White Chicken Embutido Pasta

"It's almost midnight and I was craving for pasta but I just wasn't in the mood to order food online. So..."

I just rummaged my fridge and cupboards for anything that I could use to whip an easy pasta. And I found the following:

• 1 long chicken embutido

• 1 cup of cream

• 2 cups of pasta shells

• 1 bar of cheddar cheese, cubed

To put them together, I used the following cooking essentials:

• 1 medium sized onion

• 2 cloves of garlic

• 1 tablespoon of olive oil

• water

• salt, pepper, and chili powder to taste

Right after coming up with the idea of the pasta that I wanted to cook given the ingredients that I had, I set the stove to high heat and put a pot of water to boil with 2 tablespoons of salt. When the water was already boiling, I dropped the pasta shells and cooked them for 3 minutes. When my alarm rang, I transferred the shells in a bowl with five tablespoons of pasta water.

For the sauce, I sautéed the onion and garlic. When I saw that they already achieved my desired color, I dropped the chicken embutido that I sliced into quartered coins. After a minute, I put salt, pepper, and chili powder. After which, I added the cream and let the mixture simmered for 2 minutes.

To easily serve the pasta, I just added the shells into the pot of sauce with the cubed cheddar cheese. And there, I was able to whip a white pasta in less than 30 minutes.

#BetterTasteTip: It tastes the best 20 minutes after cooking.

Pan-Seared Breasts

"Lets minimize our eat outs and just cook lunch or dinner during our weekends together, though I really want to meet my protein goal per day."

Yes friends! Those were jowa's lines before, though I really wanted na rin naman to lessen our eat outs to save more for something that I really want to buy before this year ends. Besides, I also aim to explore and hone my cooking skills. Hahaha. And one of the main ingredients of our weekend cooking is chicken, being very easy to cook and jowa can easily estimate his protein consumption.

A little side story, jowa had to buy the ingredients for this dish on his way to my place since I was so sleepy to go to the supermarket because I just came from an overnight with my best friends. And this resulted to a not well marinated chicken meat. Hahaha. Nevertheless, I enjoyed this dish because:

(1) Jowa cooked it; and

(2) Of course it kind of gave me a new taste for a chicken dish. Hahaha...

Okay, so for the real highlight of this post...

We only used few ingredients in this dish, namely:

• 2 chicken fillets (breast part)

• 1 pack of garlic marinade

• 1 pack of chicken gravy

• any amount of corn and carrots

We're supposed to marinate the chicken overnight. But guess what, we're not able to do so. Well, sabi ko nga kanina eh nag-overnight ako with my best friends. Hahaha. It kinda sacrificed the taste of the chicken. So if you wanna have a tasty chicken meat, marinate it overnight.

What jowa did? He just rubbed the chicken with that packed garlic marinade that he bought. And I somehow didn't like the taste of the chicken with this marinade. Hahaha. He knew this already.

If you're not so fan of garlic as a marinade like me, you can always create your own. As what I learned from watching too many cooking videos, a tasty marinade has equal parts of sour, sweet, and salty. For me, I usually use soy sauce, honey, and lemon juice.

After marinating the chicken, it's time for that sizzling sound. Pre-heat your pan. You'll know that it's ready when you see smoke whenever you put water droplets into your pan. Just put in there the fillets, making sure not to overcrowd your pan to make sure an easy and even cooking. Once you achieve a golden brown meat, it's time to cook the other side.

Once you're done cooking, you can always plate your seared chicken in any way you want to. But of course if you're too hungry, you can always skip the art of plating and just dig into that chicken goodness.

#BetterTasteTip: It tastes perfectly with blanched carrots and corn.