Day Fifty-eight--Chicken Parmesian with pasta

Woohoo, last night's dinner was a doozy. It filled our bellies up! It took two and a half hours from start to finish but not all of that time was active time. Just most of it.

I started at 4 pm by making the pasta dough. I made the dough and then let it rest for about 45 minutes. While it was resting, I made the sauce and chatted with my mom. The sauce was my fave recipe for sauce my good ol' friend Jamie Oliver. This is my go-to sauce now. I'm very happy that I have left over sauce for pizza on Friday too. The sauce is so easy. I put olive oil in the pan and let it heat up. Then I chop an onion, slice two cloves of garlic and chop up a dried red chili. I cook them all together for 10 minutes. Then I dump in three cans of diced tomatoes with basil in them. Again, thank you Wegmans for carrying store brand organic tomatoes. This cooks for about 30 minutes and then I throw in some fresh basil. I ran outside and grabbed a handful, while noting that my basil is going to seed already. What gives with that?! Once it simmers just a bit more with the basil, I put the sauce in a big bowl and ran my immersion blender through it to get rid of the chunks of onion and tomato. This way, Aidan has no idea that there are actual vegetables in it. =) Now, sauce is done.

I move back to the pasta. I roll it out paper thin and get to cutting thin strips. Right now I am still using my pizza cutter to cut up the pasta, but I think I'm going to look into the attachment for my mixer to cut pasta. Although I still need to replace my food processor. I guess I'll do that first. I'm going to need it soon with canning season upon us. I had four hangers hanging around my kitchen with pasta hanging on it to dry. This took the bulk of my time I think. It was time consuming, but at the same time it was really relaxing.

By this time it was almost 6. Tim and Connor would be home from karate in 30 minutes. It was time for the chicken. I had three beautiful organic breasts that I split in half, ending up with 6 pieces of chicken. I shredded some fresh Parmesan cheese and mixed it with bread crumbs. I dipped each piece of chicken into a bowl with a beaten egg and then dredged it in the bread crumb cheese mixture. Then that chicken went into a pan with hot olive oil waiting for it. It sizzled on each side for a couple of minutes until the crust was a nice dark color, then I flipped it over. I repeated this with all six of the breasts. I poured a little bit of the tomato sauce into a 13 x 9 cake pan and then put the chicken pieces on top of the sauce. Then I sliced fresh mozzarella and put a piece on top of each breast. Ok, ready for oven. Crank up the broiler and slide it in for 5 minutes. Done.

6:30 rolled around. I was just taking the chicken out of the oven and I had a big pot of salted water coming to a boil. As soon as Tim and Connor rolled in the door, the fresh pasta hit the pot. Three minutes it was done. It's amazing that in three minutes Connor can get out of his karate outfit and in clothes, whereas when I need him to get dressed to go out it takes him 30 minutes. Interesting.


Chicken Parmesan with pasta

This meal was enjoyed by all. We shared a plate of it with Nancy because she worked late and we wanted to share. This is a container in the fridge for lunch that I can tell there will be a battle over. Aidan even ate a whole bunch of his salad. He was very proud of himself.

Today's dinner I'm making early in the afternoon. I am going to pack it up and we are eating on the road tonight. We are whisking the boys off to a top secret surprise that is two hours from us. I can't wait!

Day Twenty-One--Ravioli

Hello to all out there in cyber world. I'm happy to report that tonight's dinner was a success again. There was a lot of work in this one, but Tim helped and we had fun bumping into each other in the kitchen and giggling over the ridiculous reports on NPR.

Tonight's dinner is from a cookbook I picked up for Aidan over the weekend. I ran into the book store to get my book and had to look at the kids' books. Honestly, I can't be let loose in a bookstore. I blame my mother for this. Anywhooo, I picked up a cookbook for Connor and a cookbook for Aidan. I want them to feel at home in the kitchen too. I want them to be able to feed themselves and perhaps future girlfriends in the very far off future. For Aidan, I got The Silver Spoon for Children. It's a really great cookbook. It's nice and sturdy which is nice for working in the kitchen. Tonight we made ravioli from scratch.

Fresh Ravioli with Jamie's Awesome red sauce

I used the pasta recipe in this book instead of the one from The River Cottage cookbook. I think the recipe in the River Cottage cookbook was easier to work with. Tim made the filling and filled the little rounds of dough. I made the sauce and it simmered while we were working on the ravioli. The ravioli were supposed to be vegetarian, but Tim found the chunk of mozzarella that was wrapped with prosciutto and basil. He used that with the ricotta. It was a long process, but like I said, we had fun. The worst part was when the boys started cruising through the kitchen and snagging the ravioli as it was coming out of the water. The dinner all came together at the same time. We had the raviolis with the sauce and just a simple side salad. Aidan said it was the best dinner yet. It's funny. He's said that a couple of times already.

There were no left overs from this meal. The boys pounded the ravioli down like there was no tomorrow. There is a lot of the sauce left over. There was filling left over too. We've decided that since we had pizza just a couple of days ago, on Friday we're going to try and make calzones instead of pizza. I know, it's pretty much the same thing as pizza, but it will be a little different.

Tim made drinks for us tonight to go with our dinner. I turned mine into dessert. We've been having a cocktail every night lately. My favorite is the Sand in Your Shorts. Tonight we had White Spiders. It was minty and refreshing. I sipped it through dinner, but decided to throw a small scoop of vanilla ice cream (from our favorite dairy) into it and make it a dessert drink.

White Spider

I think that is all I have for tonight. I'm tired and can't really think right now. I hope this post makes a little sense. Until tomorrow...where we will be having Mexican for Cinco de Mayo...Happy cooking!