Knitter in the Kitchen

Recipe found here on Madeline’s Rachael Ray blog. We haven’t quite decided yet whether this one is a keeper or not. The veggies were really yummy, but the pork was on the bland side. Of course, it didn’t help that we totally overcooked it and thus it was tough. Hubby remedied the blandness by dousing the pork in Siracha sauce.

Hubby thought the dish would improve if we used flank steak instead of pork. I think it’s a good idea. However, I am not sure we will ever experiment with that. There was a fair amount of chopping (at least to us) and we haven’t decided yet whether the effort involved in this recipe is worth the end result. It’s good, but it didn’t wow us. If you try it, be careful not to overcook the pork!

Recipe from Baking Bites. This one is definitely a keeper, as there is minimal effort involved and yet the results are delicious!

Recipe from here. Easy and yummy! We doubled the recipe and made a fair number of mods, but they were personal preferences (e.g., using leaner ground beef, adding more garlic and basil, etc.).

So what happens when we finish cooking is that Hubby plates the food and I run upstairs to get the camera. He has made a few style suggestions in the past that I really liked, so I dubbed him the food stylist. This time he thought it would be fun to include a drink in the background and see if readers can guess the drink correctly. Anyone??

Recipe from Gourmet, June 1995 found via Smitten Kitchen.

Mods and Thoughts
:: I used 3/4 of a large white onion and chopped it instead of slicing it.
:: I meant to chop some garlic to throw in with the onions, but I forgot so I added 1 Tbsp bottled minced garlic instead. We love garlic!
:: The recipe doesn’t indicate dry or sweet marsala wine; I used dry.
:: The mushroom sauce is really delicious. If you click on the Gourmet link above and read the recipe reviews, you’ll find that a lot of people doubled the mushroom sauce. I would definitely do that next time because the mushrooms are what make this dish taste good.
:: Be careful not to overcook the chicken like I did! Because dried out tough chicken is not a good thing. Unfortunately I am the queen of overcooking meat so next time Hubby gets to watch the chicken.
:: I am still trying to figure out what do with the mushroom sauce in the last step. The recipe calls for reducing it to 1/2 cup, but that seems like very little liquid and I would like some sauce on the chicken. Instead of reducing, we threw in about 4 teaspoons of cornstarch to thicken it but that was a bit much. Next time, we may experiment with either adding less chicken broth at the end or adding just a 1 or 2 teaspoons of cornstarch.

All in all, a great dish!

Rosemary Beef Skewers from the March 2008 issue of Everyday Food. Very easy, very yum. We like our meat pretty much cooked, so we just broiled it longer.
Rosemary Potatoes. An old favorite from Cooking Light.