Food From The Ether Part 1: Orange You Glad I Didn't Say Banana?

I recently participated in a weekly blog event hosted by Anne of Cooking With Anne called "Ready, Set, Cook!" Every Tuesday morning Anne provides a list of three special ingredients, and the idea is to create a recipe off the top of your head using those three ingredients. You can use anything else you want, but you must use those three ingredients.
The three ingredients for last week's event were: farfalle (bowtie pasta), chicken and mandarin oranges. Now, it's not a requirement of this event that you actually cook your creation. However, the recipe I came up with sounded pretty tasty, so I thought that I would attempt it.

When it came to actually preparing the recipe I did end up changing a few things because reality, unfortunately, does tend to intrude into the creative process. My original recipe can be found here, with the other submissions. The recipe I prepared last night is below.

Chicken Farfalle with Spicy Orange Sauce
Yield: 2 entrees, 4 appetizers, or 1 Big Honkin' Bowl

½ lb. boneless chicken breast, cut into chunks
1 can (10 oz) mandarin orange segments, with juice
1 C white wine
pinch of paprika
1 tsp crushed chili pepper flakes
salt & pepper to taste
2 tbsp + 2 tbsp butter
2 tbsp flour
¼ C slivered almonds
small handful of sesame seeds
2 C farfalle (bowtie pasta)

Brown chicken in butter, remove from pan and set aside.
Add some more butter to the pan, and mix in the flour. Add the can of orange segments, the wine, the paprika and the chili flakes and mix to combine. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat to medium low.
Meanwhile, put a large pot of salted water on to boil for the pasta.
Place the chicken back into the pan and simmer uncovered, stirring occasionally, until the sauce reduces by about 25%, about 10-15 minutes.
When the water boils, cook the pasta until just al dente. Place the pasta on a plate or bowl and add the chicken and sauce. Sprinkle with the almonds and the sesame seeds, and toss to combine. Serve immediately.

I really didn't know what to expect with this dish, but it turned out really well and tasted amazing. The wine and the oranges worked really well together and produced a nice light-tasting sauce combined with a spicy hit from the chili flakes and paprika. The almonds and sesame seeds added some more flavour and provided a bit of crunch.

All in all, I was very happy with this and will be adding this to my regular repertoire of dinners.