How to Make Chicken Linguine Florentine!

Hey, what's up all my meal makers out there. Welcome to making meals with Mika. We are in a different setting. I'm in like in a new house so I'm about to settle in and make one of my favorite dishes. It really don't have a name though. It's basically like linguine in a nice lemon cream sauce with a little parmesan cheese. We're gonna stir in some spinach and then today we're doing chicken breasts and chicken thighs. And then you know for a side I'm gonna have like a salad and maybe a Corona or two. I don't know. Anyway let's sit back relax and let's make this meal with Mika. So the first thing we're gonna do is we're just gonna cut the chicken. Now for some reason today I wanted two different types of chicken. I really never even mix light and dark because thighs are thighs and legs are my favorite. I like dark meat opposed to white meat. But we're gonna put this chicken breast in here too. So I just sliced it on the cross section then I'm gonna take it and just slice it in strips. That's it. Very simple. And now I know this knife is really cutting through this because this is a really good knife actually. But if your knife isn't cutting through this as easily just separate them like that. You don't have to cut through both of them because you want to like safety is first right. So you just want to separate it but just make sure you're getting like really nice simple cuts. So I just cut these in strips. This is the chicken breast and then these are the thighs. So I'm not going to cut this on the cross section. The thigh is a little bit fattier so I'm going to cut some of this fat off. You can't really do all of it and the fat is the flavor anyway into it. So I'm just going to take the thigh I'm going to cut it. So like you see the veins right here this is like from the skin and you see how that is. So to make it the most tender you're going to cut it kind of like at a diagonal. That's just going to a lot more tender and it's going to cook really evenly and it's going to be delicious. So I'm going to cut this and then I'm going to season the thighs and the breast together. I'm going to start cooking the thighs before I put the breast because they cook at different temperatures and different times. The thigh is going to take a little bit longer to cook than the breast. So if you are like me and you want to mix these two together I just say do it. Why the heck not? You know so they can all get seasoned together but they're going to cook at separate times. So I'm going to start with just salt just some regular salt. You can use sea salt but this is just regular table salt. Okay I don't have all my fancy schmancy seasonings. I'm just going to do just very delicious very basic today. Then you're going to do some black pepper and make sure you season it really really well. Then we're going to do some onion powder and I still have my dark meat and my white meat separate because I don't want them mixed up because they're going to cook separately. Then you're going to do some garlic powder and even though I'm going to put fresh garlic in here I just like garlic. I love garlic and then I'm going to do some red pepper flakes. You don't have to add the red pepper flakes it's just going to make it just a little bit spicy because I like spicy food. So my chicken is seasoned. I'm going to oil my pan with some olive oil. So the chicken is cut and it's seasoned. I I have whole grain linguine because it's delicious. We're going to do it and it's healthier for you. So you always salt your pasta water but do not put salt in it until it boils. You want to know why? Because if you put the salt in it before it boils if you have like a non-stick pan or anything like that you actually ruin your pan. So do not put the salt in there until it boils. So my pasta is boiling. I'm going to put that I mean my water is boiling. I'm going to put my pasta in there and just let it do its thing. Okay so my pan is already preheated and I am going to put a couple of tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil. I recommend olive oil because it has a higher burn rate. Do not use butter. I mean I guess you can use butter but the thing with butter is when your skillet gets really really hot like butter burns really really quickly. So I suggest you use extra virgin olive oil or any type of light oil. So what we're going to do is we are going to put our chicken thighs in the pan and you want to hear that sizzle. The sizzle is a great thing right. If your pan is not sizzling it's not hot you don't want that. So we're just going to sit here and we're going to let these chicken thighs get nice and almost done. Then we're going to add the chicken breast. They're going they're going to hang out together. Our pasta is cooking. We're going to make our sauce put it all together and eat. It's going to be delicious. So the chicken thighs are just about done and now what we're going to do is we're going to add the chicken breast. You still get the same sizzle to this mixture and then once this is done we're going to remove the chicken and we're going to work on our delicious sauce and put it all together. All right guys I had to switch my pasta it wasn't even cooking on that back burner. So now the chicken should look like that. Look all the chicken is looking the same color. It's going to be different textures and different juiciness but they all look alike. Now I don't even need to add any more oil but this is where I'm going to add my spinach. I'm going to try to add the whole bag because you know it's going to kind of cook down to nothing. Now if you want to you could add you could add like onions to this. I would say shallots because they're a little more mild but you know I'm eating a salad on the side. I'm going to have onions in my salad so I'm not going to put onions in this mixture but you could or shallots and then we're going to continue to cook this until the spinach cooks all the way down. It's going to be delicious. Now you know what the rule is right? Here's the number one rule my opinion on cooking. When you add a new ingredient you have to add just a little bit more seasoning right so we're going to add a little salt. We're going to add a little pepper. Yeah I got like you know the music going in the back so if you hear the music going in and out it's just it's just my uh my phone playing my music. We're going to saute this and then once the spinach is all nice and roasted we're going to take this out work on the sauce and put it look at that oh that is gorgeous gorgeous so what we're going to do is we are going to turn the heat down we're going to remove the beautifully mixed chicken and the spinach. The spinach I use I like to use like the whole spinach not frozen spinach in this because the frozen spinach adds too much water but that is just gorgeous. So to this pan we're about to ranch nothing now we ain't ranching nothing now. This