Chicken Mozzarella Pasta with Sun-Dried Tomatoes ♦ Tossed Salad ♦ Blueberry-Vanilla Cream Cheese Turnovers

This is simple, but tasty … a quick and satisfying meal that you can put together stresslessly. Logistics: make the salad ahead and shove it in the fridge. Complete the chicken; reheat it when the time comes. The pasta will have absorbed a bit of the liquid, so you’ll need to add a bit of the pasta cooking water as you reheat it. Thaw the dough and let the cheese come to room temperature, so that you’ll be ready to start in on the turnovers a half-hour before dinner time. Let them bake as you eat.

Blueberry-Vanilla Cream Cheese Turnovers

One per serving … but who are you kidding? You’ll eat two. These turnovers would be great for breakfast, but if so, make them fresh. They’re best within a few hours of baking. They taste a little bit like blueberry cheesecakes wrapped in puff pastry. They’re not overly sweet, and even so, you can adjust the sugar at will. Note that the recipe requires you to leave time for some of the ingredients to thaw or soften.

What You Need to Make 8:

Confectioners’ sugar for finishing

How to Do It:

1. Thaw puff pastry overnight in the refrigerator, or according to package directions. 2. Pre-heat the oven to 375°F. 3. Line a rimmed baking sheet with a silpat. (The turnovers will likely leak, and the filling will stick to most pans.) 4. In a medium bowl, combine the cream cheese, 3 Tbs of the sugar, the vanilla bean seeds (or extract), and 1 of the egg yolks. Mix with a wooden spoon, switching eventually to a whisk, until well combined and smooth. 5. Combine the blueberries, 2 Tbs. of the sugar, the cornstarch, crème de cassis, salt, and cinnamon in small bowl. 6. On a lightly floured surface, roll each pastry sheet into a 10-inch square. Slice each sheet into 4 equal squares. 7. In a small bowl, beat the remaining egg yolk with 1 tsp. water. Brush the outer edge of each pastry square with the egg wash. Divide the cream cheese mixture and plop it into the center of each square. Divide the blueberry in a similar manner. Fold each square in half diagonally to form each into a traingle. Pinch the edges together to seal them. Lightly brush each pie with egg wash and sprinkle with 1/2 tsp. of the remaining sugar. Use a pancake flipper to carefully transfer them to prepared sheet. 8. Bake until golden-brown, about 25 minutes, rotating the baking sheet’s position about halfway through. Cool slightly on the baking sheets and then transfer to a rack to cool completely. Before serving, sprinkle with confectioners’ sugar.

Chicken Mozzarella Pasta with Sun-Dried Tomatoes

You can put this together start to finish in an hour or less. No reason why you couldn’t make this dish with boneless, skinless chicken breasts, sliced into strips or not.

What You Need for 4 Servings:

8 oz. penne pasta
1 small jar (3-4 oz.) sun-dried tomatoes in oil
1 lb chicken breast tenders
1 large garlic clove, minced
1 cup sliced mushrooms, optionally
Salt
Paprika
½ cup white wine
1 cup half-and-half
1 cup mozzarella cheese, shredded
1 Tbs basil
Coarsely ground black pepper
¼ tsp crushed red pepper flakes, or to taste

How to Do It:

1. Cook pasta according to package instructions. When draining the pasta, reserve the water. Multitask: as soon as you put the pasta water on to boil, get to work on the chicken. 2. Drain tomatoes and reserve the oil. Dry the chicken on paper towels. 3. In a large pan, over medium heat, sauté tomatoes in 2 Tbs reserved oil for 1 minute, turning them constantly. Watch them carefully; they’ll brown quickly. When they’re just shy of being deeply browned, add garlic. Continue cooking until garlic is lightly browned, about 30 seconds. Strain the tomatoes and garlic out of the pan, leaving the oil. 4. (If using mushrooms, sauté them now, remove them from the pan, and let them join the tomatoes and garlic.) 5. Raise the heat to moderately-high. Add more oil, if necessary. Add chicken. Don’t overcrowd the pan; do this in batches if necessary. Salt the chicken lightly and dust each tender very lightly with paprika. Brown the chicken; about 2 minutes per side. Salt and dust after flipping. Remove from heat. 6. As the chicken’s cooking, slice sun-dried tomatoes into small bits. 7. Deglaze the pan with wine. Add half-and-half to the skillet, and heat until it just begins to boil. Add cheese, and stir constantly until cheese melts. Thin the sauce with pasta water, as necessary. Add tomatoes and garlic. Add basil, a little at a time, until it looks right. Add salt, black pepper, and red pepper, to taste. Add chicken and cook over low heat for 10 minutes, or until chicken is cooked through, adding more pasta water, if necessary. 8. Add (mushrooms and) cooked pasta to the skillet and stir to combine. Off heat. Check seasoning, and serve.

Salad

MiLam has plenty of recipes for salad. Take your pick. In my house, I make a large salad every two or three days, so there’s almost always a salad ready to go in the fridge. That frees you up to consider the chicken a good candidate for a weeknight dinner, with or without the dessert.

A Quick and Satisfying Meal

♠

This post was not solicited, nor did we accept any anything in exchange for writing it. Credit for all photos: Make It Like a Man!

♠