Chicken, Swiss Cheese, Bacon, Pasta Dinner

Started out the day, making a pound of bacon.  We were going to have BLT’s for lunch, but after the shrimp omelet for breakfast, we weren’t really hungry for lunch.  I was thinking some sort of pasta/chicken dish, so I started to think about how I could add bacon and Swiss cheese to that meal.  Did some internet research and didn’t find a whole lot of options.  Some chicken casserole’s with stuffing and a condensed soup with wine, decent but not what I was looking for.  Some bacon, Swiss Chard, and tomato, I am not feeling the love there either.   I am thinking I will cut the chicken breast in half, beat both sides and cut it into bite size pieces.  Cook some pasta up, spiral, penne, something (not macaroni or spaghetti).  When sauteing the chicken, add the already cooked bacon, some onion, and on the side make a kind of  Swiss cheese, dry white wine sauce, to pour over everything when it is almost done.  We will also have a salad on the side, lettuce, tomato, red pepper, red onion and a light balsamic dressing. 

2 cloves of garlic, finely chopped
1 small onion, chopped
1 full chicken breast, beaten and chopped into 1″ pieces
3 cups cooked pasta (I used spirals for this dish)
4 slices of bacon cooked

Sauce:
1 cup milk
1 cup Swiss cheese (grated or finely chopped)
2 Tbsp butter
2 Tbsp flour
1/4 cup dry white wine (Chardonnay)
salt & pepper to taste
cayenne pepper to taste (yup, I add it to everything!)

You could easily add mushrooms to this dish as well and I’m thinking it needs something green, but I didn’t have anything that I thought would work well to add.

Boil your pasta, don’t forget to add about a tsp of salt to the water, makes such a huge difference.  Place butter and flour in the bottom of a small pot.  Blend together.  Add the milk, Swiss cheese and white wine.  Allow this to slow cook, melting the cheese and stirring occasionally, add cayenne pepper, salt and pepper (to your taste).  Add chicken, onion, garlic and bacon to a large skillet and saute until the chicken is cooked.  Once chicken is cooked, add the cooked pasta,then the cheese sauce and continue to stir under medium/low heat for approximately 2-4 minutes.

I ended up using spiral pasta, added about 1/2 tsp of cayenne pepper and it was really good.  Syd loved the dish, said it is right up there with my Portuguese Stew, and he is not a big pasta eater!   This recipe is going into the next cookbook!