Currently cooking out of Simple Weeknight Favorites from America’s Test Kitchen

This dish combined many of the things I love to eat: pasta, chicken and asparagus all wrapped up in a light sauce of lemon, Parmesan and garlic. I figured that I’d really like this dish, and I wasn’t disappointed. It was super easy to make and tasted delicious.

You start off by browning pieces of chicken breast in a bit of butter. Using the same skillet, asparagus is sauteed just until tender, at which point chopped garlic is stirred in and cooked until fragrant. While the asparagus cooks, pasta is boiled until al dente, then drained, reserving about a cup of the pasta water. Everything (chicken, asparagus, pasta) is mixed into the skillet that the chicken and asparagus was cooked in, followed by grated Parmesan cheese and lemon juice. If the dish seems a little dry, you add some of the reserved pasta water to loosen it up.

This had just the right amount of lemon and garlic, without being harsh or sour. We had leftovers the next night, and they were pretty good as well. I did add a splash of cream to the leftovers as they were pretty dry. All in all, this is a great springtime dish. It is quick enough for a weeknight meal, but I wouldn’t be ashamed to serve it to company, either.

Currently cooking from In the Kitchen with A Good Appetite by Melissa Clark

I have a bit of a love/hate relationship with mac and cheese. I love it because it is cheesy pasta. I hate it because I usually eat too much of it. Unfortunately, this recipe isn’t going to help me resolve my dilemma. This was so very, very good and so very, very easy to make. It is “drier” than most mac and cheeses I’ve made, and the only cheese in it is about a half of a cup of Parmesan. Yet, the combination of bacon, parmesan, peas and lemon juice is delightful.

This dish comes together fast. In fact, I had to take the sauce off the heat because the pasta wasn’t quite done. You start out by sauteing a couple of chopped up slices of bacon until they are crispy. Next you stir in frozen peas and cook for a minute to defrost them. Then you add a bit of creme fraiche or heavy cream (I went with the heavy cream), lemon juice and the cooked pasta. After stirring everything together until the pasta is coated, you add the Parmesan and salt and pepper. More stirring until the cheese is melted, and then lots of eating.

Seems almost too easy to be good, but it was. I did have to add more heavy cream because my pasta seemed too dry, and when I reheated it the next day, I added a bit more. We liked the dish so much, that I made it again, a few days later, and added some leftover flank steak instead of the bacon (and left out the peas because Bryan decided that peas didn’t belong in mac and cheese).

This will definitely become my go-to macaroni and cheese recipe. Forget the blue box.

This was my first taste of chili mac. I pretty much knew I’d like it because I like chili, and I like pasta. I wasn’t disappointed. However, after a week of eating leftovers, I was pretty sick of it. There’s your warning. This recipe makes A LOT of chili mac. Enough that you probably won’t want to look, or even smell, chili mac for a few months.

This is one of the few recipes in this book that wants you to precook the meat, hamburger in this case, before putting it into the slow cooker. Because the pasta cooks so quickly (quickly, in slow cooker time, is about 2 hours), the meat runs the risk of not being completely done.

So your first step is to mix the  hamburger with a panade (milk-soaked bread). The panade keeps the meat tender and adds a bit of flavor. Since you’ll be browning the meat, the authors have you brown the onions, bell pepper and spices first, then the meat gets added to the skillet. Finally, crushed tomatoes, tomato sauce and brown sugar are stirred into the skillet and then everything is transferred to the slow cooker. Macaroni, cheese and water are stirred in, then everything cooks until the pasta is tender.

This was really good (for the first 5 days). It is spicy without being too spicy and very filling. My only complaint is that the pasta goes from tender to mushy really quickly. Needless to say, the pasta in the leftovers was completely mushy. It still tasted good, just mushy. Next time, I’ll probably leave the pasta out and use this more as a pasta sauce, cooking the pasta for each meal. It would also be good with baked potatoes or as a sloppy joe filling.

This recipe packs a punch, both from the radicchio and the balsamic vinegar. It comes together very quickly and has a bunch of different textures. However, I didn’t love this dish. I thought the radicchio was too bitter, and I just didn’t like the balsamic vinegar in there.

Once again, I didn’t get pictures. It was very brown.

The dish starts out by searing a steak (I used flank steak). You want the steak to be very rare, so the juices add flavor to the sauce. Once the steak is done, it gets set aside to rest. The radicchio, an onion and some garlic gets sliced and added to the pan and cooked until they are soft. The steak is sliced, and the meat and all the juices are added to the pan, along with the vinegar, cooked spaghetti and enough pasta water to form a sauce.

I’m not sure what I could change about this dish to make it more appealing to me. Maybe use cabbage instead of the radicchio and leave out the vinegar?

I was having a bad day when I made this dish. Everything seemed to go wrong. I used too small of a pot to cook the pasta and went through three more pots putting this dish together (which resulted in cool pasta, unwilted spinach and a pile of dishes). I kept dropping the knife as I was cutting up the chicken (fortunately not on any of my extremities). And I burned most of the pine nuts instead of toasting them. Even after that the dish still came out fine.

This is pretty much a simpified pasta alfredo with spinach and chicken. You start off by browning chicken, then making up a quick sauce of garlic, lemon zest and juice and a half of a cup of cream. Meanwhile, you cook a pot of pasta and drain it, reserving about a half of a cup of the pasta cooking water. The pasta, sauce, chicken, spinach, pine nuts, Parmesan cheese and the reserved water are put back into the pot and mixed together. The heat of the pasta wilts the spinach, and the reserved water thins the cream sauce.

