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Pesto chicken pasta
Also known as chicken pesto pasta · pasta al pesto con pollo · pesto pasta with chicken
Pasta slicked bright green with basil, pine nuts and pecorino, grilled chicken sliced over. Grassy, salty, sharply fresh.
Typical serving
620 kcal
usually 480–790 kcal
 Protein | 34 g |
|---|---|
 Carbs | 63 g |
 Fat | 26 g |
Reference figures for a dish as it is commonly cooked — never a measurement of your plate. The range is the honest part: two kitchens make this differently. In the app, a photograph replaces the guess.
Before you start
- a food processor, or a pestle and mortar
Ingredients
Serves 2 · dimmer marks are storecupboard
- 150gspaghetti — trofie or fusilli hold pesto better than a strand does
- 220gchicken breast
- 2 large bunchesbasil — leaves only — the stalks are stringy and go bitter in a blade
- 20gpine nuts
- 25gparmesan
- 1garlic clove
- 1½ tbspolive oil
- ½lemon
Method
6 steps
fry · 3mPine nuts turned in a dry pan until they are just gold, then tipped straight out. They go from pale to burnt in about fifteen seconds and they will keep colouring in a hot pan.
blend · 6mBasil, nuts, garlic and salt worked to a coarse paste in short pulses, then the oil trickled in and the cheese folded through by hand. Run the machine long enough for the bowl to warm and the basil turns black and tastes of metal — pulse, scrape, stop early.
grill · 13mChicken salted and cooked on a hot griddle, turned once, until it is coloured outside and right through inside — no pink at the thickest part and clear juices when it is pressed. Rested two minutes, then sliced.
boil · 9mPasta in salted water, a mug of the water kept.
fold · 3mPesto NEVER goes in a hot pan. Pasta drained, returned to the empty pot off the heat, loosened with a spoon of the cooking water, and the pesto stirred through there. Cooked, it goes khaki and dull and loses the point of itself.
finish · 2mChicken over, a squeeze of lemon, more cheese.
Worth knowing
True pesto is pounded in a marble mortar with a wooden pestle — the blade of a blender bruises the basil and turns it dark.
Basil’s aromatic oils and the pine nuts’ fats both dissolve in the olive oil — the sauce is uncooked so none of it is driven off.
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