Warm Poached Chicken and Pasta Salad

Warm Poached Chicken and Pasta Salad

This is another new recipe for me tried for the first time tonight and yes, okay, I know it's a lunch recipe- but here is the story... I had planned to do a particular chicken dish on Saturday but I had a busy day and was sooo tired so the cooking went out the window. So I moved that dish to tonight's menu instead, but then I happened to stumble across this recipe which was in the same cookbook as the other chicken dish and had almost identical ingredients but less cooking and preparation time. So I went for the lunch dish at dinner (it's monday night- so the less cooking time the better!). Good thing about it is, it will be GREAT cold tommorrow for lunch- and now I have a fancy pasta salad recipe to do for bbq's etc.

This is actually a weight watchers recipe, well it was, but as usual I didn't really follow the recipe 100% and made it my own. So here's what I did...

Time Taken?: 25 minutes

2 year old friendly?: Yep- he ate this one! Chicken and all!

Serves 4 (plus one 2 year old)

INGREDIENTS

400g chicken breast, fat trimmed and cut into palm sized pieces.

2 cups chicken stock (or water is fine if you don't have stock)

2.5 cups of Penne Pasta (the original recipe used wholemeal sprial pasta- but I didn't have any)

1 punet of cherry or grape tomatoes

1 cup of torn basil leaves

1 garlic clove, crushed

3 tablespoons lemon juice

2.5 tablespoons olive oil (or grapeseed oil as the original recipe had)

Goats cheese to crumble over the top (as much or as little as you like. Feta or ricotta would also work- depending on what you prefer. This wasn't in the original recipe but I added it after tasting the original feeling as if it needed a little more flavour and moisture)

METHOD

Put a large pot of water on to boil for the pasta.

Place chicken in a small saucepan and cover with the stock (or cold water)

Bring to the boil, and then reduce heat to medium-low and simmer for 6 minutes.

Remove pan from heat. Cover and set aside for 10 minutes or until chicken is cooked through. Drain and allow to cool before shredding with a fork.

Meanwhile, salt the boiling pasta water and cook pasta until al dente. Drain.

Whisk the garlic, oil and lemon juice in a large bowl.

Add the pasta, chicken, basil and tomatoes and toss to coat in dressing. Season with salt and pepper and crumble over some goats cheese. Toss again to combine.

Serve warm or cold.