Chicken Broccoli Ziti with Garlic and Oil

Wash the broccoli under cool water to remove any dirt, bacteria and pesticides. Then cut the stalk away with a sharp chef's knife.  Cut away as much stalk as you can up under the tops of the "trees"  so that the broccoli almost wants to fall apart but doesn't.  Set the broccoli aside. 

Cut each end off the garlic cloves and them down the middle the long way.  Peel away the skin from each half.  Lay the blade of your chef's knife flat on top of each piece (one at a time) and give it a good SMASH with the heel of your palm.  Then chop it finely across the direction that it split.   Set aside.

If you're a chicken washer, then go ahead and wash your chicken.  I prefer not to wash, but to each their own!  Remove and gross chewy bits from the chicken, membrane, fat, tendons, it's all got to go.  Then cut the chicken into 1' strips the long way and then slice those strips into 1/8" thick pieces across.  You should end up with pieces of chicken approximately 1" x 1" square and 1/8" thick.  For all of my metric friends out there, that's about 25mm x 25mm square and 3mm thick.  

Take a small bowl and whisk 1 cup of flour, 1 tsp of salt and 1/4 tsp black pepper together in it.  

Add 3-4 pieces of chicken at a time into the bowl and flip them around in the mixture until they have a light even coating on them and then place them on a plate.  Repeat until all of the chicken is coated.

While you're preparing the chicken and the broccoli, you should get your water boiling for the pasta!

Preheat your skillet over medium heat.  

Add 1" of water to the double boiler,  add the broccoli to the upper section and turn the burner on medium high.  Bring to a low boil for 10-12 minutes.  This timeline is an approximation.  Broccoli goes from not done to overdone very quickly so keep a close eye on it. The color of the broccoli will give you a good indicator of where it's at. It will start changing as it warms up, the more done it gets the brighter green it will turn. Once it's done, the color will start to go the other way and turn darker. You want to take the broccoli off the heat right at the sweet spot where it's at it's brightest green and fork soft. When you hit this point remove the broccoli from the double boiler and place in a heat safe bowl. Do not cover it.

Follow the instruction on the package to cook the pasta to "al dente".  For those of you that have heard the term al dente before but don't know what it means, it's an Italian saying, meaning "to the tooth" and describes pasta that is cooked until firm but chewy, NOT soft and mushy.  That's what we're looking for, firm chewy pasta!

When the pasta is done to your satisfaction, immediately drain the water and return it to the same pot you cooked it in.  Add 1 stick of butter cut up into 4 pieces and allow the hot pasta to melt the butter.

While the pasta and broccoli are cooking let's get the chicken cooked!  Add 3-4 TBS of oil to your preheated skillet and then cook the chicken in batches, careful to not overcrowd the pan.  After you add the chicken to your pan don't touch it until you see it start to turn white up over the edges.  Once you see that it's time to flip.  Your chicken should have a nice golden brown color too it.  If you're not getting golden brown turn the heat up a bit.  If it's brown brown turn it down!  When your last batch is done, add all of the chicken back into the pan and then add the garlic.  Let it cook, stirring frequently until fragrant ~60s.  Add a splash of marsala wine to deglaze the pan and we're done!

Add the chicken to the pot with the pasta in it directly from the skillet making sure to pour all of the oil from the skillet in as well. Mix well.  Add in the rest of the oil you have left over.  Add the broccoli last and stir gently so you don't cause the broccoli to disintegrate.  That's it!

Serve while it's still nice and hot with a slice of bread and butter and maybe a little parmesan cheese on top!