Cooking for Alan – Dinner #1
Today marks the beginning of my adventure in using Ina Garten’s book, Cooking for Jeffrey as my inspiration for creating dinner menus and as a way to try and prepare every recipe in her book. Since the recipes I’m using are not my own, I will provide links to them. So when you see text that is highlighted in RED that’s a prompt for you to click on the words to be taken to where the recipes have been published online. I’ll also be providing links to other resources that you may find useful.
Tonight’s menu was timed out to be ready just as my husband and son returned from an afternoon of hunting snow geese in the bitter cold. Why in the world they voluntarily choose to spend time outdoors when it’s 10 degrees is something only waterfowlers really understand. So I was happy to prepare some comfort food like steamy hot cous cous and oven roasted chicken.
MENU
Arugula with Prosciutto and Burrata
Cous Cous with Pine Nuts and Mint
Skillet-Roasted Lemon Chicken
The Arugula with Prosciutto and Burrata had to be modified a bit. My local grocery store didn’t have any bags of just arugula…so I settled on a spring greens mix. Since my trip to Italy this past summer I have grown very fond of the delicate, peppery flavor of arugula, which they use in great abundance in Rome. This is a super quick salad to assemble. Aside from making a quick dressing and toasting some sliced french bread, it’s just a matter of putting it on a platter and digging in.
Next came the Cous Cous with Pine Nuts and Mint. If you’ve not discovered this teeny tiny pasta/grain you should. It cooks in 10 minutes and soaks up whatever flavors you put with it. It can be eaten hot, room temp and even cold. My sons ate a lot of it when they were young.
Last but not least was Ina’s famous Skillet Roasted Lemon Chicken. She claims this is one of Jeffrey’s favorites and something she’s made for dinner parties countless times. It cooks amazingly fast due to an oven temp of 450 and the fact that you remove the backbone of the chicken and cook it lying flat. I usually have my guy at the meat counter remove the backbone for me to save time. But I have done it at home by myself with great success and you can too. The method is called Spatchcocking…let the giggles begin.
And then you finally end up with this on your plate. Alan and my son gave the meal 2 thumbs up. Oh yeah, once their plates were clean they found the Devil’s Food cake I had baked yesterday and featured on my last post. Thank goodness someone is helping me finish that decadent dessert!