recipes – Page 23 – The Kitchen Illiterate

Andouille and Shrimp with Creole Mustard Sauce

Andouille sausage-y pasta

I have to give a big thumbs up to Bon Appetit for this one: It is fast and easy and absolutely delicious. And I managed to throw it together last night after a few beers, when normal food preparation can sometimes be a challenge for me. True, it didn’t end up quite as saucy as the picture promised, but that is quite likely entirely my own fault for not adding as much mustard as the recipe suggested. Being a relative newcomer to the love of mustard, after all. Regardless of whether you choose to preface your cooking with a night of Guitar Hero at the local pub, it is very worthy of Monday night dinner. And Tuesday night dinner. And even Friday and Saturday night dinner. It is gooood.

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Chicken Florentine, where have you been all my life?

I’ve updated this recipe to make it more streamlined and even more delicious. Check out the updated recipe, and let me know what you think! I’ve also added new photos to this older post.

Who would have thought that the simple combination of spinach, chicken, and cream could create such a glorious dinner? Well, the Italians, obviously, because they are good at that kind of thing. I’m just baffled that it took me so long to realize it. I mean, I love spinach, I love chicken, and I am a sucker for anything in a cream sauce. How has this dish never graced my kitchen? And when can I have it again? It is truly a perfect combination of flavors and textures and all those other things that make food, you know, good. Er. Yes.

I saw the recipe in Giada’s Family Dinners about two weeks ago and it stuck in my head, floating around, taunting me. “You love spinach. You want to cook me!” But I’m a grad student, see, and I don’t have time to be at the beck and call of whatever recipes decide to tempt me. I had to eat frozen veggie burgers (don’t worry, I heat them up first) and macaroni and cheese and pre-made gnocchi from Trader Joe’s while this recipe enticed me and beckoned to my nonexistent free time. Well, finally last night I had some free time. And I only wish I’d made the time earlier, because this is one of my new favorites.

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Dorie’s Midnight Crackles

Midnight Crackles

My cataloging class is on Friday, and the professor assigns each student a date to bring a snack for the class. This Friday was my snack day, and you can bet your sweet tuchas that I wasn’t about to go to Shaw’s and buy a box of Keeblers. When I have an opportunity to bake for people, I jump on it. And after a week of relatively disastrous cooking experiences, I turned to Dorie Greenspan for guidance. I knew she wouldn’t steer me wrong, and she didn’t. Even though I took some (minor) detours from her recipe, these cookies were still pretty amazing, and my classmates devoured them. And they were pretty darned astonished that I made them myself, too. Baking apparently impresses people. I’ll have to keep that in mind.

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Slacker Food: Southwestern Mac and Cheese

Southwestern Mac

“Oh my god,” you’re thinking. “Is she seriously blogging about boxed mac and cheese? This is just getting pathetic.” Ok, yes, I am seriously blogging about boxed mac and cheese because, frankly, I’m kind of addicted to it. It is the one processed food product that I can’t give up (well, that and Cheez-Its. Are we sensing a theme?). While the boxed mac and cheese isn’t quite the dietary staple for me that it was about four or five years ago, I still feel the need for it once every month or two. And I still usually make it the same way my mom did when I was growing up: with a can of tuna mixed in.

I can hear some of you now: “Oh man, it’s not bad enough that she’s talking about powdered cheese products, but mixing TUNA in there, too? Gross!” I’ve had many a friend tell me they thought my favorite comfort food meal was an abomination, but I just say they haven’t seen the light. And hey, at least my tastes have evolved somewhat. I avoid the flavorless orange Kraft stuff these days in favor of Annie’s, and I usually make it with cream instead of milk, because I’m crazy like that.

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Chicken Curry Soup with Broccoli and Rice

Broccoli drowning in chicken curry soup

Looking back over the past few months of my bloggity blogging, I am struck by two things: There has been a serious dearth of updates since about September, and most of them have been about soup. I mean, it is kind of excessive and I almost don’t even want to post this, yet another recipe for soup. But it was such a delicious soup, it really doesn’t deserve to be slighted like that. And if I don’t, well, I’ll just be contributing to the lack of posting here. Or would that be not contributing? Ack, my brain is exhausted from my cataloging homework and I can’t really figure out the niceties of language right now, but I can tell you how this lovely bowl of soup came to be.

Ok, it doesn’t look so lovely. The saddest thing about my recent obsession with soup is that the stuff doesn’t really photograph well. All the pictures I took of my soup just kind of look like yellow puddles with overturned broccoli trees sticking out of them. However, do not let the lack of photogenic qualities deter you: This recipe is easy and tasty, is a great use for leftover chicken, if you happen to have roasted one up, and is even better reheated for lunch the next day. This soup deserves to be part of what is quickly becoming the year of the soup.