is where that good butter come in. Now it's time to add the butter for everybody that's been like where the butter at? We're about to add it. We're about to add it right now. So what we're about to do is we're about to make our cream sauce and it starts with a nice good foundation this is about two tablespoons of butter and then we're going to add approximately seriously this is about four cloves of garlic. I mean you can add how many cloves that you like. I would suggest at minimum two cloves because you want this garlic to permeate the sauce. I love garlic so I'm always do four at least four or five that's it my garlic that's it that's that's my favorite. So when this garlic gets nice and toasty now listen garlic cooks very rapidly so this is on a low heat I have it electric stove I have it I have this on like a three if it was a gas stove this would definitely be like on like a medium low and we're just gonna let that garlic just sit there and just kind of toast up and then once it gets nice and toasty we're gonna add some half and half. Listen our garlic is not look at that it's nice and brown and toasty but it's not dark it is not black. Black garlic is a whole different thing you can buy it at the store but you don't want this one to be black. So I am going to use half and half because I don't want this to be a really thick sauce like alfredo sauce. I need this to be just like a nice creamy light sauce so I'm gonna pour approximately I'm gonna say half of this in here I don't know what's that maybe like two cups two and a half cups and right now I'm just gonna just let this just kind of simmer just a little bit because I really do want that garlic to permeate all of the sauce so I'm gonna put a little bit of pepper in here with the garlic and I'm just gonna let that the cream and the garlic just kind of marinate together for maybe like approximately like five minutes so just let this simmer almost for five minutes we're then we're going to finish it off with the parmesan we're going to add the chicken and the spinach and the lemon and we're going to put everything together in the meantime my pasta seems like it's done over here right so you don't want it you don't want it mushy so right here this is a nice it's kind of firm but still a little stretchy this is perfect so I'm going to take this off the water I'm just tasting it it's perfect I'm gonna take it off the water so it won't overcook okay okay so this has been like really simmering for about a good five minutes on low so what we're going to do is now like this is where the magic happens so we got to do all of this together so normally I buy the shredded parm they did not have it today I don't even have my food processor or nothing my grater or nothing so I literally chopped this myself so this is going to take a little bit longer to melt but I don't care so I just added approximately three fourths cup of parmesan remember this is not an alfredo sauce right so you don't have to add a lot of parmesan we don't want it really really thick and then we're also going to add the juice of one lemon so since I don't have my fancy schmancy lemon juicer you're just going to take the lemon and you're just going to squeeze it and you can just put your hand right here over it and it catches all the seeds right I want this to be very very very lemon me because it's going to be delicious I love lemon and cream and butter and spinach and chicken and parmesan it just all goes together for me so I'm going to juice this whole entire lemon catching all the seeds in my hand and once all the parmesan cheese melts it's going to be nice and light and still creamy and delicious that's a lot of lemon juice I know if you don't want this much lemon juice you don't have to use this much lemon juice I use the whole entire juice of one whole lemon my best friend vanza she was visiting me not too long ago and I make this something something similar to this this is my comfort dish like honestly this is a comfort dish for me and then she was like no way too lemony so but this is a very lemony sauce if you like lemons this would be perfect so we're just going to sit here and just keep stirring until all that cheese gets incorporated and then we're going to add the pasta and the chicken and the spinach and then we're going to eat it and it's going to be delicious that sauce is looking good hold on I'm sorry it's after work I had to take a sip of my uh of my little cocktail don't even worry about it so the sauce is absolutely perfect so we're gonna add our chicken and spinach back to the mixture I know people think it's just really cute to kind of like have your pasta and pour the sauce on top of it but the proper way to prepare pasta is when you do make it you really do need to put it back in that sauce so it can just get all the goodness and deliciousness like don't just pour the sauce on top of the pasta it really does need to be fully incorporated so I'm going to put my linguine back in here and if you guys ever did like the making meals with Mika live back in the summer I did um a dish very very similar to this but it didn't have any cream it was um olive oil lemon based with a chicken stock and I actually used um tomatoes because I told y'all like this is my ultimate favorite dish I'm pretty sure everyone has that one dish like no matter what time of year it is or what where they are like that's what that's their go-to so pasta is my go-to especially linguine so this dish is actually done so I'm going to sit here and let this marinate just for a little bit and then what you do is you just take your reserved cheese and you just sprinkle that on there and it's absolutely delicious and there you go so you're gonna serve it up with some garlic bread today I'm having salad and there you are right so the pasta's done so I'm gonna put a little bit in my bowl don't talk about my bowl I told y'all just move I don't got none of my utensils it's cool though because you can still make really really good food even though you might not have like all of the things that you think you need you just have to make stuff work so I'm gonna go get some chicken on there I got the pasta hold on oh I gotta get some sauce so let me go hold on one second mark the camera come back I gotta get all that sauce because that's the that's where the goodness is right because we're fancy right we have to put parsley because all right so here we go I'm gonna try this is whole wheat pasta so if you don't if you're not used to whole wheat pasta then just get like a regular um regular pasta but I prefer the whole pasta and you do have to get used to the texture but once you do it's it's quite great so here we go that's hot wait a minute you know that's pretty delicious I knew it was gonna taste like this because I make it all the time so this is the linguine with the light cream sauce with some lemon spinach and chicken so thank you for making this meal with me