Chicken Tetrazzini

Necessity is the mother of invention! 

I had a bunch of cooked chicken to use, and my pasta plans fell through when I realized I only had thin spaghetti on the pantry. I also had a bag of frozen peas in the freezer. I never buy peas but after helping some friends move, I acquired a random bag of this lesser favorite vegetable and needed to use them.  What to do? Chicken tetrazzini! 

Here’s what I came up with:

Cook the pasta to al Dante and top with peas and chicken in a casserole pan. 

Carmalize a diced yellow onion (I prefer the CPK method for this, where after the onion is soft, add 1 tsp each of soy saucec, cider vinegar, and lemon juice until the onion is totally caramelized in the browned butter.  

Then, to this pan I added 1-2 TBS of flour and let it cook up a couple minutes. 

I slowly added 1 each of milk and chicken stock and scraped the onion reduction off the bottom of the pan up into the rue. 

This would have been a perfect sauce but a) it wasn’t enough, and b) it needed mushrooms. 

SO I cheated and whisked in a can of golden cream of mushroom soup. 

This was poured over the top of the pasta and chicken mix. I topped with a heaping 1.5 cups of freshly grated Parmesan cheese and baked covered until hot and bubbly. Served with crusty bread and an iceberg salad. Big hit!