Monday, June 18, 2007

Recipe Success

I'm trying my best to break out of cooking-malaise and boredom. I recently purchased Cook's Illustrated Best 30-Minute Recipe. I have a great deal of respect for their work and since Rachel Ray's 30-minute meals don't get universally good reviews, I thought it was the best place to start.


The book is full of tempting recipes and the usual process/tool discussions we've come to love from CI. None of the ingredients are terribly exotic for folks who like to get down in the kitchen and my first attempt did indeed come in under 30 minutes including pulling things out of cupboards and beginning the prep.

Tonight we had Penne with Chicken, Red Peppers, Artichokes and Goat Cheese. Mmmmmm. Preparation required two knives, one board, a couple of small bowls and two pans. Not bad in terms of clean-up. The chicken was cooked first, followed by the peppers and hearts of palm (substituted for the artichokes 'cuz I like them better), garlic and other seasoning. A quick deglaze of the pan with wine and some thickening and I was ready to assemble the finished dish by stirring together the cooked penne, sauce and crumbled goat cheese: result was a really creamy, tangy sauce. Its a definite keeper.


Knitting
So I'm back to knitting after my time in Indy when I didn't want to appear to be too much of a freak. Krista is not only completely knit but damn near completely assembled. That's the rest of tonight's work. She's lovely. I've also picked back up the Charlotte's Web shawl; I'd forgotten how much I enjoyed knitting it; Koigu being pure heaven in the hands. Hard as it is to believe, that's the only project on the needles just now. I'm going to see how long I can stand that and then I'll start some footies or socks or something.

1 comment:

Melissa said...

Sounds yummy! Can't wait to see your sweater!