The weekend meals: Cold Chicken Pasta

In my last post, I showed how to make a cold pasta salad with tuna... this time I decided to use chicken instead. It requires a bit more work - marinade, grilling, and chopping but I assure you, it's well worth it!

Ingredients are very similar to the previous recipe. Feel free to add or omit any veggies that you prefer.

• 3 sticks of celery
• half a red bell pepper
• 1 green bell pepper
• 1 carrot
• 1 kyuri (Japanese cucumber)
• 1 chicken breast
• about 3 handfuls of pasta
• olive oil
• salt & pepper (to taste)

For the marinade

• Soy sauce
• Pepper

Slice all the veggies up and dunk them in a bowl of water and put it in the fridge. I usually slice them to about the same width and length. Oh and I put it in the fridge because it helps to keep the veggies fresh and crunchy while I do the rest of the stuff.

Slice the chicken breast into strips and pour some pepper in. Now here's a bit of the problem, I can't tell you exactly how much to put because I did it by some sort of instinct. So I'm going to say roughly about 4-5 shakes of pepper....

And about 4-5 glugs of soy sauce.

Mix it up. IF the marinade looks a little dry, add a bit more soy sauce. Let it sit for at least 10-15 minutes so that the chicken actually gets the chance to absorb the marinade properly.

If you've got the time to spare, let it sit in the fridge for an hour or so.

Heat up the griddle pan on medium heat with some olive oil. You can also use a regular frying pan but you won't get the nice char marks or the caramelized sauce. Well not as much as from a griddle pan.

Try to place the marinated chicken breast strips as neatly as you can across the griddle.

Note: use whatever utensil you're more familiar with. In my case, it's just the Asian-ness that makes chopsticks a much easier utensil than a pair of tongs or spatula.

Let it cook until you see the sides of them lose their opacity and turn into a more solid almost white color. Then you can start flipping them over to cook on the other side. Once that's done, take them off the griddle onto a plate and let them cool. I usually just shove them in the fridge.

While you're waiting for the chicken to be done, start cooking the pasta. I always add a dash of salt and a small glug of olive oil in. The salt gives it a bit of flavor and the oil makes sure that it doesn't stick. For some other recipes, I like putting a bay leaf in.

Once the pasta is done, drain properly and cool them by running them under some tap water. This will prevent it from cooking any further.

I also put this in the fridge to keep them cool. It is after all a cold chicken pasta....

After an hour or so, take everything out (veggies, pasta and chicken) and give 'em all a nice dicing.... except for the pasta...

Place in a bigger bowl and combine slowly. If you are a tad rough or too fast, the pasta will break and you'll just end up with bits and pieces of them...

Add a little salt and pepper to taste while mixing to get the right taste. If it's not salty enough, don't worry, the chicken will release its flavors after a bit so go easy on the salt.

There you go!

Easy peasy innit?

Happy cooking!

xxx

Bunny