geek + red sox + cooking = peter ryan

The last time I visited with my sister I was drawn into her Everyday Food tv guide size magazine. It is a Martha Stewart (yes I know) magazine that focuses on easy to cook meals. Since I rarely like to spend more than 30-45 minutes cooking a meal its 10 issues a year seemed an easy way to broaden my cooking repertoire without adding a lot of time. So I decided to subscribe (and yes through a serious gaff by either me or their lousy online subscription portal managed to subscribe to Living as well). So I was bothered to see an issue of Living on Friday in my mailbox but was excited about the prospects of Everyday Food which was hiding underneath it.

So Sunday was my first foray into the Everyday Food world and for dinner I attempted a few things.

Apple, Grape, and Celery Salad
For a salad I decided to make an Apple, Grape, and Celery Salad. This was very easy. The ingredients for this were:

• 1 cup red grapes, halved.
• 1 granny smith apple, cored, halved, and thinly sliced
• 1 tbsp oil (I avoided vinegar because beth does not like it)
• 2 stalks of celery, thinly sliced on the diagonal
• 1/2 cup chopped walnuts
• salt and pepper

I tossed these together. The salad was very quick and easy to make and was delicious. The bulk of the recipe came from the magazine but I swapped almonds for walnuts since I had decided to use walnuts in the main course and didn’t feel like buying two types of nuts.

Lemon Asparagus
There was a recipe for Lemony Broccolini which sounded tasty and easy to do. On my trip to Whole Foods there was no broccolini so I decided to go for a Lemony Asparagus. It was a snap to make:

• 1/4 cup lemon juice
• 1 bunch of asparagus
• 2 garlic gloves sliced thin
• 2 tbsp oil (approx. i just drizzled it into my pan)
• Salt and Pepper
• 1/4 cup water

I heated the oil over medium heat and then added the garlic and asparagus. After 2 minutes I added the water and covered for 6-8 minutes. This was too much time - the asparagus was very tender at this point. In the future I would probably try 3-4 minutes of cooking once I add the water. Anyway after 6-8 minutes (which again should have been less) I added the lemon juice and salt and pepper. I tossed these together in the skillet and transferred directly to the serving plates.

Chicken Breasts Stuffed With Herbed Couscous
Finally for the main course I used a variation of the chicken breasts stuffed with herbed couscous recipe from everday food. I followed its directions exactly except for the following substitutions :

• 1/2 cup basil leaves instead of mint. I have been growing my own basil and used that instead.
• Walnuts instead of pinenuts. Beth prefers walnuts and I figured they would work. I did finely chop them so they wouldn’t standout in the stuffing.

I didn’t have any real problems making these. It was a bit difficult stuffing the chicken breasts but I chalk that up to me never doing that before as opposed to anything particularly hard about it. By far the last one I did (I made 4) was the easiest and most well done. One thing I noticed was it was difficult to keep the outside clean of the couscous stuffing but it really added to the dish all together because I was not able to have a stuffed filling on the entire breast so having trace amounts on the outside ensured distribution of the flavor.

The couscous as a stuffing was delicious and also was healthier than a traditional bread stuffing.

Beth really enjoyed the food (she cleaned her plate very quickly) and it is something I will definitely make again. It also was an easy technique (by altering the stuffing) to vary the flavor which I will keep in mind when I am making something up.

This entry was posted on Monday, August 20th, 2007 at 5:26 pm and is filed under cooking. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.