The food:
Fresh fettucine with roasted chicken and broccoli rabe
The story:
I like lemon juice and zest in just about everything, savoury or sweet. I added lemon zest to the blueberry pie in my last post below, it’s an integral ingredient in the hummus I make every two days for my sons to snack on, and I love it with pasta, as in this recipe for Fresh Fettucine with Roasted Chicken and Broccoli Rabe (and lemon!) from known lemon booster Giada Laurentiis, featured in her book Giada’s Family Dinners.
I whipped this up the other night as a way to use some leftover roast chicken, indulge in my favourite fresh (and inexpensive!) pasta from Pusateri’s, an upscale gourmet shop in Toronto, and to get my evening fix of lemon. The recipe takes a little more time and trouble than you might expect after reading it (washing and trimming the rapini/broccoli rabe is a bit of a chore) but the result is a big dish of lemony comfort food.
Two mid-sized bowlfuls of washed and chopped rapini cook down dramatically to complement but not overwhelm a half pound of fresh pasta as shown above.
The Hungry Novelist 