{"id":788,"date":"2016-09-24T01:34:13","date_gmt":"2016-09-24T08:34:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dwaynejeng.com\/blog\/?p=788"},"modified":"2016-09-24T01:34:13","modified_gmt":"2016-09-24T08:34:13","slug":"chicken-bacon-tomato-cream-sauce","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dwaynejeng.com\/blog\/2016\/09\/24\/chicken-bacon-tomato-cream-sauce\/","title":{"rendered":"Chicken Bacon Tomato Cream Sauce"},"content":{"rendered":"

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I like sauces. I think they’re the ultimate expression of pure flavor. A pasta is a good delivery mechanism for sauce. So I decided to make a tomato cream sauce.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Let’s start with the recipe, since that’s 80% of the value of this blog post.<\/p>\n

Ingredients<\/h3>\n

4oz thick-cut bacon
\n~8oz chicken thigh, cut into 3\/4″ cubes
\n1 onion, chopped
\n4 cloves garlic, minced<\/p>\n

1\/4 cup Madeira
\n2 cup pureed tomatoes
\nleaves from 10 sprigs thyme
\n1\/2 cup heavy cream<\/p>\n

salt
\nwhite pepper<\/p>\n

pasta such as farfalle (bowties) or conchiglie (shells), cooked<\/p>\n

INSTRUCTIONS<\/h3>\n

1. Bring bacon and chicken to room temperature and dry with paper towels.
\n2. In a large pan over high heat, cook half the bacon until bacon strips start to curl (about 30 seconds each side). Remove bacon from pan and set aside.
\n3. Still on high heat, stirfry the chicken until full cooked, about 2-3 minutes. Remove chicken from pan and set aside.
\n4. Still on high heat, cook the remaining half of the bacon, similar to the first half. Remove bacon from pan and set aside.
\n5. Lower heat to medium-low heat and add the onions and garlic. Sprinkle a pinch kosher salt over the onion and garlic mixture. Saute until soft (about 10 minutes).
\n6. Stir in wine, then stir in tomatoes. Raise heat to bring to simmer. Then lower heat and simmer until thickened (about 25-30 min), stirring occasionally.
\n7. While tomatoes are simmering, chop the bacon.
\n8. Add chicken, bacon, and thyme. Stir until mixed.
\n9. Reduce heat. Slowly stir in cream.
\n10. Add salt and pepper to taste. Serve immediately with pasta.<\/p>\n

Serves 2-4.<\/p>\n

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Thursday, August 1, 2016 – I wanted to go into this exercise with as little outside influence as possible. One, this was to test my cooking knowledge. Two, I wanted to see if I could give this my personal Dwayne-ish twist (bacon, Madeira). So I applied what I knew about cream soup and chicken pot pie.<\/p>\n

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Unfortunately, the result came out runny and watery. There were lots of reasons. For one, my ratios were all off. I had a 1:1 ratio of tomatoes and cream, and then added wine on top of that, which meant extra moisture. The other mistake is, apparently you need to simmer tomatoes for 30-60 min to develop the tomato flavor and reduce and thicken the sauce. Skipping that step meant a soup-y sauce with not enough flavor.<\/p>\n

The other mistake I made was, I read somewhere a while ago that freezing onions is a good way to preserve them, if for whatever reason you have half an onion. So I fished out half a frozen onion from the freezer. This turned out to be a bad idea. The onion was mushy and watery, which only added to the watery problem, and instead of caramelizing, the onions just kinda turned into a mushy paste.<\/p>\n

Lesson learned: if you don’t use a whole onion… well, try to use the whole onion. There really isn’t a good way to “save” an onion for next time. (Frozen pureed tomatoes are okay though.)<\/p>\n

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Sunday, August 21, 2016 – This was much better. After tweaking the ratios, simmering the tomatoes for much longer, and using fresh onions, I managed to get the flavor and thickness I wanted from my sauce. There was so much flavor in the sauce, I barely needed to hit it with any of the salt and pepper. (But I added a little bit anyway, because salt brings out the flavor and white pepper is love.)<\/p>\n

If anything, the sauce was too<\/i> thick and too<\/i> flavorful. I had simmer for 30 minutes and used 12 springs of thyme, so the final recipe reflects a little toning back of the recipe.<\/p>\n

I originally served this pasta with fettuccine, but a long noodle like fettuccine makes it hard to get the right ratio of sauce to noodle in that perfect bite. This sauce is so thick, it’s nearly curry-like. So I figure a pasta that’s a bunch of small uniform pieces, like farfalle (bowties) or conchiglie (shells) would work best. Unfortunately, I haven’t actually tried<\/i> that yet. So please try it and let me know. I’m dying to find out.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I like sauces. I think they’re the ultimate expression of pure flavor. A pasta is a good delivery mechanism for sauce. So I decided to make a tomato cream sauce.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[74,54,22,71,83],"class_list":["post-788","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cooking","tag-bacon","tag-chicken","tag-pasta-sauce","tag-recipe","tag-tomatoes"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwaynejeng.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/788","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwaynejeng.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwaynejeng.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwaynejeng.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwaynejeng.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=788"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dwaynejeng.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/788\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":789,"href":"https:\/\/dwaynejeng.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/788\/revisions\/789"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwaynejeng.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=788"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwaynejeng.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=788"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwaynejeng.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=788"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}