Springtime Spaghetti (with chicken, spinach, and tomatoes)
Spring is kind of here and with the weather getting slightly more spring-like where we live, Josh and I wanted to create something fresh and colorful for dinner. We absolutely love cooking with fresh ingredients and we try to do so as often as we can. Pasta is one of my favorites but Josh isn’t too keen on having it as much as I’d like to so when he said to me “Can we have pasta tonight?” I said “Yes!” right away. He came up with this concept, which isn’t necessarily new, of making spaghetti with chicken, spinach, and tomatoes in some sort of buttery sauce. He pretty much picked out all of the ingredients and let me to do the rest of the work!
Whenever I cook without using a recipe, I never really use exact measurements or specific cooking times so for the sake of people possibly attempting to recreate this one, I tried the best I could to give you guys some measurements and times or at least a place to start. I’m also probably the worst person at making sauces so I used a “Creamy Garlic Butter Pasta” recipe from The Kitchen Paper in order to make the sauce, but if you’re fabulous at making sauces, create whatever appeals to you! The sauce can also be omitted if you’d like your pasta to be on the lighter side.
This is a recipe where I had all 4 burners going at the same time so if you’re not too great at multitasking, get some help! Mine ran away to play video games after cutting the chicken and veggies, but our kitchen is only big enough for one master chef (me).
Here is what I came up with!
Ingredients:
Pasta of your choice
1 lb chicken tenderloins cut into bite-sized pieces
Fresh spinach
We only used ½ of a bundle but you can use as much as you would like.
Grape-sized tomatoes cut into halves or quarters
We LOVE Sunset Wild Wonders Gourmet Medley Tomatoes from Walmart. Not only do they each have different flavors, but they make us feel extra fancy because of all the colors. We used about 1 ½ boxes for this recipe. The rest of the tomatoes were eaten while cooking! Use as much as you'd like.
2 medium Zucchini cut to ¼ in. thickness
1 Lemon
Butter
Olive Oil
Salt and pepper to taste
Grated Parmesan (optional)
Sauce:
3 tbsp Butter
1¼ tsp minced garlic or 4 garlic cloves minced
2 tbsp flour
⅔ cup milk
⅔ - ¾ cup water or extra milk to thin the sauce if needed/desired.
Instructions:
Set water for the spaghetti in a large pot to boil while preparing and cutting the spinach, tomatoes, zucchini, and chicken.
In a large pan, melt about 1 tbsp of butter at medium heat for the zucchini, and in another large pan, heat up about 1-2 tbsp of olive oil on medium heat for the chicken.
Once the water comes to a boil, add your pasta and let it cook according to the directions on the box, and begin working on the sauce.
Add the zucchini to the large pan with the melted butter, and add the chicken to the large pan with the heated olive oil. Occasionally stir the zucchini to prevent burning and cook for about 10 minutes or until done to your satisfaction. Salt and pepper to taste.
Salt and pepper the chicken to taste, and add the zest and juice of ½ a lemon to the chicken. Cook the chicken until it is all the way done stirring occasionally to prevent burning and to make sure all of the pieces are cooked all the way through. When the chicken is finished, set aside to a safe place (or your chicken-crazed cat might get to it and eat it before you do!).
Once your pasta is finished, drain, and set aside. In a really large pan (you’re eventually going to put almost everything in this pan), melt 1 tbsp butter on medium heat.
Once the butter is melted, add the spinach to begin wilting. Stir continuously to prevent burning. After the spinach is about ½ wilted, add the tomatoes. Cook until the spinach is finished wilting.
Lower the heat to medium-low and add the chicken, spaghetti, and sauce. Toss to coat everything in the sauce and to mix everything together. Once everything is mixed, serve warm alongside your pan roasted zucchini.
Add grated parmesan if you so desire and enjoy!
Sauce:
Melt the butter in a small pot on medium heat.
After the butter is melted, add the minced garlic and let simmer for about 1 minute.
*The original recipe said to then add the butter and garlic into a food processor and blend until smooth but that sounded like too much work so I skipped that step!
Add the flour and stir to combine with the butter and garlic.
Slowly pour in the ⅔ cup milk while stirring. (I might have added a little too much flour and it got gummy so I added water to thin it out a bit. You could probably also use milk if you wanted a creamier sauce.)
Let thicken before adding to the pasta.
There you have it! With Spring here and Summer a little too far down the road, fresher ingredients from local markets will become a little more accessible and hopefully inspire Josh and I to create more meals like this one. Let me know if you recreate this recipe, how it turned out, and what you did differently, if anything!
