Grilled Chicken Pesto

Another easy pasta sauce coming up for you. Pesto normally is pretty daunting to most people, but in actuality it's actually fairly simple and straightforward. The only caveat I give to you, is that you need to make sure you have like a food-processor of some sort. I'm have convinced that you can make it in a blender, and more than half convinced that it might actually be easier in a blender (the whole ice crush feature kind of thing), but I use a food processor, and I know that works. The ingredients are a little more exotic in some senses relative to the kind of run of the mill tomato sauce pastas. I think since I'm going for the more authentic mode, maybe I'll try to make a real alfredo next (not that creamy American kind). Additionally, I'm going to assume that you all know how to make pasta already, so I'm not going to tell how to cook it. If you don't, I'm sure it's buried in here somewhere.

Ingredients:

boneless, skinless chicken breast
onion
fresh basil
freshly grated parmasean
garlic
pine nuts
olive oil
salt
pepper

Cooking Instructions:

1.) Cube the chicken breast and julienne the onion (slice into slivers)

2.) Cook the chicken and onion on a pan in olive oil on a medium heat

3.) In a food processor, mix the parmesean, pine nuts, olive oil, garlic, and basil until a sauce is created (you'll have to kind of guess the amounts that you'd like to eat)

4.) Salt and pepper to taste

5.) Pour sauce over chicken and onion and mix over pan

6.) Mix with pasta

That's all there is to it, it's really quite simple. You only have the major annoyance of having to clean your food processor, if you consider that an annoyance. It's good, and it's a little lighter than the standard marinara and meat sauces (not necessarily healthier, it's a lot of oil). For the parmesean, you don't HAVE to grate it if you have a food processor that would break it down fairly easily, like a blender with an ice crush feature might do the trick nicely, the standard blades on a food processor don't really break down the parm all too well leaving you with big chunks, which you don't want. You can use flakes or slices as well, I like to get a fresh brick of parm and grate it down, you can use the pre-grated ones but that's usually lower quality. If you don't mind you could even go as far as to try the powdered stuff. To me, that might be kinda nasty.

Basalmic Bread Dip

So, I kind of picked this up from a restaurant in Seattle called Piatti, it was really good, and a it's a nice twist to the normal basalmic vinegar and olive oil dip. I think more people do this than I know of, but this is kind of an easy way to do it yourself.

Ingredients:

basalmic vinegar (as a note, the more expensive or higher quality the vinegar the less sour it is)
olive oil
crushed red peppers
Italian seasoning (basil, oregano, thyme)
black pepper

Directions:

Mix and serve with bread

So the key is that you need to have good bread to go with this. Of course, don't make it too sour, so I'd recommend a better brand than the cheapest vinegar you can find in your local supermarket. The Costco ones (I think like Basalmic Vinegar of Modena or something) are actually quite nice. I recommend a good sourdough or Italian loaf for if you make this. This is ideal for artisan breads, where I would back for maybe 5 minutes at 350 degrees or 1-2 minutes under the broiler. This makes the bread crispy on the crust, but also warm and chewing on the inside, allowing it to soak up the basalmic. I prefer this to the standard bread and butter, and actually even to garlic bread.