All You Need Is Love . . . and Sauce

Quick; who said, “Hunger is the best sauce”?

If you guessed “Shakespeare,” you would be in the company of most people. He, along with King Solomon and the Apostle Paul, with honorable mention going to Ben Franklin, is the go-to guy for quotations.

But in this case, you would be wrong, at least according to WorldofQuotes.com. It was actually Cervantes who wrote, in Don Quixote, “Hunger is the best sauce in the world.” Honorable mention must go to Socrates, who, according to Cicero, said that "the best seasoning for food is hunger; for drink, thirst."

I tested this saying recently with a recipe from one of my favorite books, Everyday Pasta, by Giada De Laurentiis. You have to wonder about a lot of cookbooks or sections of cookbooks labeled “Everyday.” Are these recipes really suited for using every day? On one of my typical days, if I’m not working until closing, I get off at 6:00 and come home to feed my family, the hungriest member of which is usually me. Would Giada’s recipes stand up to that kind of day?

I decided to find out by cooking “Chicken in Lemon Cream with Penne.” Chunks of skinless, boneless chicken breast are first seasoned and then browned. A pan sauce is constructed from the fond, some chicken broth, heavy cream, lemon juice and zest, cayenne, and parsley. Then all is tossed together with penne. That’s it. Couldn’t be simpler.

When I first made the dish, I cooked some broccoli on the side and then, on a whim, tossed it in with the chicken and pasta, too.

Truth be told, it didn’t look like much, not really, despite Giada’s calling its presentation “elegant,” but it turned out to be a really delicious dish. The chicken was tender and had that yummy brown crust in patches. But the sauce, the best part, was rich with chicken flavor and a burst of lemon, with a kick of heat at the end. That night, I bolted my food, murmuring all the while, “This is good; this is really good. Mmm. So good.” And to my husband, “Don’t you think this is good?”

“Yeah, sure. It’s good. Uh-huh,” he replied.

I thought about that later. While we both liked the dish, we obviously experienced differing degrees of enjoyment. He thought it was an adequate, maybe even good, weeknight meal, while I was ready to open a restaurant with this dish in the lead-off spot. It made me wonder—why did I think it tasted so much better than he did? Was it because I was hungrier? Food tastes better when one is hungry, doesn’t it? In fact someone, it might have been Shakespeare, I thought, once said that hunger is the best sauce.

So I performed a scientific experiment. The next week, on a night when I again got off at six, but when I wasn’t quite as hungry, I made the dish again, replicating it exactly, down to tossing in cooked broccoli. I took a tentative taste. There was the flavor of chicken, the burst of lemon, the finish of heat. It tasted exactly the same, and it was still just as good as it had been the week before. I bolted another plateful.

I’m no Socrates, but here’s what I think—no matter what day it is, hunger does make a good sauce, but sometimes all you really need is sauce.

Chicken in Lemon Cream with Penne
from Everyday Pasta, by Giada De Laurentiis

1 pound penne pasta
3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
2 boneless, skinless chicken breast halves, diced into 1-inch cubes
1 teaspoon herbes de Provence*
Pinch of salt, plus ½ teaspoon
Pinch of freshly ground black pepper, plus ¼ teaspoon
1 cup reduced-sodium chicken broth
2 cups heavy cream
Zest of 1 lemon
Pinch of cayenne pepper
¼ cup chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley
1 tablespoon freshly squeezed lemon juice

Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil over high heat. Add the pasta and cook until tender but still firm to the bite, stirring occasionally, 8 to 10 minutes. Drain.

Meanwhile, heat the oil in a large, heavy skillet over medium-high heat. Season the cubed chicken breast with the herbes de Provence and a pinch of salt and pepper. Cook the chicken until golden brown, about 5 minutes. Using a slotted spoon, remove the chicken and set aside. Pour off any excess oil from the pan. Add the chicken broth to the pan and ook over medium0high heat, using a wooden spoon to scrape the brown bits off the bottom of the pan. Add the cream, lemon zest, and cayenne. Reduce the heat to medium-low and simmer for 10 minutes.

Add the pasta, chicken, ½ teaspoon salt, ¼ teaspoon pepper, chopped parsley, and lemon juice. Toss to coat the pasta and chicken with the sauce and serve.

[*Herbes de Provence is a French herb blend usually composed of thyme, marjoram, fennel, basil, rosemary, and lavender. If you can’t find it premixed in your grocery store, feel free to substitute your favorite herbs. An Italian seasoning blend of thyme, basil, and oregano is good with this dish. The flavor is different, of course, but still good.]