Sesame Chicken and Asparagus Penne

Ingredients:

• 2 boneless chicken breasts
• 8 oz. penne pasta
• 1 lb. asparagus (I've also used broccoli)
• 4 T toasted sesame seeds (reserve one for topping)
• Sauce ingredients:
• 1 T brown sugar
• 1/4 c soy sauce
• 4 T sesame oil
• 3/4 T hot chili sesame oil
• 1 T red wine vinegar
• 3 T chunky peanut butter
• 3 cloves garlic, minced
• Toppings: 
• 1 small cucumber, peeled, seeded, and diced
• 3 green onions, sliced thin

Directions:

1. Boil chicken breasts until cooked through.  Let chicken cool before shredding.  You can pick it apart with your hands or use two forks for this.  Put chicken in large bowl.
2. Cook penne noodles as directed.  Drain.  Toss with a tiny bit of extra sesame oil to keep noodles from sticking.  Add to large bowl with chicken.
3. Snap ends off of asparagus and put spears in boiling water for 1 minute.  Remove from water, let cool slightly and cut into 1 inch pieces.  Add to large bowl.
4. In a blender, combine all the sauce ingredients until well blended.  Pour over the penne, chicken and asparagus.  Add 3 T toasted sesame seeds.  Stir until well-coated.
5. Serve either warm or chilled.  Topped with 1 T sesame seeds, cucumber and green onions.  Serves 4.

Man, I love this dish!  Like I mentioned in the ingredient list, I've also made this with broccoli which is also very tasty (although asparagus is my favorite).  If you wanted more kick to it, you could beef up the hot chili oil.  Since I make this for my whole family, I usually scale back on the hot chili oil (to 1/2 T) - then Roger and I add extra hot chili pepper flakes to add the heat, while Emma can have a less spicy version.  I've also frozen this dinner (minus the toppings) and thawed later - it worked surprisingly well.  Easy to make in bulk too, it would also be a great pasta "salad" to take to any kind of potluck/event.  Thanks to Stacy Ferney who shared a recipe with me that inspired this one!