Mamaliga

Chicken Piccata

So we have this new thing going on when I have to take care of dinner three days a week – Monday, Wednesday and Friday to be precise. It is something I enjoy, and it’s a way to wind down after a busy day. The problem is that I am a terrible meal planner. I do grocery shopping, and usually get what’s on sale, or what might inspire me to do a certain meal, but I don’t remember ever going with a pre-planned ingredient list for an upcoming meal. And usually what happens is that I wake up, open the fridge to sort of assess the situation of what I have or don’t have or what needs to be gotten rid of, then frantically search the Internet, cooking magazines or cookbooks for something that might resemble a decent dinner. For some strange reason, I always find that I have excessive mushrooms from the previous grocery shopping day. Don’t ask me why.

But I have my staples. I’m not that hopeless. For instance I make sure there are always a couple lemons and limes in the bottom fridge drawer. When skinless, boneless chicken is on sale, I pile up, and divide them up into portions and freeze them. Butter? I need that like gas in our car, okay?  And, look! I have all I need for Chicken Piccata, a sublime marriage between sauteed floured chicken breast cut into thin cutlets and a lemony-buttery-garlicky sauce topped with lemon slices, capers and parsley. To be honest, I inherited this recipe from Steph, since she does the best Chicken Piccata in town. And it’s a big town.

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Popularity: 18% [?]

Spinach Ravioli

This Wordless Friday’s cooking was (among others) a superb spinach ravioli with a 4-cheese filling (Blue, Feta, Parmesan and Cream cheese) sprinkled with sauteed sage, and in a fennel-butter-anchovies sauce. As always, let me know if you need the recipe.

Popularity: 25% [?]

No, that’s not a name of an obscure pasta dish, or anything near – just the title for my blog post on how to make pasta from scratch.

I enjoy cooking with store bought pasta (Barilla) but for certain dishes I like having home made fresh pasta (Pasta Fresca), since it adds a whole new dimension to the equation.

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Popularity: 50% [?]

Even if there’s nothing Romanian about it,  seems like Pasta Al Brodo became a Sunday lunch tradition on our household.

Maybe because it is so simple to put it together, or sparks a digestive memory of a two-course traditional Romanian home made meal on Sundays, where chicken soup with egg-noodles of some sort was always on the menu – or who knows why and not important. The point  is that you can make Pasta Al Brodo in 20 minutes and have a 5-star restaurant result.

Of course the secret ingredient that secures success is a good quality home made chicken broth. More on that in another post.

Pasta Al Brodo

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Popularity: 11% [?]

In days when the inspiration muse doesn’t strike, it is always helpful to fall back on some good old recipes you know and tried before. One of them is my mushroom sauce.
A humble sauce but not with a humble attitude, my universal mushroom sauce makes many dishes happy, such as pastas (linguine in my case), stuffing, etc.
The one discussed here is a fresh linguine pasta I made with Semolina (Durum) flour.

Mushroom Sauce

It has a sublime texture, aroma and taste using simple but excellent ingredients such as garlic, plum tomatoes, mushroom and olives.
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Popularity: 5% [?]