...The Rest is Ganache: Farfalle with chicken, sausage, and creamy sun dried tomato pesto aka. YUMMMMMMMMM!

Most people I know have a signature dish. For some, they are lucky if they can have their signature dish be oatmeal from a packet. Those are the people I like to call potential customers. Just like I don't fully understand people who are ignorant about computers but am thankful for them as they keep me employed, I am similarly thankful for those people who burn water, as they need someone to feed them lest they starve. For others who enjoy the art of cooking as much as I do, you get a little more creative. A few examples off the top of my head are Joanna's cupcakes, Sarah's risotto, Amber's soups (I want her chicken tortilla soup like right now), Anthony's orange chicken, and Terry's steaks. Shoot, now I'm wicked hungry. If you don't know these people, their stuff rocks. I should make them guest blog. I digress.

My specialty would probably be this dish. I've been making it for years and love how versatile it is. It is wonderfully flavorful, even the reheated leftovers rock, and you can tweak it for taste in any number of ways. I don't have a recipe to link so I'm gonna try to give you the low down off the top of my head.

First we must lay the foundation of our edible ediface by performing prep work. This was me chopping up about 6 or so green onions (in the bowl) and a couple deseeded jalapeno peppers or red peppers or whatever hot pepper you like (on the cutting board) . That little cutting board wasn't really well suited for the job. I've since had Joanna pick me up more cutting boards. I'm a germaphobe and don't like mixing meat and veggie cutting boards so I used this little bugger, better suited for cutting limes for a bar or whatnot.

As I recall, this was 3 sausages and about 1.5 pounds of sliced chicken breast. The original recipe calls for chorizo but, since I was making this for Joanna and she doesn't like most sausage, I subbed in Trader Joe's sun dried tomato and basil chicken sausage. If you like spice, I recommend you stick with chorizo, which is a spicier Portugese sausage. Good stuff.

I also cooked a 12oz package of farfalle (bow tie for the plebians in the group) pasta to al dente and set it aside. I'm gonna share with you an interesting factoid I learned from America's Test Kitchen. When cooking pasta, you really do want to use 4-6 quarts of water like they suggest. It dilutes the starch the pasta gives off which will otherwise stick to it. The more you know...

Brown up the sausage over high heat in a skillet for a few minutes. Trust me, you want a big skillet. We got a LOT more to toss in. The sausage looks lonely, but not for long.

"Hello Mr. Sausage, I'm Chicken, your new neighbor. Let's dance." Cook the chicken till it's brown on the outside and mostly cooked. Don't cook it too long or it will be dry by the end of our little adventure.

Go ahead and toss those green onions and jalapenos. Scratch the screen to smell what it was like at this point. Did you try it? If so, now try to lick your elbow. Then we need to talk about a bridge I have for sale...

I sometimes forget to take pictures when I'm in the middle of things. This was a case of that. Clearly something has changed between the above picture and this one. What was it, you ask? Well, I put in about 1.25 cups of heavy cream and 2/3 of a cup or so of sun dried tomato pesto. I've had a devil of a time finding sun dried tomato pesto since Delallo is the only company I know that makes it and Giant Eagle, the grocery store giant in this area, doesn't stock their stuff anymore cause of some lover's quarrel or something. The solution? A jar of pesto, sun dried tomatoes to taste, and a food processor. I'm the MacGyver of food. Cook this mess and simmer it for about 10 minutes to finish cooking the chicken.