A version of this Capellini with Pesto, Chicken, and Shiitakes dish used to be on the menu at Grisante’s*, an Italian restaurant in Mount Lebanon, PA, a lovely community south of Pittsburgh where I lived alone in a stone Tudor house many lifetimes ago. I had decamped to the South Hills after having lived at a few different places in Pittsburgh, and I found the suburban lifestyle to be so easy, so gracious. No traffic; no crime. And it was beautiful – the stone houses, the landscaping. It was like a movie set. Not real.
My boyfriend at the time was a gourmand, and we frequented Grisante’s a couple of times a month. We didn’t cook at home much, if at all, but we knew all of the best restaurants in the area. Every day was a special occasion, special enough to dine out, in any case. But believe it or not, it got old, going out to eat so often. Time passed. I moved to New England, met Ron, and settled into this life of gardening, harvesting, cooking, and eating. This life is much more satisfying, but there are some food memories from that time in my life that persist, and this Capellini with Pesto, Chicken, and Shiitakes is one of those memories.
I’ve spent some time poking around on other people’s blogs looking for recipes that might come close, but haven’t found anything that matches what I remember. The dish was elemental, yet precisely executed and beautifully plated. So let’s start there. If you follow this recipe for Capellini with Pesto, Chicken, and Shiitakes, you’ll sit down to a beautiful plate, beautiful until you start eating and the pesto is schmeared around. But at that point, you’ll be totally focused on how delicious the dish is.
The Grisante’s dish used angel hair pasta, but I haven’t found gluten-free angel hair, so I’m using capellini. Regardless, the pasta must not be overcooked, nor undercooked.
The chicken nuggets must be dark meat – succulent, with crisp edges. The Basil Pesto must be freshly made. I don’t think it’s the same dish if you resort to using jarred pesto. Finally, the mushrooms. My memory is vague, but I love shiitakes, so that’s what we’re going with. And don’t skimp on the olive oil. You only live once!
Capellini with Pesto, Chicken and Shiitakes comes together so easily. You cook everything separately then assemble it. The trickiest part of recreating this dish was crisping the nuggets of chicken. They weren’t breaded, but they were crispy. Coating the chicken pieces with the egg white and corn starch did the trick. They’re perfect – crispy, tender, flavorful, and delicious, even before they come together with the pesto, the pasta, and the shiitakes.
Capellini with Pesto, Chicken, and Shiitakes
Ingredients
- 10 ounces shiitake mushrooms
- 1 t salt
- 3 skinless, boneless chicken thighs
- 1 egg
- 2 t corn starch or tapioca starch
- 1 t salt
- 2 – 4 T olive oil (for sautéing the chicken, as needed)
- 1/2 pint basil pesto (see note for link to recipe)
- 12 ounces Jovial gluten-free capellini pasta
- olive oil (for finishing)
Instructions
- Prep the mushrooms – Remove the stems and slice the mushroom caps. Add them to a pan over medium heat with a t of salt and a splash of water, and cook, stirring occasionally, until the mushrooms have given up their liquid and the pan is nearly dry. Remove the mushrooms from the pan and set aside.
- Prep the chicken – Cut the chicken into bite-sized pieces. Separate the yolk from the white of the egg, and reserve the yolk for another purpose. Add the white to a bowl that's large enough to hold all of the chicken pieces, then fold in the chicken and stir, so that all of the pieces are coated. Sprinkle in the starch, and stir until the starch has dissolved into the egg. Set aside for 5-10 minutes.
- Start the pasta water – Fill you pasta pot with water, cover it, and bring it to a boil while you sauté the chicken.
- Sauté the chicken – Heat the oil in the pan until it shimmers. Add the chicken pieces in a single layer so that they're not touching (you may have to work in batches) and sauté them on the first side, without moving them, until they're browned and slightly crusty, then flip them over and brown the other side and continue to cook until the nuggets are crispy, browned, and cooked through. Set the nuggets aside on a plate, tenting foil over the plate to keep it warm.
- Boil the pasta – Cook the pasta, one minute shy of the package directions. Capellini cooks quickly, so be careful not to overcook it. Pull the pasta out of the water and pour it into your skillet. Stir in most of the pesto and a bit of the pasta water, then pour the pasta into your serving dish, or or apportion it into individual pasta bowls. Top the pasta with the mushrooms and then the chicken, finish with a drizzle of olive oil and a dollop of pesto, and serve immediately.
Notes
INGREDIENT NOTE: Despite my snobbishness about making pesto from scratch, I’d like to share with you a link to an article I just read in All Recipes – I Tried 7 Store-Bought Pesto Sauces and Was Surprised by the Winner. The author tried 7 different commercially available brands of jarred basil pesto, and only one passed muster in her estimation – Kirkland Signature Basil Pesto from Costco. And lots of folks on Reddit agree! I plan to try it and I’ll update this post when I do. What do you think?
* Grisante’s may not be the actual name of the restaurant. It’s no longer there, and I haven’t been able to find any evidence that it ever existed. A friend of mine thinks it may have been called Gianni’s or Giovanni’s. We’ll never know.
** Restaurant Le Marché (Pl. Sainte Catherine · Le Marais) – from Flickr