pasta faye

While I was in Fayetteville, I cooked a pasta dinner for some people. I'm sorry.. I have no recipe because I made it up and I NEVER measure. The dish had chicken, italian sausage, red bell pepper, white wine, chicken broth, tomatoes, onion, garlic, flat-leaf parsley, salt, pepper, parmesan, and a touch of milk and butter (secret weapons). Decided to call this pot of pasta Pasta Faye in honor of my friends at Ark. So thoughtful, I know.

Browning the sausage; Make sure to take the meat out of the casings.

Kind of a gross process, but it is a must.

After browning the sausage, remove and sauté the chicken in the same pan.

Cut into bite size pieces for easy chomping and quick cooking. Season with salt and pepper before.

Take the chicken out just before it is done. The chicken will continue to cook off the heat. In the same pan, add sliced onion, a can of diced tomatoes and sliced red peppers. Sauté for a while - make the onions sweat. Add a touch of salt. Then add at least 4 cloves of gaaalic.

After the veg (onion, pepper, tomato concoction) has reduced, deglaze the pan with some cheap white wine. Dry white wine is usually used in pasta dishes, but I don't think it really matters. Then add chicken broth (low sodium) and let reduce to a thicker consistency. Turn up the heat on that thing.

Once the sauce has reached the appropriate sauciness, add the chicken, sausage back in. Cook for about a minute. Add the parsley. Add the cooked pasta to the pot - NEVER add sauce to pasta, always pasta to sauce. Why? The reason is so that the flavors from the sauce get trapped inside of the starchy noodle. I used rigatoni - tube pasta; this kind of pasta is great for chunky sauces because the goodies get stuck inside the noodle.

Finished product.

Are you admiring the salad? You should. Emily made her famous fruit salad. Grapes, strawberries, romaine lettuce, and cucumbers. Italian dressing. Duh. So easy and always classy.

The eaters, missing Emily.