Sunday, February 13, 2011

Dinner a la Rachael Ray

Last night I used one of my favorite cook books for a bit of inspiration. This cook book is Rachael Ray's All-Occasion Cookbook. Ms. Ray gets a bad rap sometimes but I think her recipes are great. They aren't the most gourmet, but they are speedy, healthy, and tasty.

For our Saturday night dinner, I used three recipes:
1. "Too easy" chicken with leeks-- basically, you brown two chicken breasts in a skillet; remove them to soften some leeks; add the chicken back and pour some white wine over the whole thing and cook til done.
2. Pesto mashed potatoes-- I made my own pesto earlier in the week, but the jarred stuff works really well too. Tim actually was in charge of the potatoes. He chopped up about 2 pounds of red potatoes, boiled til soft, and then mashed with chicken stock and about 3/4 cup of fresh pesto.
3. Mixed green salad-- one heart of romaine, one head of radicchio, and one fennel bulb. Added a little balsamic and olive oil, and threw on some Parmesan shavings for good measure.

The meal was decent, but nothing to rave about. The potatoes were the best part, and I ate the leftovers for dinner tonight! The chicken wasn't done when the recipe told me it would be so we ate the meal in shifts. Scheduling a meal correctly to have everything completed at the same time is one of the hardest things about cooking. I feel like I've had 20 years of experience so having a meal-in-shifts makes me incredibly cranky. The salad was decent but would have served 20 people. I probably would have preferred a simple lemon vinaigrette to the balsamic as well.

The potatoes will definitely show up again.

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