Tahini Caesar Pasta with Grilled Chicken Recipe | Chef Tom X All Things Barbecue

Hey everybody, I'm Chef Tom with atbbq.com and this is tahini caesar pasta with grilled chicken. Today we're gonna create something very similar to a caesar dressing but not in the traditional sense because we're gonna be using tahini as the base which of course is a sesame seed paste. So the flavor changes a bit but pretty much everything else you would catch in a caesar dressing you'll find in this sauce. We'll cook our pasta, we'll pour all that sauce over the top, thin it out with pasta water and then we're gonna serve it topped with blackened chicken tenders. We're just gonna build this whole thing in the food processor starting with our tahini. Now this is the organic tahini from Sum which is one of the new pantry products that we're stocking here at atbbq and I've really been enjoying playing with it. This is kind of our base. So we're adding one cup of that as well as one cup of cold chicken stock. Now we're gonna add in a quarter cup of fresh parmesan, freshly grated I should say, obviously not fresh, it's been hanging out for like 18 months somewhere. We're gonna squeeze in some fresh lemon juice. You can go anywhere from like two to four tablespoons just depending on how lemony you want this to be. I'm gonna guesstimate that to be about three. Next I'm gonna add in about two tablespoons of our pit fire hot sauce which is really not all that hot. It's mostly for the vinegar. That vinegar and the tanginess from that vinegar in the hot sauce as well as our Dijon mustard which we're gonna add about a tablespoon of. That's gonna really help offset some of the bitterness of the tahini. Because while the tahini has incredible flavor it also can come off a little bitter if you don't balance it. Now we're adding some anchovy paste for the umami and then we're gonna get to some garlic. Four cloves, we're just gonna crush them, peel them and toss them in and let the food processor do the work there. And then last thing we're gonna do is add about a tablespoon of our Lone Star brisket rub just for that salt and pepper. A little bit of that roasted garlic in there too. So let that run for a good 30, 45 seconds to make sure that garlic's all broken down. Let's just get a little taste. That's exactly where I would want it to be. It's got the right amount of tanginess to balance the creaminess of the tahini. Taste in the garlic. You're getting that umami in there as well. So, honestly really resembles Caesar dressing but with that sesame flavor. Next we're gonna cook our pasta. Put a couple tablespoons of salt into our boiling water. And then speaking of pantry products that we're now carrying, we've got some pastas including this linguine from Remo. That's just gonna go in there whole. Just stir it until it softens enough to all get submerged. The package says about 10 minutes on the cook time. We'll check it at eight because we definitely don't wanna overdo this. Right at eight minutes now. Still got a little bit of bite to it. Pretty dang close. I'm gonna give that like 30, 45 seconds. We'll go ahead and strain this but we're gonna catch that pasta water so we can use some of it back in the sauce. Throw this back in the pot now. The burner's off. Just add a little bit of olive oil to make sure this stuff doesn't stick. All right, tahini Caesar's going on top of the pasta now. Our chicken's gonna take very little time to grill so we're just gonna kinda let this settle in, get it to the right consistency and go grill our chicken. So you can add as much or as little of that pasta water as you want. Just know that as it sits here, it's gonna thicken up a bit, especially as it starts to pick up some of the starch from that pasta. So I'm just gonna put a splash in for now and we'll check it here in a little bit. All those aromas are coming alive. So now for the chicken, what we're gonna do is we're gonna baste it with some butter first. This is pretty typical anytime you're doing a blackening technique. Gonna hit it with butter and then that blackening seasoning on top. So we got the cattleman's blackening seasoning out. These are smaller pieces of meat so we're not gonna go super heavy on the seasoning. Got the griddle set up on the yoder today. So direct heat, that flame's hitting right underneath where we're about to cook. It's set to 425 degrees. I'm gonna drop our chicken tenderloins right into that garlic oil. Just a few minutes there, we're getting some nice crust on here. Now with something this thin, we're not gonna need to close the lid to get that internal temperature up where we need it. So we'll just continue to let these cook with the lid open. Let's start checking some temps. I know some of these fatties are gonna be running a little behind. We're looking for about 155 to 160 on these guys. Ooh, that one flew a little bit fast. All right, let's get these thin ones out of here. For presentation, we're just gonna slice these into little medallions. We'll put them right on top of the pasta. So you can see how that's really set up now. I'm gonna loosen it up with just a little bit more of that pasta water because it's still hot. And then it gets moving again. So again, this is all to your preference. If you like it a little bit firmer, a little bit heavier coating, you know, don't add water. If you want it a little bit creamier or smoother, add a little bit more water. This is kind of a nice in-between right here. Add a little bit of height. Make it look pretty. We'll pop our chicken tenderloins right on top. And then for garnish, we'll just add some chives. Now for the bite. Mm, that tahini flavor shines through. I'm not mad about it, but all the other flavors scream Caesar salad to me, and Caesar salad's one of my favorite foods in the world. Pasta's got great texture to it. Cooked just right. It's got the right amount of creaminess, the right amount of bite. This sauce, I love that you can adjust that level. So like I said, you want a thicker coating, don't add any water. You want it to be nice and thin. Also could be enjoyable. And then there's this chicken. Chicken tenders, I don't cook these a lot, these tenderloins. If you cook them right, certainly don't overcook them. They still have plenty of juiciness to them, but the fact that we basted them in butter first adds a little bit of that fattiness that they lack. And then there's the combination of the Cajun seasoning with the Caesar, which for me has become one of my favorite pairings lately. Thank you guys so much for watching. Be sure to check out atbbq.com for all the products featured in today's video. If you enjoy the recipe, hit that subscribe button. And if you have any questions or comments, or there's anything you'd like to see me cook, let me know in the comments section down below, and let's be good to one another. For more recipes, tips, and techniques, head over to atbbq.com slash the sauce. All Things Barbecue, where barbecue legends are made.