Chicken Scampi (A.K.A. Greasy Chicken) with Home Made Pasta

It is a well-known fact in the George family that my mother-in-law has a few legendary recipes. Lasagna* is one of them. Her meatloaf is another....and then there is "Greasy Chicken". A classic (and delicious) chicken scampi recipe was quickly referred to as "Greasy Chicken" in a household of nothing-but-sons....and it remains so. Since we've been married, I make Greasy Chicken about once or twice a month. My cholesterol, so far, is just fine, thank you very much.

Home made pasta is actually pretty simple. A few cups of flour and a bunch of eggs, essentially. And some salt. Don't forget the salt. One can make it by hand or in a stand mixer. My stand mixer, which I affectionately named "Pearl" is amazing. I love her. She completes me. Since I have such a fabulous stand mixer...naturally I decided to go for the 30 minutes of hand-kneading. This was a bad idea. More on that later.

 

So to make it by hand you sift (above photo) about 3 cups of flour onto the counter and create a well in the center...kind of like a volcano. Eggs will be put in here so it's really best to make the well wider than I did here...

 

Here are 4 eggs in my well. The idea is to lightly scramble them and then sift, with the fork, the flour into the eggs and combine gradually. What ensued here was a disaster of eggs leaking out the bottom of this "volcano" and a mad effort to combine the flour and eggs and keep the eggs from dripping off the counter (or under the toaster oven) and so on. It was a mess people. A mess. 

 

But NOT unsavable! I managed to get this all combined and started the 30 or so minutes of kneading. By hand (which you will note are covered in sticky, nasty dough from the previous "egg-scapade"). This can be therapeutic and I do love to make pasta by hand but at this point it was 7:30 on a weeknight...and once the dough is kneaded it needs to "rest" for another 30 minutes. Oh dear.

 

You know the dough is ready when you cut it in two with a bench scraper and there are no holes in the dough. There are still some holes here so I kept on kneading. When it was finally ready, I set it aside (recommend wrapping tightly in plastic wrap or in a flour coated towel to keep it from drying out.) 30 minutes is enough to start the Greasy Chicken!

 

I usually use a bunch of chicken tenderloins. Cut them to about 1/2 inch pieces. Season with salt/pepper and garlic.

 

Do a little "shake and bake" style....shake the pieces in an egg to coat them.

 

Then shake again in Italian seasoned breadcrumbs (add more salt, pepper, garlic and Italian seasoning)

 

Before you saute the chicken in olive oil, get your mise en place ready for the sauce.

 

Mmmm....smellin' good!

 

So good a certain someone showed up in the kitchen to see what we were up to! 

 

Ok, the dough is ready! Here I am following the instructions from the KithenAid pasta roller attachment.** Cut the ball into 4 pieces. Set three aside and start to roll 'er out!

 

Roll it through at the thickest setting first and then gradually work to a desired thinner setting.

 

I cut the noodles two ways. This way (folded, cut then unfold) and the much easier way (just cut). We were going for a rustic approach and look so the pizza cutter and no guide was perfect. 

 

Store the noodles on a floured towel. If you want to dry the pasta use a drying rack or get creative and make one on your own. There are lots of ways to improvise. In this case we just used the towel since we were going to cook the pasta right away.

 

And now the sauce. Melt a stick of butter. Add a bunc of cloves of garlic (pressed) and cook for about a minute. Be careful to cook the garlic so it is roasty and not acidic...but don't walk away because garlic will burn quickly. Keep an eye on it and let it cook. Then add the chicken back in...

 

Squeeze some lemon (anywhere from a tablespoon to a whole lemon - whatever your preference) add a splash of wine and some salt/pepper to taste. 

 

Serve over rustic homemade noodles (or linguine or egg noodles...whatever your heard desires!) ...at 9pm. Fer cryin' out loud!

*Some things are sacred, I'm not sure I'll ever share this one. Sorry people.

** This pasta roller was a wedding gift from our good friends from home, Christy and Jim Redding. THANKS GUYS!

Special tanks to my photographer and sous chef, "Chef McChris" :)