Chicken Legs with Fettuccine in Cream Sauce | Recipe

Name: Chicken Legs with Fettuccine in Cream Sauce | Recipe
Prep time: 15 min
Cook time: 45 min
Total time: 1 h
Cuisine: Italian cuisine
Ingredients: Chicken legs 4; Fettuccine pasta 250 g; Cream 100 ml; Parmesan 50 g; White wine 100 ml; Butter 2 tbsp; Flour, curry powder, salt Spices

Eat breakfast yourself. Especially if that breakfast is pasta with chicken in a creamy sauce. How many times have I said that a proper breakfast takes half an hour to cook in the morning? Nobody believes me. And they should.

It takes a minimum of effort and ingredients. Take the famous “Bush legs”, for example, the imported chicken legs a whole generation of today's young and not-so-old people grew up on.

Besides drumsticks, the shops always have other parts of the chicken: wings, legs, fillets. I don't like fillet, as I haven't liked white meat since childhood. Wings are great as a beer snack, baked in the oven, or in pilaf with chicken, which is an ideal meal. But drumsticks, thighs and leg quarters are the all-round cut: plenty of meat and easy to cook.

A leg quarter is the part of the chicken from the pelvis down to the foot. It is usually sold whole, or as just the thigh, or just the drumstick. Any of them will do.

How many times have I said that a proper breakfast takes half an hour to cook in the morning?

Italian pasta goes perfectly with chicken, and it cooks very quickly. In my opinion, long pasta suits chicken legs best: spaghetti, fettuccine, tagliatelle, pappardelle. This time fettuccine happened to be at hand. Literally it means “little ribbons”. It is one of the most popular pastas in Rome and the area around it, although in other regions farther from Rome the same pasta goes by a different name.

But chicken is chicken, and it is the sauce that gives pasta its flavor. You have to make an effort here and use your imagination. A sauce (from the French for gravy, or the Latin salsus, “salted”) is a liquid addition to a dish. It is often not quite liquid but fairly thick, especially for pasta, so that the sauce can “cling” to it. The sauce is the main thing: pasta is simply boiled in water, and it is the sauce that gives it the taste that turns ordinary pieces of dough into a culinary masterpiece.

Let's combine chicken legs and fettuccine and make a delicious breakfast: pasta and chicken in a cream sauce.

More with chicken legs

Chicken Thigh PattiesJuicy chicken thigh patties made from ground dark meat with cream and herbs, pan-fried until golden and served with fried rice. Step-by-step photo recipe.

Chicken Pasta in Cream SauceTagliatelle with tender dark chicken meat in a butter and cream sauce with a hint of nutmeg, topped with green Parmesan crumbs. Ready in 45 minutes.

Baked Chicken Drumsticks with Potatoes in Tomato SauceChicken drumsticks browned in butter, then baked in a clay pan with potato wedges, onion, garlic and chili and finished in thick spicy tomato sauce.

Grilled Chicken Thighs: A Boneless Thigh RecipeGrilled chicken thighs: boneless, skinless thigh meat with curry powder and olive oil, cooked in a ridged grill pan in about 10 minutes. Step-by-step photos.

Oven-Baked Chicken Leg QuartersBaked chicken leg quarters: parboiled with spices, roasted in a clay pan with butter and finished with a dark mustard, soy sauce and brown sugar glaze.

Ingredients

2 servings

Chicken legs 4
Fettuccine pasta 250 g
Cream 100 ml
Parmesan 50 g
White wine 100 ml
Butter 2 tbsp
Flour, curry powder, salt Spices

Step-by-step recipe

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Choosing pasta is much easier when it comes to fettuccine, since our local producers are reluctant to make flour and salt into this shape, preferring small or popular kinds: spaghetti, shells, elbows, vermicelli. So you can be sure of finding high-quality fettuccine. Try to choose pasta in a transparent package so that you can see the intact, whole “nests”. It is better if the pasta looks rough, because then it holds the cream sauce better.
Cook the pasta in salted water until done; the cooking time is given on the package. The salt cooks recommend is 7-10 g per 1 l of water, and you normally take about 10 times as much water as pasta. Cook it until “al dente”, meaning firm to the bite, so that the pasta is soft with just a slight firmness in the middle. The time on the package usually corresponds to this state, but only if it is good pasta and not a “fancy” novelty.
Wash the chicken legs and remove any remaining feathers (they are there, look for them). Salt the legs and sprinkle with 1/2 tsp of curry powder.
Melt 2 tbsp of butter in a deep frying pan.
Roll the chicken legs in flour and put them in the pan. Fry over medium heat on all sides until browned.
Add 1/2 cup of dry white wine to the legs, cover the pan with a lid and simmer over medium heat until the wine evaporates.
Next add 1/2 cup of cream or milk, bring to a boil and keep simmering until the chicken is cooked. Since the legs were rolled in flour beforehand, the sauce will turn out fairly thick.
Transfer the cooked legs to a separate plate. Drain the cooked pasta in a colander and let the water run off. Mix it: the pasta and chicken in cream sauce should be uniform.
Sprinkle the pasta with finely grated Parmesan. Pasta and chicken in cream sauce tastes better if you don't grate the Parmesan to a “dust”, as is usually done. It is better to use a fine grater so that it comes out as thin “strands”.
Put the pasta in cream sauce with Parmesan on plates. Place the cooked legs on top.
Chicken in cream sauce is served only hot.

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Recipe facts

Yield:	2 servings
Calories:	223 kcal per 100 g
Prep time:	15 mins
Cooking time:	45 mins
Total time:	60 mins
Category:	Main Dishes › Chicken and Poultry
Cuisine:	Italian cuisine
Rating:	4.8 (1)