Monday, September 06, 2010
Chicken Fettuccini Alfredo-Master Recipe
I was asked earlier today to share my chicken fettuccine alfredo recipe. The fact that anyone would ask me, who cannot really cook for anything, to share a recipe, makes me laugh hysterically. But, I do get by and so I thought I’d pass it along to the likes of you. Enjoy!
Here is my super secret, homemade recipe that has been handed down through the generations-(that is to say, starting with me and roundly accepted by the dogs who got a taste of it when some landed on the floor...they were pleased and will share the recipe with their friends at the dog park). Please note that each and every step is extremely important and that if a single step is missed, it will not taste the same:
Ingredients-
Chicken - I prefer the skinless, boneless variety but the heathens in this forsaken town can’t seem to grasp the concept of “remove the dang bones, too!” so, if you have heathens where you live as well, get the skinless with “ribs”. You will be cutting off the good meat. Do not fret about bones with meat left dangling on them as you will actually need those later in the recipe.
Onions - One, the bigger the better.
Fettuccine noodles - you don’t need to go gettin’ all fancy schmancy here, just get the ones in a box from the store.
A bit o’ chicken broth - or stock or base or bouillon or chicken juice, whatever you want to call it.
Olive oil - no need to seek out the town virgin, any olive oil will do although I prefer the nicest looking bottle because it makes me feel like a chef.
Garlic - cloves and cloves-not to be mistaken for hooves. And if you’re sick, get more cloves. If you are afraid of vampires, use additional cloves.
Alfredo sauce - this is very important. It would not be chicken fettuccine alfredo without Alfred’s sauce. He has kindly shared his sauce with the world and you can find them on your grocer’s shelves. You also want to make sure you combine two different flavors such as “four cheese” and “roasted garlic” so that people will think you slaved away for hours in the kitchen just to prepare them a special meal. (Unless your guests are hoodlum dogs who don’t bother to let the food sit in their mouths long enough to even TASTE what they just swiped off the floor.)
Water - in which to boil the noodles
Directions-
Get your cutting board and expensive, cool looking kitchen knife that you purchased when you decided, one day, in the not too distant past, that you were going to learn how to cook and that the best way to do that would be to get the most expensive knife you could find and go to the counter. For the 37th time this month, hold knife in front of you, allow the light from the kitchen to glint off of the surface of the blade, sending out very important, “there is a chef in the kitchen right now, pay attention” vibes. Admire your reflection in the blade. (Unless you are sick in which case you would recoil in horror.) Decide that the food will not cut itself while you love your knife and get to work.
Slice off the ends of the onion and peel off the “icky” paper part. You should now have a bare, naked, fragrant onion before you. Because you are not an experienced chef and are petrified of cutting your fingers off, make criss cross cuts to one side of the onion, like a checkerboard.
Turn onion on its side and cut the onion as if you were going to make onion rings. Watch with smugness how onion becomes “diced” upon each, individual slice. Wonder if any famous chef ever figured that one out.
Realize that you forgot to turn on the stove. Realize you forgot to get a pan out. Get pan. Place on burner. Turn on burner. Add olive oil, (virgin or experienced), and allow it to coat entire pan by expertly turning pan from side to side as if there were cameras in your kitchen, watching you. Take diced onions from cutting board and slide in to pan.
Take a moment to enjoy the scent of cooking onion. Everything smells like a good meal when you cook onion. Open windows so neighbors can smell what they do NOT get to have. Laugh to yourself. Consider putting a fan in the window to direct the scent towards a particularly hated neighbor.
Bring cutting board back to counter space and get garlic cloves. Do not use garlic clove....masher thingie because that is cheating! No real chef would ever cheat when it comes to chopping vegetables! (Except in the case of diced onions.)
Cut off the top and bottom ends of garlic clove and de-skin the clove. Hold garlic up to your face and breathe deeply. Think that whomever invented garlic should be given a spot in heaven forever. Consider chomping on garlic. Resist urge.
Take a clove and glorious, expensive chef kitchen knife and introduce each other. Take knife and smash down on garlic clove. Mongo smash! Pretend you are a professional chef and “dice” garlic clove like the pros...for the first cut or two. Slow way down because nobody needs blood and body parts in their dinner. Think it doesn’t matter because you have to go slow first until you get muscle memory and one day, you will fly through this step. Wish muscle memory would hurry up.
