Creamy Chicken Pasta

Michelle chose this for her birthday dinner, with the inspiration recipe from here, but because of young palates, we kept everything separated. Feel free to toss everything together if you'd like.

Brine the chicken pieces, then smoke them. Since we don't have a smoker, if we try this ourselves, we'll just season (with some of the Cajun seasoning) and sauté about one pound of chicken breasts.

Cook the pasta (regular or gluten-free as desired) and the broccoli; keep warm until dinner-time.

For the sauce, first soak some cashews (3/4 cup) in hot water for an hour. Drain them, then process with chicken broth (1 1/2 cups), nutritional yeast (2 tablespoons), salt and pepper until super smooth; set aside. Cook some chopped onions, red/yellow/orange peppers and garlic in a bit of olive oil. Stir in some tomato paste (2 tablespoons) and Cajun seasoning (1 teaspoon each onion powder, garlic powder, smoked paprika and oregano and 1/4 teaspoon thyme and cayenne pepper). Add the cashew sauce and stir to mix well.