RECIPE: Creamy Lemony Chicken and Pasta

I done gone made a recipe!! I'm not exactly the next Delia Smith or Jamie Oliver but just a little something to prove that I can cook and don't just eat out (e.g. this whole blog) or get microwave meals all the time!

This is something simple I knocked up as I really wanted a dinner with clean and fresh lemon flavours but that was also creamy. I vaguely remembered something the girls at uni used to cook with courgettes and lemon zest, but that seemed to much like hard work so I came up with this :-) takes about 10 minutes prep time, 1 hour to marinade and another 10 minutes to cook ... nice easy, quick and tasty!

Serves 1:

• 250g of Chicken Breast
• 2 "egg sized" lemons (or equivalent)
• 50g dried pasta
• 1 courgette
• pinch smoked paprika
• pinch ground cumin
• 1 tsp coriander paste
• 1/2 tsp garlic paste
• 1/2 tsp ginger paste
• pinch salt
• pinch peeper
• 2 tablespoons of Crème fraîche

1. Put the juice of the lemons in a bowl - I squash the lemons before cutting as it makes it easier to get the juice out.
2. Add the coriander, garlic and ginger paste to the bowl - measurements are rough guesses and are just to add a bit of depth to the flavour and not over power the lemon.
3. Add the paprika and cumin to the bowl and mix up until it's blended in a bit.
4. Chop the Chicken into bite sized cube and then add into the bowl and mix until the meat is covered by the marinade - season to taste with salt and pepper
5. Leave for at least an hour to give the marinade a chance to ... er, marinade.
6. Heat up some water and place the dried pasta in it - I like to put a little bit of oregano and olive oil into the water as the pasta cooks.
7. While the pasta is cooking, slice the courgette and steam the courgette slices- I do this in a steamer over the pasta.
8. With your third hand :0) put the chicken in a sauce pan with all the marinade on a moderate to high heat - if you have chopped the chunks up correctly it should take about the same time as the pasta, in my case 10 minutes.
9. When the pasta, courgette and chicken have finished cooking add to one pan and stir in two large dollops of Crème fraîche until it's all mixed in.
10. Serve and enjoy!

I tend to cook on instinct and with very rough estimates of how much flavour I want from each ingredient, but hopefully I've got the proportions right here :-)