In this cooking demonstration, the host walks through a quick, flexible chicken primavera dish centered on an aioli‑style sauce. The video begins with heating a sauté pan, adding olive oil and garlic, and preparing a colorful mix of vegetables—zucchini, mushrooms, fennel, red and orange peppers, grape tomatoes, green beans, broccoli, and julienned carrots—emphasizing varied shapes and colors for visual interest. Chicken pieces (tenders, breast, thighs, or wings) are lightly coated in seasoned flour to protect the meat, add flavor, and thicken the eventual sauce. The host adds the longest‑cooking vegetables first, then the rest, and finishes with a splash of white wine for steam. Throughout, the host discusses numerous sauce options: a simple aioli (olive oil and garlic), pesto, marinara, rosa, Alfredo (cream or Greek‑yogurt “fall Alfredo”), and Asian‑style teriyaki or General Tso’s, showing how the same base can be transformed. Pre‑cooked pasta is folded in, and the dish is finished with fresh basil, optional scallions, and grated Parmigiano‑Reggiano or mozzarella. The host offers storage and reheating ideas (oven, sauté pan, Ziploc bag) and mentions dietary tweaks like gluten‑free pasta. The segment ends with a call‑to‑action for a live Blab session the following week, inviting viewers to join and ask questions.
Chapters
This isn't going to be too long. The only thing that's going to take any time is cooking up a little bit of the chicken. So let's get started with that and we'll go from there. Turn it on. Switch cameras. Alright, so as usual, I've got my sauté pan on. I'm going to let it get hot. And one thing to talk about while we're thinking of this is the vegetables that you use. When you make a dish, if it's going to be all vegetables or mainly vegetables, one thing you want to think about is color and variety. Variety doesn't necessarily mean the type of vegetables as much as the shape of vegetables, too. You want your dish to be colorful and you want it to be interesting. If everything's cut the same way, you know, it's not— it's going to be fine. It's going to taste good. It's going to be pretty, but it's not going to be quite as interesting. One of the things I do when I prep vegetables is I try to make them in different shapes, or I try to get vegetables that can be cut in different shapes. Starting like usual, I'm going to put a little olive oil in here. I'm going to add a little bit of garlic off of there. Just let that— I got this wet. Let me dry the bottom of this pan. I was wondering why it was kind of making noise there. And then I've got some chicken cut up already. And these are chicken tenders, but you could use breast, you could use thighs, you could use wings if you wanted to. You know, anything that you really like or you might have on hand. Now I'm just going to roll these a little bit in flour. I'm coating my protein here because it's raw, and a couple things will happen. It protects the chicken, it gets some flavor on the chicken because I've got it seasoned with salt and pepper, and it's also going to thicken up whatever little bit of sauce I might have in the pan. Now, there's not going to be a lot of liquid today, but there could be depending on how you wanted it to go. So as those are going to cook, and my rule of thumb on adding vegetables is as soon as I turn it around, I start to add them. So that's in. Now I'm going to add in whatever is going to cook— take the longest to cook. I've got some zucchini. Let's see how I cut them in half moons. I have some sliced mushrooms. I have some sliced fennel.
Oh, I have to use fennel. That's something I don't even know if I've ever used fennel.
Fennel is lovely. It really is a nice vegetable, and it roasts really well. I used it last week in the fish. I had some left over, so there it is again. I have some red pepper, and for color.
Yep.
Red and some orange pepper. Okay, I have got some tomatoes, and I'm using just grape tomatoes. I could cut these in half, but I'm going to put them in whole. And again, this is more for color.
I love cooked or roasted, you know, raw potatoes, grape tomatoes.
Wonderful roasted. And you could roast them too and then put them in right at the very end.
Yeah.
The bunch off and you have them in the refrigerator. I have some green beans that were going to go if I didn't use them, so I cooked some of those up. And then I had gotten a little bit of broccoli especially for today. So that's really the only thing I really bought for today was the broccoli. And last but not least, I have a little bit of carrot, and I julienne the carrot.
Mm-hmm.
So that's it. So then I'm just going to stir-fry. The only thing I did was I let the chicken get a little bit cooked first.
Well, I mean, it's such small pieces, it seems that it will cook very quickly.
