Saturday, May 30, 2009

Lazy Man Cooking: Spaghetti Lemon Pepper Chicken

This recipe is my own concoction, and is (so far as I know) original with me. Though I do owe my inspiration for it to Hell's Kitchen.

One night not more than a couple of weeks ago I was watching an episode of the show on Fancast and Gordon Ramsey was (as I'm sure you can guess) berating one of the executive chef aspirants for a mistake.

But in this case I had to agree that the verbal beating was deserved as it was a fairly big mistake. The dish in question was spaghetti lobster, and the chef had forgotten the lobster. A pretty significant error I have to say.

I'm sure this was not the first time the show mentioned spaghetti lobster, but for whatever reason this time it stuck in my head. You see my own gastronomical ventures are fairly pedestrian. The idea of someone putting something in spaghetti besides the sauce and some Parmesan had never occurred to me. But my brain got to working on the idea...

Now, as the title of this post implies when it comes to cooking I'm a lazy guy. But I do like to eat real food. And I'm too broke to eat out at restaurants more than occasionally. So I keep it simple stupid with box dinners (the various helpers and mac&cheese) and things that can be made with a minimum of effort. Which is why I love the crock pot.

Put in whatever meat you're craving at the moment, season to preference, add water and go read for a few hours. Come back, warm up a can of vegetables on the stove and butter up a couple of pieces of bread and you're set.

By this method I made some lemon pepper chicken the other day and came back to do the rest when I started thinking about the spaghetti I'd made a couple of days before. (I still had a bunch leftover as well as some sauce.) After a minute I said "What the Hell!", and the eponymous dish was born.

First the ingredients:

  1. Chicken
  2. Water
  3. Lemon Pepper
  4. Spaghetti
  5. You Favorite Sauce
  6. Salt
  7. Parmesan
(Use whatever amounts seem right to you.

First put the chicken, some water and lemon pepper in the crock pot on high. That should take around three hours. So go read something. When that's about ready (if you don't have some leftovers already, like I did) start on the spaghetti. From what I understand you can really fancy with preparing spaghetti, but I never do. I just boil it for around 10 minutes or so and toss in some salt if I think of it. Then drain.

While the spaghetti's boiling you can warm up the sauce, if you get it in a jar. Put it on medium and just stir occasionally. If you make it yourself I can't help you at all as that's way beyond my competency level.

If, like me, you're too cheap to spring for boneless now's the time to de-bone some chicken. It's actually easier than it sounds. Just a knife and fork and pay some attention. The tricky part is getting those little slivers out. Once that's done get a bowl put in the spaghetti, chicken and sauce and mix them up.

After that season with salt and shredded Parmesan to taste and enjoy!

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