Creamy Chicken Pasta with Tagliatelle, Onion and Parmesan

Step-by-step recipe

1. Chicken pasta in cream sauce is made with so-called “dark” chicken meat, not breast. If you're making a big batch, you can take a whole chicken, remove the skin and cut off all the dark meat after first removing the breast, the white meat. If you're making breakfast for two, 1-2 chicken thighs or 3-4 drumsticks are plenty. In my experience, chicken drumsticks are very handy for cooking many dishes in small amounts. For example, chicken and rice turns out really well with skinless, boneless drumsticks: the meat comes in neat portions.
   
2. Rinse the chicken drumsticks and remove the skin. With a sharp knife, carefully cut off all the meat, avoiding the tendons that look like thick white threads. Cut the chicken into small slices.
3. Chicken pasta in cream sauce works best with long, fairly wide pasta, such as tagliatelle, fettuccine or pappardelle, but regular spaghetti will do too. Long pasta holds a thick cream sauce with chicken pieces well. It's especially good with egg pasta.
   
4. Melt a piece of butter in a frying pan. Italian sauces are usually made with good olive oil, but a cream sauce goes better with butter. Don't mix the two. It's important to use real butter, not blends and spreads made from who knows what.
5. Peel a small onion and slice it into thin strips. Fry the onion in the butter until lightly golden.
   
6. Add the dark chicken meat to the fried onion. Season with salt and pepper to taste. Add a pinch of ground nutmeg on the tip of a knife.
   
7. Fry the chicken with the onion over medium heat for 10-12 minutes, stirring, until the chicken is almost done.
   
8. Add 1/2 tsp wheat flour to the chicken and onion and stir right away so the flour is evenly mixed with the meat and onion. Cook everything together for 2-3 minutes, stirring.
   
9. Add light cream a little at a time. The cream should be at room temperature. Use as much cream as it takes to get the sauce as thick as you like. Don't make the sauce too runny, or the chicken pasta will look like milk soup. The right consistency is like thick sour cream.
   
10. When the cream sauce has reached the consistency you want, cover the pan and let the sauce simmer over the lowest heat for 3-4 minutes. Season the sauce with salt, pepper or more nutmeg to taste.
    
11. Boil the pasta in salted water as usual until done. The cooking time is usually on the package; it gets the pasta al dente, with just a hint of firmness.
12. Drain the cooked pasta in a colander and toss it with the cream sauce.
    
13. As a finishing touch, I recommend grating a small piece of Parmesan, adding chopped parsley leaves and blitzing them in a blender for 4-5 seconds. You'll get fine Parmesan crumbs, the size of granulated sugar, in a lovely green color. It makes the chicken pasta in cream sauce look very pretty.
    
14. Plate the pasta and sprinkle with the Parmesan and herb mix. Chicken pasta in cream sauce should be served right away, while it's hot. As it cools, the sauce thickens quickly and the pasta sticks together.