Orchiette with Broccoli Rabe and Chick Peas

To my mind, there are a couple of ways you can go with pasta. I love thin spaghettis -- capellinis and angel hairs. Then there are the tubes -- penne, ziti and rigatoni. For the record, I hate rigatoni. Always have. I cannot eat them, even to this day. Then there are the other toothsome varieties and of those, I am partial to orchiette and troffie. For this recipe, I like to use orchiette, little thumb-print type pastas that we called 'flying saucers' when I was a kid.

I pair my flying saucers with dark greens and chick peas. This may, in fact, be my favorite application for broccoli rabe. I admit that I am partial to dark greens -- I could eat kale or swiss chard or broccoli rabe every day of the week, but don't let the fact that broccoli rabe possesses many health benefits fool you. I eat this because it is delicious and, even if you don't generally like dark greens, this is a treatment that even you less adventurous food friends will enjoy.

You will need:
1 large bundle of broccoli rabe
1 can of chick peas (drained and rinsed)
1/4 pancetta
4 cloves of garlic -- very finely diced
pinch of crushed red pepper flakes
1 pound of orchiette pasta

The prep:
Bring a large pot of water to a boil while you clean the broccoli rabe by cutting away the thick woody stems; then coarsely chop. When the water comes to a boil, salt it and add the broccoli rabe. Broccoli rabe, or rapini, can be very bitter. I find that boiling it for just a minute or two before sauteeing mellows out the bitterness. After you've boiled the broccoli rabe, drain it and set it aside.

Put on a pot of water for your orchiette.

Finely dice the garlic and also dice the pancetta into small cubes. Heat a sautee pan, add a tablespoon or so of olive oil and toss in the pancetta and garlic. Reduce the heat, because you want the garlic and pancetta to cook pretty well, but you don't want to scorch them. After about 5 to 7 minutes, add the rinsed chick peas and the broccoli rabe. At this point, you just need to sautee this for a few more minutes.

By now, your pasta water should be at a rolling boil. Add a healthy pinch of kosher salt and the orchiette. When the pasta is about halfway done, add a pinch of crushed red pepper to the broccoli rabe and chick pea sautee pan, along with about a ladle full of the pasta water. As with all pasta preparations, remove the orchiette about one minute before they are al dente and cook them for a minute or two in the sautee pan with the broccoli rabe mixture.

Serve with freshly grated pecorino romano cheese.

Sunday Recipe: Chicken Romano with Linguini in Lemon Sauce

The food cognoscenti, for many years, have looked down their noses at Italian-American cooking, versus 'authentic' Italian cooking, but I would argue that there's a difference between authentic Italian-American and over-cooked, mushy, disgusting Italian-American. It is not accurate or fair to judge Italian-American cuisine by a can of Chef Boyardee. That's a pretty unfair criticism. It would be like me disparaging all the food in Tuscany because I got food poisoning there. Oh wait ...

Of recent note, there has a been a bit of come to Jesus recognition of good Italian-American food. spaghetti and meatballs is a distinct American iteration, but it's a delicious one that I will defend. Along those same lines, I have no idea of the actual origin of chicken romano, but it strikes me as a particularly Italian-American dish. When done well, it can give you a right mouth-gasm.

You will need:
3 or f boneless, skinless chicken breasts halves (depending on how many you are serving)
2 c. flour
3 eggs
3 c. Pecorino Romano cheese (plus some Romano for your pasta)
1 shallot - finely diced
2 cloves garlic - smashed
1 pat of butter
1 lemon (juiced)
1 c. white wine
pinch of crushed red pepper
1 lb. of dried thin linguini

The prep:
Clean up each of the chicken breast halves, then pound each half thoroughly. If you don't have one of these:just put the chicken between some plastic wrap and use one of these:
Once the chicken is pounded out, cut each half breast into about three cutlets.

Make a dredging station. (I know, I know. This sounds complicated, but it's not. Really. Trust me.) Moving from right to left, put the flour in a shallow bowl. In the next bowl, whip the three eggs. In the last bowl, you should have several cups of romano cheese. I find it's easiest if I can go right from the dredging to the skillet, so once I set up the dredging station, I heat a tablespoon or so of olive oil in a large non-stick skillet over medium heat/medium-low heat.

Dredge each chicken cutlet in the flour first, then into the egg wash, then in the romano cheese. Place immediately in the skillet, and dredge the next cutlet. When one side of the cutlet gets golden (about 5-7 minutes), flip it. Because the chicken is thin, it cooks quickly. I can usually fit about five cutlets in my skillet at a time. Salt the chicken lightly in the skillet. As each cutlet is done, remove it to a plate and keep on cooking assembly-line style.

After you've cooked all the chicken, in the same non-stick skillet (so that you can scrape up any little bits of residual goodness from the chicken cutlets), add the pat of butter, the garlic and the shallots and sautee those for about 5 minutes until they're soft. Then add the lemon juice and white wine. Bring to a boil, reduce to simmer.

Put on a large pot of water when you are dredging the chicken. As to the pasta, unless I'm posting a recipe for fresh cut pasta, dried is always appropriate. I am going to link to the world's greatest post defending dried pasta. If you're not a pasta wizard, please refer to this post. For this dish, I really like thin linguini.

When the linguini is nearly cooked, remove the garlic cloves from the sautee pan, add the linguini to the sautee pan with about 1/2 c. of pasta water, and give it all a toss with the pinch of crushed red pepper. After you remove the pasta to a large serving bowl, top it with the chicken cutlets and drizzle the left over lemon-wine sauce over the whole thing. Serve with grated pecorino romano cheese.