Penne with chicken, broccoli and blue cheese

A delicious easy midweek meal, that's what you can expect from this penne with chicken, broccoli and blue cheese. Simple but tasty and ready in half an hour. Complex-free. The blue cheese provides a lot of flavor. And as always, dishes with cheese fill the stomach very well. So you certainly won't leave the table hungry.

How to make penne with chicken, broccoli and blue cheese

As mentioned above, this penne with chicken, broccoli and blue cheese is a simple and straightforward dish, ready in 30 minutes. And for that you don't have to stress or manage seven tasks in parallel. We'll go through it step by step here.

The preparations

As always, we start with the so-called “mise en place”. Weighing, preparing and chopping all the ingredients. So we can concentrate on the cooking later on without stress and distraction.

We start with the broccoli. We cut the florets from the thick stem into pieces that fit nicely in the mouth. Then we don't have to cut them anymore later on when we are eating.

Next we remove the skin from the garlic cloves and chop them finely.

We also cut the chicken breasts into bite sized pieces. About one and a half to two centimeters in size.

And finally we cut the blue cheese into pieces. This shouldn't be that accurate. The goal is for these pieces to melt quickly when we put them in the pan.

And ready we are already with cutting and chopping.

Cooking the broccoli and the penne

Now we bring a pot with two liters of water to the boil. We first let the broccoli florets cook for two minutes. Then we remove them from the boiling water and put them aside to rest.

Then we cook the penne in the same water. Depending on the type, the cooking time may vary slightly. But as a rule, this is about ten minutes. Do not overcook the penne, but “al dente”. The reason is that we will treat the penne further afterwards, and it also cooks further in the meantime. So if it is now “a little undercooked” it will be “just fully cooked” when served.

The chicken and the sauce

While the penne is cooking we can prepare the chicken pieces and sauce. To do this, we first heat some olive oil in a large pan. Ultimately, everything will come together in this pan. So take a large one.

When the pan is hot, we add the garlic and the chicken cubes. We fry them on a high heat for about three minutes. Turn them regularly so that they sear on all sides.

Then we add the white wine and cream. Mix everything well and let the sauce reduce over medium heat for about five minutes.

Finally, we add the blue cheese to the sauce and let it melt. The sauce will thicken immediately. And the blue cheese adds a lot of flavor.

The final touches

When the pasta is done, we drain it. Then both the broccoli florets and the penne go into the pan. We now mix everything together well and let the flavors integrate well.

You can add salt and pepper if desired, but for me the blue cheese alone adds enough flavor. It also depends a bit on which type of blue cheese you use. We will go into that a bit more in detail later on.

And then you can serve the penne with chicken, broccoli and blue cheese in deep plates. Coincidentally, a bottle of white wine has been opened, so you can enjoy a glass of white wine with it.

What is blue cheese?

Of course, there is no such thing as a completely blue cheese. But by blue cheese, or blue mold cheese, we mean cheese that is veined with blue mold. As you can imagine, this type of cheese was created by accident, because the cheese was moldy. But it was tasty and did not appear to lead to any unwanted side effects. So people started cultivating these types of cheese. Meanwhile every country has its own types of blue cheese.

And indeed there is blue cheese and blue cheese. Some varieties have a very intense taste. Which is not everyone's cup of tea. And other variants are milder. Keep this in mind when purchasing your ingredients for this penne with chicken, broccoli and blue cheese.

Some varieties of blue cheese

• Gorgonzola: Gorgonzola is an Italian blue cheese made from cow's milk. The cheese was first made in the town of Gorgonzola, near Milan. There are different variants, a milder and a more intensive one.
• Roquefort: from France we of course know Roquefort, a firm French blue cheese in seven varieties.
• Bavaria blue: Germany also has a well-known blue cheese called Bavaria blue. This has a slightly milder taste and is also younger compared to the other blue cheeses. It only came onto the market in 1972.
• Danish blue: yes, Denmark also makes blue cheeses. Danish blue came onto the market at the beginning of the twentieth century.
• Cambozola: finally a very well-known blue cheese is Cambozola. You wouldn't expect it, but it also comes from the south of Germany. It is also milder and more recent, but is now known worldwide. It was not marketed until 1980.

What is your favorite type of blue cheese? Add it in the comments, we will be happy to read it!

Read more about blue cheese.

More surprising.pasta

You can do nothing wrong with pasta. Easy to make and everybody likes it. But you cannot make Bolognese all the time. So here are some more inspiring pasta recipes:

• Pasta with sweet paprika sauce.
• Sicilian tuna pasta with fried capers.
• Tagliatelle with healthy Gorgonzola sauce.
• Vegetarian red lentil Bolognese.
• Almost authentic pasta carbonara.

If you speak Dutch, you can find the Dutch version of this recipe on gerechtenweb.blog.