I love pasta. It is like the party bus of foods. Not only is it made it all kinds of awesome shapes and sizes, but it’s also an amazing vehicle to carry all kinds of different ingredients. The party bus doesn’t discriminate; it welcomes all kinds to the culinary celebration of dinner time. It tells marina sauce and meatballs to hop on for the classic tour around town. It pre games for vodka sauce with chicken to be tossed in for a crazy night. Throw some shrimp, garlic and butter into the mix for a decadent affair. Your options for a delicious pasta meal or only limited by your imagination.
I recently decided to be the driver of the party bus and used orzo and added chicken, blue cheese and red onion so that we could use the car pool lane right to Yummytown (aka my stomach via the tongue entrance ramp!).
Another great thing about pasta is that it’s cheap and really stretches. You can feed a lot of people with only 1 or 2 pounds of pasta. This recipe can easily be adapted for however many people you are planning on. I am terrible with portions of pasta, so I honestly can offer no guidance as far as how much uncooked pasta would serve 1 person. I do know I made spaghetti with lemon chicken and asparagus (using 1 pound of pasta) and it feed 7 and still had left overs. I originally anticipated making just 2 servings of this (1 for dinner that night and 1 for lunch the next day), but it did in fact feed me for 3 meals. Orzo is especially tricky to determine a serving size of!
So this again was 3 full meals.
1/2 bag of orzo
2 boneless, skinless chicken breasts (cut into bite size cubes)
about 1/2 cup of crumbled blue cheese
1/2 red onion
1/2 cup flour
salt and pepper to taste
a couple of shakes of Tastefully Simple Bacon Bacon!
Cook the orzo according to package directions in salted water. Meanwhile cut the chicken in small bite size pieces. Combine the flour, salt, pepper and Bacon Bacon (if you are using it) in a bowl. Dredge the pieces of chicken in the flour. Warm extra virgin olive oil in a skillet over medium heat and add the chicken. Cook, stirring often, to brown and cook through. Chop the onion in small pieces.
Once the pasta is done, drain almost all of the liquid. Reserve a little bit still in the pan to help the other ingredients stick and thicken the dish slightly. Add a drizzle of EVOO to the pasta. Add the blue cheese and stir, letting the cheese melt. Add the uncooked red onion and the chicken. Give a stir to combine well. Pour into the serving bowl and top with a little bit more blue cheese crumbles. I opted not to cook the red onion, because I wanted the crunch and the bite. But, the onion did soften slightly from the pasta. I’m sure it would also be really good if you sauteed the onion a little bit.
This is a super easy meal to prepare for 1 or 10!
Hang Onto your fork 