Pollo Affumicato Con Fungi Y Orecchiette (Smoked chicken with mushrooms and Orecchiette pasta)

OK Dudes and Dudettes and whomever else I missed (trans, non-declared, whatev…) I can’t remember if I sent this out before, but I have a pressing urge to send it out again… regardless. Because… this recipe is the bomb! Les is in the midships cabin recuperating from a root canal re-do, and I’m contemplating a voyage into existentialism: Open heart surgery to repair a leaky atrial valve and an aortic root aneurysm. So there. Stick that in your pipe and smoke it!

So… here it is.. as I wrote it and for our local Point Loma Yacht Club Cook book. Yes, it was accepted as written and posted for members to peruse and enjoy:

I first tasted this amazing dish in a San Diego Point Loma restaurant named La Luna Notte.  I went home thinking about how I would make it and created my own version that I’ve added and subtracted to over the years.  Cooking is after all nothing more than chemistry in action…  As written, the recipe seems very… well… complicated.  If you have a 4 burner stove it is quite easy, but I once cooked it on a one burner camp stove in the Eastern Sierra Nevada… whilst drinking a really nice Beringer Knight’s Valley cabernet and gazing upon Mount Whitney at sunset.  And it was fabulous…  Another note… you have permission to open a bottle of your favorite sipping wine… it assists the subconscious mind to access and surface the deep creative gastronomic processes hiding within…

There are 4 main parts to prep this exquisite pasta dish

1. A concoction of olive oil, red onion, mushrooms, garlic, spices
2. Chicken thighs with salt, pepper and instant smoke
3. Alfredo Sauce
4. Cooked Orecchiette pasta
5. Prep and cooking of incidental additives:  baby spinach, arugula, broccoli

Overall How To:

• Cook Chicken thighs and set aside
• Cook orecchiette until al dente drain, cool to stop cooking and set aside.  If you are paying attention with all the steps it will be done when the other parts have been completed.  If not, don’t worry… (Sub orecchiette with small elbow noodles or other pasta.  It’s OK…)
• Start concoction and while that is cooking… start Alfredo sauce… yes you can do the concoction and alfredo sauce at the same time.  Perhaps not the first time… but… practice… practice.  Sub the “home brewed” alfredo with a store bought jar.  I’ve found Trader Joe’s to be one of the better tasting than other brands.

Ingredients With Their How To:

Chicken Thighs

• 4 chicken thighs, cubed into bite sized pieces
• Pinch of salt, pinch of black pepper, 1 garlic clove diced
• Instant smoke 2-3 teaspoons… Oh heck, use a tablespoonful

How to:

• Place 1 tablespoon of olive oil into a medium sized sauce pot on medium heat.  Sure you could use an appropriate sized fry pan, but then you will have spatters all over your nice clean stovetop.  I cook and Les cleans.  She likes the sauce pot method…
• Add chicken and stir to coat
• Then let it sit there for a bit without stirring to brown
• After adequate browning, stir to assist more even browning throughout
• When close to being done, add the instant smoke and stir
• Finish to the level of cooking you are happy with and set aside

Concoction

• Olive oil, 1-2 tablespoons
• Red onion (or white which I use as well) ½ to 1 medium sized onion, diced
• Cremini mushrooms, 6 oz, quartered because I like them chunky.  If sliced they well may disappear over time, leave the flavor, but lose all aspects of chew as in mushroom.  Tis why I prefer shrooms and leave the mush to others.
• 1 teaspoonful fresh ground Italian spices (or use your individual preferences)  I have this kewl little grinder…
• ½ teaspoon dried red chili pepper.  Sometimes I go stark raving and use a full teaspoonful
• A few twists of a black peppercorn grinder
• ½ teaspoon of salt.  I don’t care what kind, but I use a Himalayan salt grinder. Sometimes.
• 2 to 3 cloves garlic smashed, then finely chopped.  I go with three.  Powder is fine.
• Baby spinach. Chopped. 1-2 cups.

How To

• Place 1 tablespoon of olive oil into a medium sized sauce pot on medium heat
• Add onion and stir it a bit to coat with oil
• After a minute or so add the shrooms and stir.  That’s right.  We’re cooking the onion and shrooms together.  I know what you’re thinking… cats and dogs living together!  It’s OK… it’s OK…
• Add 2 tablespoons of water, turn down the heat and cover.  Look at it every minute or two, add more water if needed.  You probably won’t need to.  As the shrooms cook they let off quite a bit of water.  When nicely translucent and well before cooked into a blithering, mushy mess, add spices and garlic.  You may have so many other ways to accomplish this, but I have found by adding the water and covering that it almost becomes impossible to burn the onions if you become distracted whilst sipping that second glass of cab…
• Turn down heat and cover and let the amalgam fuse together

Simple Alfredo Sauce (If you want to skip this process…. Just use Condensed mushroom soup or Trader Joes Alfredo sauce, but think about it… I’m fairly sure that Grandma Bertollisimo didn’t have any…

