iamaneviltaco

Always a crowd pleaser. Everyone has their own pasta salad recipe, and everyone will always argue that theirs is the best. I don't really make any claims that mine is the absolute best in the world, but I will say that it's tastier than most I've encountered. This is a bit more of an advanced recipe, and takes some time. You're probably looking at a half hour or so, all totalled.

To start, we're going to do a variation of my pesto. What you're gonna do is take out 1/4 cup basil, add 1/4 cup spinach, and about 1/4 cup of sun dried tomatoes, 1/8 cup parmesan cheese, 1 tblsp of lemon juice. Blend it as normal, mixing in all of the ingredients at the very beginning, except the lemon juice which you add at the end. This is my version of a spinach tomato pesto alla genovese. It's rather authentic, except that I don't use fresh grated parmesan.

Next, we're going to move on to my chicken. This can be prepared beforehand and refridgerated, if you don't feel like doing all of this at once. In fact, baking it, chopping it down, drizzling about 1 tsp of olive oil over it, putting it in a bag, and shaking it every once and a while will make the chicken more flavorful.

Ingredients:
2 chicken breasts, boneless/skinless
basil, rosemary, garlic powder, onion powder, paprika, all in equal portions
a light oil. olive, canola, or vegetable work well.

Basically what you're going to want to do is brush the chicken with the oil, dust it lightly with the herb mixture and bake it at 450 degrees for about 8-10 minutes a side. Flip once during cooking, and when it appears done, cut it open at the thickest part to make sure it's not still pink in the middle.

Cut it into cubes and put it to the side.

Salad ingredients:
~1 cup spinach tomato pesto alla genovese
the listed recipe for chicken
4 cups bowtie pasta
1 cup broccoli flourettes
2 cups cherry tomatoes/grape tomatoes (your choice)

Boil the broccoli very lightly. You want to take away some of the firmness but not fully cook it. Maybe 3 minutes. Finish boiling the pasta, strain, and run cold water over it to halt the cooking process. Combine the pesto, tomatoes, broccoli, and chicken. You want the pesto to coat evenly but not be too thick and overpowering. It tastes good warm or cold, but is traditionally served cold.

The process by which you want to prepare this dish is as follows: preheat oven, start water. make pesto. bake chicken, start pasta half way through chicken. start broccoli. take out chicken, stop broccoli. cut chicken, strain pasta, mix. eat. love.