Absolutely. And then this depends on, again, how long you want, how crispy you like your vegetables, how you like your vegetables cooked, is how long you're going to leave it sautéing. Because this, again, is just a matter of taste at this point. Long. If you like them really crunchy and really fresh, you don't need to cook them so long. But this is really done for my taste. This is done. Everything's almost just about there.
It's hot.
Let me see if I have a little bit of— Lisa's got a little wine started, so I'm just going to hit it with just a little white wine to get a little steam under it.
Nice! It looks so healthy, but a good healthy.
Now, let's think about what else you could do with this. You have pesto. Put a little spoon of pesto in there.
I was going to ask you about pesto.
I'm just going to hit it with some salt and pepper because I'm keeping this really plain. But pesto— now say you like it in marinara. Put a little marinara in this right now. Now if you want to make it a Rosa sauce,. You want to make it an Alfredo sauce if you really want to push the envelope with the healthy vegetables and hit it with cream. Or take it off the stove, hit it with some Greek yogurt, stir the Greek yogurt into it because you don't want to let it get too hot, and that'll be your fall Alfredo sauce. So right now all I'm going to do is I'm going to add in a little bit of pasta that I have pre-cooked. And this is, I said, an aioli sauce. So an aioli sauce in Italian is just olive oil and garlic and just enough, you know, good healthy oil.
Is that possible?
What's that?
Yes, thank you.
Fresh basil. Boom! All right, and we are done.
That is looking good.
Now all I'm going to do is make it look a little pretty. I'm going to pull some of these vegetables to the top, get a little bit of color up here.
And now you know what I like to do as often as I can? I love fresh herbs. I love to just put a few sprigs of thyme. I love tarragon. What else?
You can add those into this as it's sautéing, whatever flavors you like to change it up and make it special. The only thing I'm going to do with this at this point is I didn't put any onions in it, but I have some scallions, so I'm going to hit it with a few scallions for flavor. I got this beautiful beautiful cheese at, I think it was BJ's or Sam's, that is just sliced Reggiano Parmigiano and other types of cheese.
That looks great. Look at that. That's a perfect summer dish. Perfect summer dish.
You have snap peas, sugar peas, any other vegetables you have or you really enjoy. That's all you got to do, and look how fast it was.
This looks fantastic and summery and gorgeous.
See, I put it in the baking dish, and that's a nice small size. That's not too much. What I had in the bowl is exactly— I think I threw 2 noodles away that kind of stuck, but that was it. Tonight, like I said, I'm just going to take it. I may put a little bit of stock in it, or I may just let it go. Only because as it bakes, I don't want it to dry out. If I put any liquid in it at all, that would be why. I wouldn't put it in now because if I put it in now, the noodles will soak it all up.
Ah, there you go.
So before it goes in the oven, that's when I'll put it in. And I'll put a little bit of mozzarella cheese on top, just let it get a little hot. Or, you know, I could throw this back in a sauté pan and just reheat it. It's an easy do. I could put it in a Ziploc bag if I wanted to store it that way, and then just take it out and cook it. So this is dinner tonight. I'll make another one in a little while and have dinner for me as well.
I think that's really— you know, I think she's going to be very happy.
Oh yeah, she loves fresh vegetables, and you know, we both love pasta, although when I make mine later, I'll use a gluten-free pasta because although I don't follow it religiously anymore, Whenever I can, I eat gluten-free products. I like the gluten-free pasta. I have no problem with that, and breads. It's only when we go out to dinner and I want to get a good sandwich that I'll bite the bullet and eat the bread.
Yeah, that's okay.
That was it. Easy, good, delicious. Like I said, a variety of things you could put in. Open your refrigerator. See what you have that you can use up. Even like I said, if it's cooked protein already, just put it in at the end, reseason it. Davinia asked about her making it an Oriental style. Absolutely. Teriyaki sauce, serve it over rice, soy sauce, General Tso's, whatever you got in there that you want to add to it will work fine. Beef, shrimp, scallops, fish that's left over, instead of giving it away or throwing it away, do something with it.
Great. Nice and good. Good dish today.
Very good. So thank you for coming around our kitchen table, and we will see you next week. Although next week I do think we're going to be doing this on Blab. We're going to give it a try. In fact, at 1 o'clock I'm coming back and I'm going to do this again on Blab just to try and draw people in. And next week Susan and I will be doing it together there, so you can join us there, and maybe some of you can actually come in to the hangout, to the Blab session with us and ask your questions directly.
