pasta with chicken

This pasta dish makes use of the excess chicken pie filling made earlier.  Pasta dough is put together using semolina, kemet whole grain flour, flax, and AP flour along with one egg, olive oil, and water. 

I find for best results for homemade pasta it's best to stick with at least 50% AP flour along with whatever other powdery substance you have in mind to include. That's just the dry ingredients and not calculating the egg or oil or water or whatever vegetable matter.  Anything less than 50% AP flour or higher protein bread flour then you risk noodles that tend to break when cooked as these have, and that's a drag after going to all the trouble. 

One egg yolk, no white, a few tablespoons olive oil, and 1/2 egg shell of water. Combined without bothering to measure, upon mixing, this batch appeared to be too dry so the whole bowl was waved under a tap of lightly running water. Wot? I live dangerously that way sometimes. It turned out to be the perfect amount of additional hydration. I could always correct the other way with a tad additional flour but that wasn't necessary.

I love playing with dough. I just love it. Better than Play Doh™ because you get to eat it. But I don't love it so much that I'd consider making it for a party of ten or so. Not without the Atlas, anyway. Come to think of it, that does sound kind of fun.

There is nothing much to say about the sauce. It's not that great. Pretty much anything would have been better including plain olive oil with Parmigiano, maybe with a little garlic. I considered mushrooms. Maybe plain cream lightly flavored with mace, nutmeg, garlic, Parmigiano. This chicken sludge  glop  goop  filling isn't as good on pasta as I thought it would be. The idea was to replace egg pasta for a baked pie dough. It doesn't work very well. 

I did take Synova's suggestion to thicken the filling with cornstarch. I also thickened it with gorgonzola cheese. One infusion of the cheese and two infusions of the cornstarch, checking between each addition. It thickened alright, and it tastes fine by itself, I just did not enjoy it at all on this pasta. 

While I was thinking about mushrooms and before opted for the chicken pie filling, I also considered the idea of topping the pile with a poached egg yolk without the egg white. Wouldn't that be cool to have a yellow globe on the top that drained when punctured? Come on, that's a great idea! These yolks poached too long because I was mucking about, but I think the idea is still a good one. 

Conclusion: I don't like this chicken pie filling anymore. I'll get rid of what's left and everything that reminds me of it. I learned the lesson again to not use less than 50% AP flour when I saw the noodles breaking up in the water. That won't happen again. I hereby swear an oath to avoid over-poaching egg yolks. But given all these setbacks, expect to see something similar again because I'm a bit thick when it comes to accepting defeat.