Chicken Pesto Pasta

A few weeks ago, I had this pesto at Souen, and I loved it. I was craving pesto even more so afterwards. The restaurant doesn’t use any dairy, but I didn’t give it a second though at that time. It wasn’t until afterwards that I would need to find a pesto recipe that didn’t have cheese in it. I did see a few sites that used different types of nuts as well as a 1:1 ratio of nutritional yeast instead of cheese, but most recipes used pine nuts…something I usually didn’t have on hand, and something I didn’t want to buy just for pesto.

I saw Branny’s recipe for vegan pesto, and knew it was the one I had to try. It tasted a lot like the one I had at the restaurant, except a little saltier. I think it was because I didn’t use quite as much basil as the recipe called for…more like 2.5 cups, but the consistency, taste, and texture was all there!

When I first showed Gary the picture from the restaurant, he thought pesto looked kind of gross, but once he tried it, he thought it was great too!

Chicken Pesto Pasta

ingredients:

directions:

Trim fat and remove skin from chicken. Separate leg and thigh parts. You should have 4 pieces now. Pat dry with paper towels. Rub salt liberally onto chicken pieces. Steam for 20-30 minutes or until fully cooked through. (You can also bake or grill or whatever.)

Meanwhile, combine all the ingredients for the pesto in a food processor and pulse until desired consistency.

During last 10 minutes of cooking the chicken, boil the pasta.

Let chicken cool for a few minutes. Cut into pieces, save the bones for stock or soup.

Drain pasta, drizzle a little olive oil to coat the pasta. Add in chicken and pesto, toss to coat evenly.

Serve and enjoy!