Everything is Coming Up Garlic

Over the winter holidays, I found something in the grocery store that would change the way I approached the kitchen — I found garlic peeled, cut and packaged in a resealable bag. Do you know how people buy vegetables and slabs of meat and cut it using how-to videos on Youtube? Yeah, I can’t do that. So finding that bag of garlic meant that I would finally add minced garlic into my dishes.

Before, calls for garlic in recipes would be me putting a dash of garlic salt and that rarely accomplished anything.

The first few dishes I experimented with were marinades for meat, but last week I tried it with pasta.

I hate red sauces and meat sauces. A lot of it utilizes anchovies, which I’m allergic to and I just don’t like the texture of heavy sauces. I used to like white sauces, but now even Alfredo sauces are too thick for me.

I noticed that in the past year when I had a hankering for pasta, I was buying plain garlic noodles from a Thai restaurant and adding chicken to it.

Another item that has become a staple in my kitchen is plain yogurt. I use it for everything from dips to sauces. Here is my recipe for the noodles:

For this first attempt, I utilized two chicken breasts that I had cooked previously for a curry chicken dish that didn’t turn out. It worked out perfect because the seasoned chicken added a kick to my pasta.

I like my pasta al dente so after about 8 minutes in boiling water I pour it into a strainer and put to the side.

In the same pot I cooked the pasta I will add all of the wet ingredients (butter, yogurt, seasoning, garlic, mozzarella) and I will stir this making sure that it doesn’t brown. I then add the chicken and quickly toss it around before adding the pasta.

Before I throw the pasta in I add a little pour of olive oil. I didn’t put this on the ingredients list because it really depends on how you like your noodles and I’m just in the habit of pouring olive oil into everything I cook so it’s less of an ingredient as just something that’s right next to the stove and gets used in everything.

I toss everything in the pot while the temperature is low for about a minute and then bam, it’s ready to go. This dish will yield 4–5 servings.

This is my first completed article of 2019 and I’m happy it’s about a food dish that I winged and made something out of. Let’s all just enjoy our food and life a little more in 2019.