant owners, and it’s full of amazing things that are not as commercial as Costco’s items. But, people, it’s awesome. Stuff is really inexpensive. The most impressive part of my haul that day was three clamshells of fresh herbs. And when I say clamshell, I’m talking about the oversized one like you get from the giant salad in at the grocery store salad bar. It was a ginormous amount of herbs. It was enough rosemary that, as one of my friends said, “I could make a bed with that stuff and roll around in it.” These things were just over $6 apiece. I got the motherload of basil, oregano, and rosemary for under $20. It has been a really fun time coming up with ways to use all that beautiful herbage.

It’s no secret that I am a fan of the chicken thigh. I find chicken breasts to be dry, tasteless, and almost useless except for fried chicken fingers. Thighs are inexpensive, tasty and versatile. The trifecta, in my kitchen.

So I knew I had herbs to use up, and I knew I was tired of Sunday gravy. What could I do with all of the chicken that was thawed in my refrigerator? But of course! Pasta — with a cream sauce. And what makes pasta fancier? Tortellini!

What I ended up churning out was a lovely weeknight dish, elegant enough for a dinner party. And, it only took about 30 minutes to make. But no one would know it, for it is so fancy and delicious.

First, I cut four boneless chicken thighs into smallish strips and gave them a liberal salt and peppering. Then I put them on a cookie sheet coated with cooking spray and popped them in a 350-degree oven to cook. You could cook the chicken in a saute pan, but I think this is easier, and tastier. The roasting will help it retain juice and cook in flavor, and it’s one less step for the cook to perform. This way, instead of pushing chicken around a skillet, you can focus directly on your sauce.

I began by making a thickening agent. Melt about 2 tablespoons of butter in a saute pan and add 2 heaping tablespoons of flour. Whisk it around until it’s all combined, and then add a cup of chicken stock. Then you have to turn up your heat to medium high, and whisk madly until all the lumps are gone. This will get rather thick rather quickly, and then you can add another cup of chicken stock. Whisk like crazy again.

Next, I added a cup of Half and Half, but milk or even heavy cream would work, depending on what you have lingering in your refrigerator. Whisk again, let it get bubbly and start to thicken.

Here is where I add the first round of “flavor.” A hearty pinch of kosher salt (maybe a teaspoon — don’t over-salt), a few good cranks of cracked black pepper, and half a cup of white wine went into the pot. Then I added some garlic cloves. I happened to have some garlic that I cooked thoroughly during an oil-infusion process the weekend before, so mine were soft and delicious already, but whole fresh cloves will work too, as long as you cook your sauce long enough to soften them. Or, if you are averse to large hunks of garlic in your sauce, mince them up. Whatever works for you is fine. But I have to admit that the pre-cooked and preserved garlic was an unexpected and welcome addition to our dish.

Next, I added half a cup of crumbled goat cheese and a handful of sundried tomatoes. Mine had been packed in oil so I rinsed them thoroughly before I put them into the mix. I didn’t want the additional oil in my sauce.

Now is a good time to set your pasta water to boiling. Frozen tortellini only takes about two minutes to cook, which is also a bonus in my book.

While the cheese melted and the tomatoes warmed, I occasionally stirred, and I pulled the chicken from the oven.

Into the boiling water went my bag of tortellini, and two minutes later I was ready to plate.

First, a large pile of tortellini went onto the center of a large plate. Then I dished the garlic/white wine/goat cheese/sundried tomato sauce over the top. Next, I sprinkled on some fresh basil I had cut in a chiffonade (about three large leaves per plate), and then I laid on several pieces of chicken on the top.

http://www.lawrence.com/users/meganstuke/photos/2011/dec/12/226513/

This dish is Christmasy, beautiful and elegant. When you say words like garlic confit, white wine and goat cheese, people start to marvel. Little do they have to know the goat cheese was $3 a log at Costco and the basil was almost free. They don’t have to know the white wine came from a box or that the dish only took half an hour from start to finish. They don’t have to know you buy your chicken thighs in bulk from Checker’s or that your sundried tomatoes came off the salad bar as an afterthought. All your guests need to see is a beautiful plate full of red and green and flavor overflowing.