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Mexican Pizza: My Most Brilliant Idea Yet?

Mexican Pizza

A few weeks ago, I had this terrific idea: What would happen if I combined two of my favorite things, Mexican food and pizza? Would deliciousness result? Or would this be another ill-conceived notion that just doesn’t pan out outside of my head? Well, I am happy to report that this might be one of the most splendidly awesome things I have ever cooked and I had a very hard time not eating the whole entire pizza myself last night. I am also having a hard time not running into the kitchen right now to eat all of the leftovers. Were it not for the promise of dinner with Mr. X tonight, I would be doing that very thing right this minute, excessive caloric intake be damned.

These superlatives are deserved despite some minor, er, troubles with my pizza dough. I just can’t win with that stuff, I tell ya! If I were the paranoid type, I’d think the pizza universe has something against me, and was purposely thwarting my every endeavor. Good thing I’m more likely to blame myself. Uh, wait…

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Cold Day, Roast Chicken, Raw Vegetables?

These are actually raw

For Christmas this year, I got a digital meat thermometer, the kind with a wire that attaches the probe to a fancy digital read out. I thought, “Finally! I can stop undercooking my roast chickens!” Yes, it’s the sad truth: I am a disaster when it comes to roast chicken. I can never manage to cook them all the way through, no matter how long I leave them in the oven, no matter how clear those thigh juices appear to run when I prick them with a fork. I start cutting them up and realize I have to immediately throw them back in the oven, in their half mutilated state. It’s disappointing, and not very photogenic. This digital thermometer was going to change all that.

A few weeks ago, my good friends over at Festivus Gastronomicus had a little moving sale (because unfortunately for everyone in Boston they are heading back to L.A.), and I ended up with their very lovely and large roasting pan. All of the elements converged, and I decided this was the week to roast a chicken. Well something went horribly, horribly wrong.

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Chicken Marsala at Long Last

Chicken Marsala

I have been thinking about making chicken marsala for a long, long time. I bought a bottle of marsala expressly for that purpose months and months ago. It might have actually been a year ago. But I never got around to making chicken marsala, for reasons I really don’t know or understand. I’ve never actually HAD chicken marsala, so I wasn’t entirely sure what a good recipe would look like, or what it is supposed to taste or smell like, and perhaps that uncertainty prevented experimentation. Who knows? But this week, I finally decided it was time for chicken marsala.

I’m not sure what my expectations were, not having had any previous experiences with said dish, but it was kind of not what I expected. I wanted the sauce to thicken up a little more. But honestly, other than that it was pretty delicious so I don’t have any real complaints. And it was easy peasy, so I’m not sure what took me so long. It’s actually a pretty fancy-seeming dinner requiring very little effort, which meant it was perfect for movie night with Mr. X. I love it when I can cook things that seem so much more impressive than they are.

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It’s a Chili Party!

Chili stuff

Crystal has been waiting patiently all week for me to write about the second annual (third?) chili party, which was held last Saturday night. I apologize for the delay, but I got pretty wretchedly sick this week and could barely figure out how to type, let alone think of something interesting to say about chili. I also realized that I never bothered to take a picture of the final product, because I was too busy setting out dishes of cotija and making guacamole and cleaning the living room, which no one even went into anyway. That’s really ok, though, because my chili pretty much always looks the same, so you can just check out the pictures from the last time I made chili and you’re good to go.

To be honest, my chili wasn’t even the star of the show. Mr. X made an awesome pulled pork chili, and Laurent and Jen showed up with venison chili (!) accompanied by homemade biscuit bowls (!!) and toasted cumin crema (!!!). It was all marvelous.

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Bucatini with Shrimp, Spinach, and Tomatoes

Bucatini with shrimp

I have been looking for bucatini in the supermarket and the hippie mart and pretty much everywhere for years, but never managed to find it, until last week. Trader Joe’s started stocking bucatini, and I might actually have cried out in serendipitous joy when I saw it on the shelf. Yes, I’m that kind of crazy person at the supermarket. I had all kinds of glorious ideas for my bucatini, not least another, and hopefully better, attempt at carbonara. Then I went to Philadelphia for the librarian conference and forgot all about my bucatini. Until tonight.

Like many other people this time of year, I’ve been trying to get more vegetables and fish and other good things in my diet. I’m not sure if shrimp is even the kind of seafood that’s all good for you, but no matter. When you add spinach, everything is good for you, right? This pasta was improvised and random and really damned delicious. And bucatini? The hollow core makes it difficult to slurp up the wayward strands. Effective and graceful eating of the bucatini is going to take a little practice.

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