Ingredients and how to:

• Heat 3 tablespoons butter in a fry pan over medium heat.  I don’t care what kind of metal the pan is made of…  I use salted butter.  Why not…
• Add 1 tablespoon of flour and cook 30 seconds stirring constantly with a whisk compatible with the pan of course…
• Add 2 cloves minced garlic and sauté until flour and garlic are golden, 30 to 60 seconds more, sometimes a bit more than that.  Hmmm… maybe it does depend on what kind of metal the pan is made of…  It certainly matters how high the heat is.  I cook with propane gas being on a boat and all.  Science alert:  Natural gas provides just over 1,000 BTUs per cubic foot (0.0283 cubic meters); the same volume of propane in gaseous form provides about 2,500 BTUs. This means that propane contains about 2.5 times more usable energy content. So, less propane is needed to produce the same amount of energy as natural gas. Now how kewl is that.
• Whisk slowly as you pour in ¾ cup heavy cream.  You read that right… heavy cream, 33% fat (Don’t even think about using half and half or low fat milk for these two.  Go for the gusto.  Just don’t do it every night.)
• It will start to thicken.  Really.
• Add little cubes of cream cheese, about 4 ounces, and stir to melt.  This is the bomb… go for it.
• Remove from heat and add 1.5 cups of shredded pecorino romano cheese.  (Many recipes call for Parmigiano-Reggiano or just plain old parmesan)
• Return to low heat, stir and let cheese melt through.  Do not boil… it will get nasty if you do… i.e the emulsion will break… chemistry in action here.
• Dump it into the concoction if it is done, or set it aside to keep warm if the concoction is not quite ready.  You can make this the day before and store it in the fridge.  Just think about it…
• (Now if you don’t want to go through all of that… get a Trader Joe’s bottle of Alfredo Sauce and use that.  It’s not as light, fresh and all that but it will work.  That and using condensed mushroom soup will speed up everything, but really now… I mean really now people!

Orecchiette pasta

• Place a pot of water on the stove and bring to a rolling boil.  It really doesn’t have to be that large.  I use a Kitchenaid 2 quart saucepan that I’ve had for years.  Cheap pot really , but It has this kewl lid that makes it easy to pour out the water and keep in whatever was cooked without dropping it all in the sink.  It works well for small pastas, like orecchiette
• Add salt to the pot… yeah I know, there’s a lot of baffling discussion about adding salt and oil to cooking pasta.  Science alert:  The salt adds flavor, but it also helps reduce the gelation of the starch in the pasta which in turn improves texture (less sticky/gummy).  Now about the oil… Well, oil and water don’t mix don’t cha know, so it just sits there floating on top of the water.  That means only a tiny bit of the oil, if any at all, will even make its way onto the pasta as it boils.  In fact, adding oil may do more harm than good. The pasta will get up close and personal with the oil once you drain it. At that point, all the oil is good for is leaving a slick coating on the pasta that might thwart any sauce that attempts to stick to it.
• So… I’m a salt kind of guy. I add salt, about a teaspoonful and no oil..  Do it your way with none, or with salt and oil if you feel better about that.  I’m not sure it matters one whit in this kind of dish.
• Add 1.0 (or a bit more) cup of uncooked pasta into pot. Cook it to a nice al dente finish.  Read the package for time and towards the end, fish one out AND DRAIN IT.  The worst thing you can do is spoon out one of the little orecchiette in the “up” position when it is full of water and pop it into your mouth.  In high school I had this chemistry teacher, Mr. Weaver.  He had several sayings and rules surrounding the residual heat contained in objects once heated.  1.  Hot metal looks like cold metal.  And 2.  Hot water looks like cold water.  You don’t want just out of the pot, boiling pasta water in your mouth.  Thing about that for a second… now why would he know that?
• When al dente, dump it into a colander or pour it through the kewl sieve lid of your saucepan, spray cold water in its “face” to stop the cooking, drain that and set aside or dump into the concoction / alfredo / chicken cauldron.

Now… let’s get back to the incidentals

• If you are using baby spinach (the traditional) or arugula (close to traditional, but a nice alternative flavor) just add it at the very end and stir it in to cook.  It only takes a few minutes to cook and it becomes limp and melds into the concoction
• I have also used broccoli which is better cooked by throwing it in towards the end of the concoction cook phase…  dump it in… add the alfredo, add the chicken, add the pasta and adjust salt and perhaps some pepper.  The broccoli will have more chew and change the texture of the whole concoction, so try it with the spinach first for a more classic approach.   I’ve also added asparagus… the same as broccoli and the same texture change occurs.  But both are good alternatives…  The possibilities are nearly endless…

Serve with whatev… but be sure to have some finely grated parmesan cheese to sprinkle on each serving of this fabulous pasta dish…  and if you’ve just baked it… some nice, warm, sourdough bread.

Voila!!!