Recipe: Chicken and Pasta in Creamy Tomato Sauce

Originally posted on Stretching a Dollar on July 4, 2008. 

I recently scored an italian cookbook on sale at Borders (it turned out to be free with my Borders Bucks) and this was the first recipe I tried from it. For anyone who knew me in Sault Ste. Marie, it mimicks one of my favorte Ang-Gio's recipes.

1 tbsp olive oil

4 boneless skinless chicken breasts, cut into 1/2 inch strips

1 jar pasta sauce

2 cups water

8 oz pasta (we used spaghetti)

1/2 cup whipping or heavy cream

1/2 tsp dried basil leaves, crushed (or 1 tbsp chopped fresh basil leaves)

1. In 12-inch skillet, heat olive oil over medium heat and brown chicken. Remove chicken and set aside.

2. In same skillet, stir in pasta sauce and water. Bring to a boil over high heat. Stir in uncooked pasta and return to a boil. Reduce heat to low, cover, and simmer, stirring occasionally (about 15 minutes or until pasta is tender.

3. Stir in cream and basil. Return chicken to skillet and cook 5 minutes or until chicken is thoroughly cooked.

The whipping cream and basil add a little bit of a cost to this recipe but not much and it's really good. The sauce is heavy and filling but has a great taste. There are a few things we're going to change next time though. The chicken was a little bland, so we're going to bread it parmesan style next time. We're also going to try cheese filled tortellini for the pasta to give it a kick. Cooking directions may vary slightly due to this change, so be careful if you do it first.

Recipe: Slow Cooker Orange Chicken

Tonight for dinner, I made this recipe for Slow Cooker Orange Chicken. A word about the blog "A Year of Slow Cooking": it's awesome. Last year, Stephanie O'Dea made something in her slow cooker every day. That's 365 slow cooker recipes. Some things didn't turn out so well, but other things are fantastic. And while her year is over, she still posts recipes on the blog. I have a ton of her recipes starred in my Google Reader and this is about the fourth recipe we've tried and really liked.

She also has a lemon chicken recipe which I think we'll make next time. I've never had orange chicken at a restaurant to tell the truth, so this was a new experience for me. I followed the recipe, though I may have cut the chicken a little different and I used flour rather than the mix. Be warned, this is not a "throw it all in the pot and turn it on" type of meal. There was some prep in cutting, breading, and searing the chicken. But it was definitely worth it and prep time was only about 15 minutes (and I'm slow, so it would probably only take most people 5 or 10 minutes).

We ate it with instant white rice. I'm still not a fan of rice, but it was good here. Next time maybe I'll try brown rice.

As far as frugality goes, here's the breakdown:

Chicken - on sale for 1.69 a lb. This amount cost a little over 3 dollars (Dillons)

Orange juice - .99 at Aldi and I had half of the mix to make drinkable juice

We had everything else on hand this time around, and since it's mostly pantry staples, this meal comes in at leses than 3 dollars per person.