Farfalle with Chicken, Tomatoes and Basil

Preparation

1. As a good friend of mine likes to say, the better the pasta, the better the dish. This hardly needs explaining. We are cooking for ourselves, so there is no point in being stingy. For farfalle with chicken, use quality pasta and, if possible, free-range chicken.

   

   You need only green basil. Not purple basil and, heaven forbid, not mint or lemon basil. The latter is something mysterious. Nobody knows where it came from, but I once bought it by accident without smelling it. I didn’t cook with it, my hand just wouldn’t do it. Some kind of mutant.

   

   The tomatoes should be red but not overripe, and slightly underripe ones are even better, so the farfalle with chicken has whole pieces of tomato. Any chicken meat will do, but chicken fillet is best.

2. Prepare the chicken fillet: remove the membranes and any leftover fat, then pound the fillet until thin, no more than 2 cm thick. It’s best to pound it on one side, the inner one.

3. Flavor the oil with garlic. Peel the garlic cloves and flatten them with the flat of a knife. Fry the garlic in a frying pan in 2 tbsp of olive oil over medium heat until golden. The garlic’s job is to flavor the oil. After that you can throw it away.

   

4. Season the fillet with salt and pepper and, if you like, sprinkle with hot red paprika. Rub 1-2 pinches of aromatic dried herbs (oregano, basil, savory and so on) between your fingers and sprinkle them over the pounded side of the fillet.

   

Pasta, chicken and basil

1. Cook the farfalle. Pour 4 l of water into a large pot and bring to a boil over high heat. Add salt at a rate of 7 g per liter of water, that is 28 g. Cook the farfalle strictly for the time given on the package. Don’t overcook them, or the wings of the farfalle will fall apart. Drain the cooked pasta in a colander.

2. At the same time, fry the chicken fillet in the garlic oil over medium heat for about 5-6 minutes per side, until golden and cooked through. Cut the cooked fillet into pieces.

   

3. Cut up the tomato while the pasta cooks and the chicken fries: cut it in half and remove the seeds. Dice the flesh. You can leave the skin on, as it doesn’t get in the way in this dish.

4. Grind the basil with the Parmesan. Wash the basil, shake off the water drops and pick off the leaves, keeping a few for garnish. Put the leaves into a blender or chopper. Add grated Parmesan and grind everything. You get a fragrant, dry mixture of a pleasant green color.

   

   If you like, you can add a clove of garlic to the basil and Parmesan, provided you don’t have to go to work. There is no need to add salt, pepper or anything else. This is, more or less, how the famous Italian pesto sauce is made. It also has pine nuts, olive oil and spices.

Combining

1. Mix the pasta with the chicken and tomatoes. Put the cooked farfalle into a bowl or a deep frying pan, add the fried chicken, the tomatoes and 1 tbsp of olive oil. You can use the oil left over from frying the chicken, but it most likely contains a lot of fried bits, including burnt ones. So it’s up to you.

   

   Toss the farfalle thoroughly with the chicken and tomato.

Serving

1. Put the farfalle with chicken onto plates, garnish with green basil leaves and sprinkle with the ground Parmesan and basil.