Description: Simple yet delicious creamy chicken and asparagus penne pasta. One of the indulged pasta dishes. It goes very well with white wine.
Serves: 2
Cooking time: 25 minutes

Ingredients

• Penne pasta – 140g
• Asparagus – cut into 4 pieces, 230g
• Chicken – cut in bite size, 180g
• Single cream – 150ml
• Garlic – chopped, 2 cloves
• Butter – 10g
• Salt – 3 dashes
• Ground black Pepper – 3 dashes
• Parmesan cheese – grated, 10g

Method

1. Cook the penne pasta until al dente in plenty of boiling water with salt.
2. While boiling pasta, heat a large non-stick frying pan over medium heat, then add garlic, black pepper, and chicken and fry these. Steam asparagus separately in a separate pan.
3. When the chicken is cooked, add cream on medium heat and stop before it boils. Add the asparagus first, mix, then the hot drained pasta and mix well.
4. Sprinkle grated parmesan cheese on top.

To serve: ground black pepper and grated parmesan cheese depending on your preferences.

Nutritional Values Per Serving

Kcal	Protein	Fat	Carbs	Fibre	Sugars	Salt	Saturated Fat	Vitamin E	Phosphorus
625.0	27.3g	31.7g	58.7g	5.4g	5.0g	0.9g	15.2g	1.5mg	209.2mg
31.2%	54.6%	45.3%	22.6%	18.0%	5.6%	15.5%	76.1%	48.7%	38.0%

Nutritional Tips

This dish is actually more nutritious than you would think by adding chicken and asparagus, but it also comes with fat ! It is high in protein, and fat and is a good source of carbs. It also can be one of your 5-A-Day and includes a good amount of Vitamin E, phosphorus some vitamin A, vitamin Bs, vitamin C, calcium, magnesium, potassium, iron, and zinc. You may consider eating low-fat/protein meals and consuming more vegetables for the other meals of the day to increase the intake of vitamins and minerals.

I did a simple recipe without any stock cubes and used a tiny amount of salt as cheese already contains salt. You may add additional salt if you wish as this meal does not contain either processed meat or ready-made sauce. Adding salt before eating is not too bad as more than 80% of the sodium intake is coming from processed food such as ham, cheese, or even ready-prepared meals (Ready-made pasta sauce could contain as much as 3g of salt per 350ml bottle for 2 portions). This is because sodium is widely used in the industry as a preservative, a flavour enhancer (MSG – monosodium glutamate), or in baking powder (bicarbonate).

A healthier option could be using low-fat cream and using chicken breast instead of chicken thigh. It would increase protein intake due to chicken breast while reducing the fat content. Alternatively, you may consider using less chicken.