Chicken Amatriciana OH. MY. WORD.

My favorite pasta dish of all times I found at East Side Mario's. Chicken Amatriciana. SO GOOD! And now that East Side Mario's has closed down in Lethbridge I have been with out for quite some time. I had seen a recipe on Pintrest for Olive Garden's Spaghetti Carbonara and that got me thinking about my favorite pasta dish. So last night I decided to google it and see if I could come up with a recipe. I found this recipe. It sounded about right, but I was disappointed with the canned alfredo sauce and Four cheese tomato sauce. For me, a recipe from scratch means the sauce is from scratch too. So I did some searching and found this recipe for Rose Sauce. I followed it almost exactly with a few simple changes. I knew that my kids would not like this dish so I made them a version of the Spaghetti Carbonara, but with thinly sliced hot dogs instead of bacon. Since I was making a cream sauce for this recipe I thought I would use it in my rose sauce. Alright now that I have given you all of that preamble, I'll share the recipe that I came up with using these three as a guide.

Mandy's Chicken Amatriciana

The Tomato Sauce
1/2 teaspoon dried basil
1/2 teaspoon dried oregano
1/2 teaspoon dried thyme
1/4 teaspoon dried red pepper flakes
2 tablespoons minced onion
3 cloves garlic, presses
1 398ml(14oz) can of crushed tomatoes
1/4 cup water

Heat olive oil in sauce pan med-high heat. Add basil, thyme, oregano and red pepper flakes. Cook until fragrant, but be careful not to burn them. Add minced onion and pressed garlic, and saute until onions are translucent. at crushed tomatoes and water. Bring to a boil and let simmer.

The Cream Sauce
2 tbsp butter
2 tbsp flour
1 1/2 cups milk
1/4 tsp salt
1/8 tsp pepper
1 tbsp onion

Heat olive oil in sauce pan over med-high heat. Saute onions until translucent. Remove onion to a bowl. Melt butter in a sauce pan. Add flour and stir until paste is formed. Add milk, salt and pepper and stir continually; until it just comes to a boil, reduce heat and stir occasionally until thickened. Add sauteed onions, remove from heat and let sit 5 min.

The other stuff
1 large chicken breast, diced or sliced
7 strips of bacon
1 green pepper(if I had a red one I would have used it)
1/4lb Asparagus( a last minute addition. When I opened the fridge to get the pepper I saw it and had to have it)
and some past of your choice...how ever much you think you are going to eat. I have no idea how much I actually cooked.

Cook bacon in fry pan until crispy. Drain on paper towel. Add chicken to fry pan and cook until cooked through. Set a side. Add a little olive oil to the fry pan and saute green peppers. Cook until tender crisp. Set aside. Add a little more oil and saute asparagus until tender crisp and bright green. This is where we put it all together. Stir the cream sauce in with the tomato sauce. Now I only used about half of this sauce the rest I put away in the fridge for another day. (But if you want to make a bigger batch you can double the "other stuff" ingredients.) After you have set aside half of the sauce, add the chicken, bacon, and vegetables. You can either spoon this over you cooked pasta or add the pasta right in. I ended up with enough to make two big plates of pasta. And yes, I ate one entire big plate of pasta. It was so GOOD, I just didn't care.