The "Utah Chicken" dish has a great back story. For our 2nd date, I invited Jeff over for dinner. He was turning 30 the next day and I thought it would be nice to have him over for a good, home cooked meal. The only problem was, I couldn't cook. So I went online and found some recipes of things that seemed tasty but easy to pull-off in the kitchen. I invited my friend, Kathy over to do a test meal. I needed to make sure I could actually cook dinner for the guy I was interested in getting to know better. I wanted Kathy to be my guinea pig and let me know if the food was good enough to serve to a guy with boyfriend potential, to make sure she and I didn't get sick after eating it, and to give me an idea on how long it will take me to get the meal on the table with everything the right temperature and ready at the same time.
I did it all for the test drive with Kathy - the feta cheese popovers I made for appetizers, the chicken pasta dish, the side veggie and even went as far as making the chocolate cake for dessert. It was a hit! I knew I could cook this meal with confidence and only be nervous about every other aspect of having a guy over at my place. I sent Kathy home with all the leftovers because just 2 days later, I was going to have the same food all over again in my kitchen.
I don't make the dish often because it is a little time intensive. It takes 1 hr, 30 minutes to prepare - with 1 hour of that cooking time. There really is no way to speed up the process of this dish. But Jeff loved it and subsequently married me, so I guess it was a great choice among the thousands of recipes I was contemplating.
Several months later, while we were dating, Jeff went to Utah for a business trip. I knew I'd be picking him up from the airport and asked him if there was anything special I could make for dinner that night. He will have eaten every meal for 5 days on the road and I knew a home cooked meal would taste really good when his plane landed. He requested the chicken dish I made for him on our 2nd date. I hadn't made it since that night and loved that he remembered it. I happily said yes, bought all the ingredients and was ready to go for when he returned to town. I picked him up at the airport and we drove back to my condo. I went to the kitchen and started making dinner. Close to 2 hours later we were finally ready to eat. It was now approaching 11:00pm. Jeff was completely dumbfounded and couldn't believe that we were eating so late. It never occurred to me to make the dish ahead of time and just reheat it when we walked in the door. And it never occurred to Jeff that I would be starting from scratch when we got back from the airport.
We got a pretty good laugh about that and thus the name of Jeff's favorite chicken dish has always since been called, "Utah Chicken".
ANGEL CHICKEN PASTA
Ingredients
- 6 skinless, boneless chicken breast halves
- 1/4 cup butter
- 1 (.7 ounce) package dry Italian-style salad dressing mix
- 1/2 cup white wine
- 1 (10.75 ounce) can condensed golden mushroom soup
- 4 ounces cream cheese with chives
- 1 pound angel hair pasta
Directions
Preheat oven to 325 degrees F (165 degrees C).
In a large saucepan, melt butter over low heat. Stir in the package of dressing mix. Blend in wine and golden mushroom soup. Mix in cream cheese, and stir until smooth. Heat through, but do not boil. Arrange chicken breasts in a single layer in a 9x13 inch baking dish. Pour sauce over.
Bake for 60 minutes in the preheated oven. Twenty minutes before the chicken is done, bring a large pot of lightly salted water to a rolling boil. Cook pasta until al dente, about 5 minutes. Drain. Serve chicken and sauce over pasta.
***** My updated gluten-free version: I use a gf mushroom soup that Wegman's sells. I make 2 types of angel hair pasta - regular and gf. ***********
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