An Easy One-Pot Chicken Dinner That’s as Generous as They Come

Sometimes, scrumptious is apparent. You can’t miss the charred curds on tandoori rooster, the crisp edges on a lasagna, the ripe flesh of a peach. But what attracts us to a bowl of rice cooked in coconut milk? Or bread pudding?

Desirability might be tougher to identify when it’s one factor absorbing one other. But it’s these saturation factors — the place an ingredient that provides meets one which takes — that consolation. We fold heat, peeled potatoes by mayonnaise, sauce our noodles within the pan and unravel over a potpie with a squidgy layer of puff pastry soaked with what’s under.

Food that’s lengthy on this kind of satisfaction isn’t technical. In reality, whereas being an expert chef has given me technical capacity, it’s a loyalty to my urge for food that makes the meals. My position at dwelling — like every prepare dinner — is facilitator, right here to supply the situations that draw taste and juices out of 1 ingredient handy off to the subsequent.

This recipe for rooster cooked with noodles is the other of flashy or groundbreaking.

Skimming the ingredient record, you might mistake it for rooster Alfredo. But too typically rooster Alfredo is a wasted alternative. Seared, sliced rooster breast and creamy pasta are mixed solely on the time of serving — a romance with out rapport — however on this recipe, the 2 substances are layered in a single pot with loads of water to make one thing deeper, lighter and intuitive.

There are some ways to let rooster and noodles have at it: You can boil the fowl and prepare dinner noodles within the ensuing inventory. You can braise the rooster to make a extra concentrated sauce, which is scrumptious over buttered noodles.

This recipe splits the distinction. It begins by roasting a complete, butter-rubbed, Parmesan-rind-stuffed rooster and a head of garlic underneath excessive warmth. The pores and skin and butter brown, the garlic sweetens, the fowl infuses with the nutty flavors of the cheese. The pot is deglazed with water, lower than you’ll use in a soup, however greater than for a braise. Then, the noodles prepare dinner in the identical pot to allow them to absorb all that flavored broth. In a closing act of generosity, the noodles share their starches with the broth, thickening it right into a sauce.

Good issues occur when substances are given a heat introduction and an opportunity to know each other.