My biggest complaint about this dish is that I wanted more sauce. In fact, when we ate the leftovers the next day, I made another batch of the sauce. So, if you like your pasta a little saucy, double the sauce.

Oh, and make sure you use a big pot to make the pasta.

Currently cooking from The Best Simple Recipes from America’s Test Kitchen

I have officially started divorce proceedings against Bryan so I can marry this book. Wait, I was raised Mormon, so maybe I can marry them both. What? That only works for men? Damn.

I could go on and on about this dish. It was spicy (but not burn your mouth spicy like the orange beef was) and creamy, cheesy and gooey. It easily made enough for four main courses and it was all done in one pan. Yes, you heard that right. You brown the chorizo, make the sauce and cook the pasta in the same pan. Genius.

And leftovers were just as good as it was on the first day.

The dish begins by browning a pound of chorizo and an onion. Next you stir in chicken broth, Ro-Tel tomatoes, cream and penne pasta and bring it all to a boil. Once the liquid is boiling, you simmer the dish until the pasta is tender. To finish it off, you stir in a half of a cup of pepper Jack cheese, then sprinkle more cheese over the top. This gets put under the broiler until the cheese is browned and bubbly.

My only concern with this dish is that the recipe tells you to halve and slice the chorizo sausage. In the past, when I’ve tried to do this with chorizo, I ended up with a reddish-brown sludge as the chorizo fell apart. This time, I browned the chorizo sausages first, and then cut them as directed. This way, the sausage was cooked enough to hold it’s shape when sliced. It worked perfectly.

Currently cooking from Tasty by Roy Finamore

So far, this is my favorite recipe from Tasty. It was quick and delicious and takes advantage of all the wonderful summer produce that’s available.

You start out by cutting the kernels off of three ears of corn and sauteing them in some butter. Once the corn is cooked, you add diced, fresh tomatoes and cream and cook until the cream is reduced by half. To this sauce, you add cooked fettuccine and some fresh basil and parmesan. Easy and satisfying.

Well, mostly satisfying. You see, both Bryan and I wanted some sort of protein with it and we wanted to cut down on the amount of cream. So a couple of days later, I took another stab at this recipe, modifying it a bit.

In my version, the dish starts off by browning small chunks of chicken (I used one breast that I cut into 1/2″ pieces). Once the chicken was browned, I moved it to a plate and added some diced onion to the pan. I sauteed the onion until it was soft and then added the corn, which I cooked for about 6 minutes. I deglazed the pan with chicken broth (about 1/2 of a can) and a splash of white wine and reduced the liquid by about half. Finally, I stirred in about 2 tablespoons of cream to finish off the sauce.

My version was much less rich than the original, but it was full of flavor and satisfying, and, I hope, a little better for us since I plan to make this dish for as long as I can get good corn and tomatoes.

Currently cooking from The Carefree Cook by Rick Rodgers.

This pasta dish was . . . okay. Nothing spectacular. It just needed something more. As in more flavor, more spice, more taste. If you are looking for the flavors of a lasagne without all the time and work, this is it, sorta.

Like most other recipes in The Carefree Cook, this came together quickly. The meat sauce is a mixture of onions, garlic, ground beef and tomatoes that cooks down into a thick, meaty sauce in about 25 minutes. Then you toss the sauce with some wide noodle pasta and top it off with ricotta cheese that has been mixed with fresh basil.

With a little doctoring, this meat sauce could be really good. It doesn’t have the body and flavor of a long-cooked tomato sauce, but it ain’t bad for 25 minutes. The ricotta-basil mixture, while making the dish more like a lasagne, didn’t add any flavor. I would actually leave this out next time.

Currently cooking from The Carefree Cook by Rick Rodgers.

The idea of using cauliflower in a pasta sauce is a new concept for me. When I think of cauliflower, I immediately think of roasting it, or eating it raw with plenty of Ranch Dressing.

Rodgers starts you off by browning some pancetta or bacon and then cooking the cut-up cauliflower in the fat until the florets are brown. Then you add garlic, tomatoes, the pancetta/bacon bits, sage and red pepper flakes to the cauliflower and simmer the mixture until the cauliflower is tender. This  chunky “sauce” is then served over pasta.

True to Rodgers’ form, this is a quick and easy dish. As an added bonus, it is also pretty healthy. I served the sauce with some whole wheat pasta, so it was very hearty and filling. Unfortunately, both Bryan and I found it to be kind of bland. A couple of notes: Make sure you cut the cauliflower into small florets so that they cook quickly. Also make sure you brown the cauliflower really well at the beginning.

Currently cooking from The Carefree Cook by Rick Rodgers

I don’t have a very large repertoire of side dishes, and I haven’t cooked with orzo before, so I was excited to try this recipe.

If you aren’t familiar with orzo, it is a small, rice-shaped pasta that cooks up quickly and can be flavored in a hundred different ways. This dish was simple, very tasty. You boil the orzo until tender (about 9 minutes), drain it, then toss it with the parmesan, peas and a bit of butter.

Any vegetable could be used here, although you might need to precook it. I ended up adding a bit of the pasta water to keep the dish from getting too dry. This dish would go with just about anything and the leftovers are good reheated.