For regular recipe, use two cloves. For those who are sick, use four cloves. For those who fear vampires, use 10 cloves, 9 in the food and one around your neck.
Take impressively and expertly diced cloves and add to onion/olive oil concoction in pan. Admire. Take pan by the handle and “swish” everything around. With a flick of your wrist, push pan forward and back, in the air, to “toss” the ingredients without using a spatula, just like you’ve seen the experts do on television. Grab the 20 pieces of garlic and onion that flew out of the pan on to the stove when you did this, and put them back in the pan, looking around to make sure no one saw you, especially those hidden cameras.
Go back to cutting board and counter. Get the chicken. Sigh again at the heathens in this town who make your life hard. Cut good meat away from bone. Cut the chicken in to 1” or 2” cubes, (or as close as you can get, you don’t need to measure each one), and store to the side of the cutting board. Repeat this process for all 5 pieces of chicken. (You are making enough to last you a week.)
Store bones to the side, as stated earlier.
Wash hands.
Take cubed chicken chunks to the pan and add them to the garlic/onion/olive oil concoction. Enjoy the “ssssssssst” sound the chicken makes when it hits the hot pan. Just like on TV! Do your fancy push/pull of pan in air business to “toss” mixture together. Pick up 3 chunks of chicken off of the floor and add it to the bone pile. Pick up the piece of garlic that got stuck to the refrigerator and throw it in the sink. Forget picking up the pieces of onion that fell on to the stove because they are too close to the flame. Resolve to pick up later. Add a bit o’ chicken broth to the mixture.
Get bigger pot.
Place pot on burner and turn burner on. Add water. Add a dash or two of olive oil. Add noodles from box. (no one needs to know!) Stir around. Add lid.
Go sit down and read your email.
Get up and do your fancy trick with the pan again. Repeat clean up process but do realize that not as many pieces of food came flying out this time! You’re getting better. Practice makes perfect. Convince yourself that the famous chefs spill pieces of food, too, but they have the magic of editing so that the audience doesn’t get to see it.
Go back to computer and play a game.
Repeat “stirring” and “tossing” numbers until chicken concoction and noodles are done. Turn off stove. (VERY important!)
Take big pot and turn it on its side above a colander. Be very impressed with yourself that you know what a colander is. Drain noodles. Run a teensy bit of cold water over the noodles to wash the extra starches out.
Get plate.
Scoop a lot of noodles on the plate. Your eyes are bigger than your stomach so make sure you put way too much on your plate. Convince yourself that even though, every single time, you can never eat the amount you put on your plate, this time you really ARE that hungry and will eat it all. Go to chicken concoction and spoon (with a cooking spoon not eating spoon), some chicken concoction on top of the noodles.
Put plate on counter and open two jars of Aflred’s sauce. Get a small bowl. Pour half of each sauce from jar in to small bowl. Whisk, vigorously. Pour sauce on to noodles/chicken. No need to heat the sauce, it will “cook” with the heat from the other food.
Bring gently steaming plate to table and sit down to eat. Get up and get a fork. Sit down. Get up and get your napkin. Sit down. Get up and get a drink. Sit down. Pick up fork. Stop and think to make sure you have everything. You do. Plunge fork in to chicken fettuccine alfredo and swirl noodles around fork ensuring you have stabbed a piece of chicken and everything is fully coated with TwoSauce.
Place in to mouth. Smile.
Once you are bloated and in pain, get up and put dishes in to sink. Take chicken bones that still has chicken on it plus whatever fell on to the floor and put in to big pot. Add more water. Put pot on stove. Boil. Turn off stove. Let chicken bone/meat cool down. Call dogs over. Inform them that training time begins. Cut pieces of meat off of bone, (if done right, should be real easy), blow on pieces of meat to ensure they are cooled and make dogs perform stupid tricks. Feed chicken pieces. Throw bones in garbage. Know that the cats will find their way to that garbage and eat those bones. Scold cats in advance that you do not have the funds to take them to an all night vet when they start choking and that though you love them, you don’t know if you can place your mouth on theirs to perform CPR, later. Get cold shoulder from cats.
Clean kitchen. Store left overs. You are done.
