Ladolemono Chicken Parmesan

Ingredients
Tomato sauce (2 small cans)
Tomato paste (1 can)
Pasta (penne or cut ziti will work)
Garlic
Basil
Chicken breast tenderloins
Feta cheese (crumbled)
Parmesan cheese (shredded)
Dijon mustard
Olive oil
Salt
Pepper
Oregano
Lemon juice


This recipe was inspired by a post on the excellent food blog Potter's Kitchen for a quick, traditional Chicken Parmesan. I'd wager that if you asked the average American what their favorite Italian food is, chicken parm would be in the top 5. Its deliciousness lies in simplicity of concept: pasta, sauce, breaded chicken, cheese. It's so simple a concept, in fact, that it's just begging for some variation and substitution. But what variation? Well, I'm Greek and it's Italian... plus, around 100 BC, those motherfuckers stole our gods. It's time to pay the fiddler, bitch.

Now, we could just dredge some chicken in olive oil and call it Greek, but we have more cajones than that. My second favorite traditional Greek sauce (after tzatziki) is a simple lemon and olive oil sauce called ladolemono. It's used as everything from a marinade, to a dressing, to a dip for chicken, lamb, and seafood and it's really fucking delicious. We can make a simple Greekish tomato sauce with oregano and basil, and we'll give feta cheese a headlining role beside the parmesan (or parmigiano-reggiano if you buy the real stuff).
Foodies like to bandy about the word "deconstruction", which usually means spreading the ingredients out on a plate and making you assemble it yourself. A deconstructed PB&J would be a half a loaf of Ethiopian rye bread, a glob of peanut butter mixed with almonds and avocado smeared "artfully" on a plate, and a small German shoe filled with apricot and owl vomit jelly. It's not so much deconstructed as it is unnecessarily fucked with, and not usually for the better. This is more of a logical reengineering.

Tomato Basil Pasta

Ingredients
Radiatori pasta (or any spiral pasta like rotini or cavatappi)
Olive oil
Garlic powder
Cherry tomatoes
Fresh basil
Lemon juice
Parmesan cheese (shredded)
Feta cheese (crumbled)


There's snow on the ground here in east Arkansas and the temperatures are dropping well below freezing. I fucking love the cold, to the point that I like to walk outside when it's at it's coldest and just stand around. Nothing makes you feel more alive. The odd thing about this weather is that it makes me crave things that most people would eat during the summer... ice cream, fresh fruit, that kinda shit. This is a simple and exceedingly good pasta dish that most people would say belongs in the summertime. Fuck those people.