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Spicy pasta? Sure!

 I'm still working my way through my habanero.


I have a lot of veggies that need to be eaten, and I need to eat a lot of veggies. Seems like a match made in heaven. Tomatoes, mushrooms, kale, red bell pepper, radish, shallot, garlic, and, of course, some habanero rounded out the plant-based side of my meal tonight.

  1. Bowl 1
    1. Minced garlic
    2. Minced habanero
  2. Bowl 2
    1. Chopped kale stem
    2. Diced red bell pepper
    3. Garlic slivers
  3. Bowl 3
    1. Sliced mushrooms
    2. Quartered tomatoes (with a little salt)
  4. Bowl 4
    1. Chopped kale leaves
    2. Diced shallot
    3. Sliced garlic
Tonight was a chicken breast night. I seasoned it up with some salt, black pepper, and oregano, then started it off in some butter and olive oil.
Rather than just making the same thing as last night, I decided to shake things up a bit by adding the habanero in with the protein instead of in the sauce, so Bowl 1 got added in before I flipped the chicken the first time. That way, when I basted, I got nice little burned straight to hell pieces of habanero and garlic sitting all over the meat. It ended up not sucking, at least.
Once I got the chicken out, I started up some linguine in separate a pot, deglazed with some white wine, then dumped Bowl 2 into the pan. After Bowl 2 sautéed for a minute, I added in Bowl 3, but made sure that the tomatoes were sitting peel up and set apart. That way, after they cooked for a little bit, I could just remove the peels with my tongs.
Once the tomato peels were gone, it was just a matter of mixing the tomato into the rest of the veggie mass, then dumped in Bowl 4 and mixed it all thoroughly. Once the liquid was mostly absorbed, I added in a little extra virgin olive oil and mixing it all up again. By that time, the pasta was done, so I drained it, adding some of the pasta water to my sauce pan along with a little bit of cream.
After the sauce reduced and thickened a little bit, I dropped the pasta into the sauce and tossed it around to make sure the noodles were coated well.
On to plating: a nice grab of noodles in the middle of the plate, a little sauce and veggie drizzled over the top, then a small amount of shredded parmesan and a few cranks of the black pepper grinder, all accompanied by some sliced chicken breast.

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