The Cookbook Project-Prosciutto and Parmesan Rolled Chicken

Let me offer this piece of advice. If you've had a shitty day at work, cook something that calls for beating the crap out of a piece of meat.


It helps. I swear.

Every couple of weeks, my friend D. and I trade off cooking for each other. Last time I was at her place, she upped the ante with a fabulous sweet potato gnocchi, so I wanted to try something a little more challenging today. Instead I did something really, really easy that looked complicated.

The recipe is from this cookbook.


I picked this up a couple of months ago at Daedalus Books. If you live in the Baltimore-Washington area and you don't know about this place, you should. You'll never leave without spending a bunch of money-but you'll walk out with so many books you won't believe it. They sell remainders, books that were sent back to the publisher, and most of their books are $5 or less. I've had to seriously limit the number of times I go there, because I have no more space on my bookshelves.

The cookbook was written by the authors of the blog Two Fat Als, and the whole idea is that people who are living on a tight budget can still afford to cook amazing food. Each recipe is broken down by cost for the entire recipe and cost per serving.

The recipe I decided to try is called Prosciutto and Parmesan Rolled Chicken, which is more or less exactly what it sounds like. It was extremely easy and extremely tasty. According to the recipe it's $5 per serving, but that doesn't take into account that I had to buy an entire package of prosciutto that I have no idea what to do with now...






I served it with roasted potatoes and acorn squash, and bread. Side note: how awesome is it that Harris Teeter sells teeny tiny loaves of bread? It's like the best thing ever for single cooks.


Two cookbooks down, 48 to go.

Veggie Pasta

When I left the house, I had every intention of ordering takeout for dinner tonight. I ran up the street to the organic market to grab a few things for tomorrow night, because my lovely friend D. is coming over for dinner. My plan was to run in, pick up two or three things, and run back out, but I saw spinach fettucini and got inspired. What I really wanted was fettucini alfredo, but milk and milk products have not been agreeing with me for some time and I wasn't really willing to suffer tonight. So, I backtracked to the produce department and picked up a couple of things.

This is my mother's recipe--I've made it several times, and it's a little different every time. It's so incredibly easy that it's not really a recipe at all.

Cut up some vegetables, put them on a cookie sheet, and spray them with Pam. I usually use a squash, a couple of peppers and a red onion.



Toss the vegetables in the oven until they're tender and brownish. While they're cooking, boil the pasta. I usually use angel hair but the spinach fettucini is what inspired this little endeavor, so I used that instead.

Drain the pasta. Add a can of Ro-Tel tomatoes (they've got jalapeno peppers in them, so they're spicy) the vegetables and whatever seasonings you want. I usually use oregano, because when I don't know what to use oregano is almost always the answer. You can be a little more creative, obviously. What you should NOT do is add red pepper flakes, because combining those with the Ro-Tel tomatoes makes you wish your tongue were detachable. I only made that mistake once.



Toss it all with olive oil. That's it. Voila-dinner.



With the pasta, I had a slice of the Brown Rice Bread I made a couple of days ago. It wasn't really the right kind of bread to serve with pasta, but it's what I had around and it actually tasted quite good with it.

In other news, this is actually the third time I've cooked this week, and I'm doing it again tomorrow. I don't really intend to turn this into a cooking blog-God knows there are other people more qualified for that-but it's making me cook more and write more, so we'll see. I am planning to blog about my cookbook project, since that will make it (slightly) more likely that I'll actually, you know, do it. Slightly.

Gnudi. Yes, pronounced Nudie. Get your chuckles out now.

I am not known for my culinary prowess, so when I actually manage to cook--and make it taste good--I am usually very proud of myself. Sometimes I take pictures, like tonight.

During the inaugural speech, I was clicking around the Internet, because these days watching something on TV just isn't enough. I found my way to Big Red Kitchen, (I have no idea how. I don't even remember what I was searching for) and found Robin Sue's post about Gnudi. I followed that over to the Food Network. All of a sudden, I was inspired. Also, intimidated. I went into this with the assumption that it would be a godawful mess.

Instead, voila. Gnudi.


It is basically described as the inside of a ravioli, without the outside. O. and I agreed that it tasted very much like the filling of a spanakopita. Best of all, it was easy. Prep time was only about fifteen minutes, and the biggest problem I had was timing everything, which is an ongoing issue for me. The gnudi was finished before I'd even thought about boiling my pasta. As a time saver, I boiled the pasta in the same water as the gnudi, which worked out perfectly. This is definitely one I'll try again.

The finished product:

I tried, I swear!

I was really going to cook last night. I had plans and everything.

See, several months ago, O.'s mother gave me a cookbook called Fat Free, Flavor Full, which led to the following exchange:

Me: Is your mother saying I'm fat?
O.: I told her I was going to get in trouble for this.

Anyway, I've made a few soups from it, but there was a recipe for an eggplant, bean and tomato casserole that looked like it could be really good, but also potentially disgusting. I bought a couple of eggplants at the food co-op over a week ago and had been putting off the actual cooking part ever since.

So, O., who had expressed a decided lack of enthusiasm for this particular recipe, had plans last night, so I thought it would be a great time to try it. I called Tracy and Jackie to invite them to dinner, figuring that if I had guests coming I'd have to actually cook something. They both accepted, though upon hearing the menu, Jackie said "...I'll stop at Chipotle on the way over."

So I was ready to go. I put my beans on the stove to cook and started cutting up my onion.

Hmm. Tracy's allergic to onion.

Well, she's ok as long as there's not much and it's cooked, so we should be all right. Next ingredient! Garlic.

Hmm. Tracy's allergic to garlic.

Ok. We'll leave the garlic out. Next ingredient! Green pepper.

Hmm. I know I had a green pepper around here somewhere...

I called O. He told me that he'd tossed the green pepper three days ago because it liquefied in the bag. Hmm. Perhaps I procrastinated too much?

...Sigh. Plan B.

So I intended to really cook, but instead made Chicken Tikka Masala from a jar. Is it any wonder I don't bother most days? Thank God O. does most of the cooking around here.