What you might ask, has inspired this shameless and slightly sickening gushing over culinary books?
Phaidon.
That's right Phaidon cookbooks! They've always been too expensive for my thin college student wallet, but recently, for my birthday in fact, I got not one but two!
1080 Recipes and Recipes From an Italian Summer both fortuitously fell into my lap last week and true to my impatient nature I could not wait to cook! For good reason too it seems. While I was mulling in line at Ann Arbor's finest Borders, the cashier took 1080 Recipes for me and exclaimed in an accented voice that I'd picked a great book, and regaled me with how it was his favorite cookbook. Not that I wasn't appreciative of this rave review but I definitely HAD to get home to cook!
This however wasn't so easy. I got the book on Tuesday and between prepping books and making them available online for work, my birthday disaster which involved a sick father and led to celebrating with my family a day late, friends birthdays and other magazine oriented chaos, it took a little longer than expected...
I finally got the chance yesterday and let me tell you I was so excited I was willing to forgo my sometimes vegetarianism, and cook a chicken recipe from 1080 Recipes it promised Pine Nuts, Green Bell Peppers, Onions and bread crumby goodness. For those who have the book: Recipe 811 pg 683.
As usual when I'm in the kitchen, chaos strikes again! It all started when a forgotten red bell pepper piece in the catch tray under the burners caught on fire... It was a small bit and reduced to charcoal before much damage could be done. Then herbs de Provence ended up all over the kitchen when I ran into the other chef in the kitchen, some of which fell onto a hot burner and started smoking too. A few open windows and two fans later we were safe from the dreaded smoke alarm but my kitchen reeked.
A cut or two to my fingers later I used my new pasta roller to churn out some pasta to go with our chicken. By the way- homemade pasta? I nearly dropped dead at the dinner table it was so good. Somewhere along the line we realized we were missing two onions and wandered the city to encounter two closed grocery stores and one poorly stocked store I was seriously considering walking into Jimmy John's and begging to buy an onion when perchance I wandered into Champions Liquor store and found... yep 2 onions.
The day was saved! I ran back to finish the dish (btw someone had been standing guard. I'm not so kitchen slow to leave food in an unattended oven) and enjoyed a superfab dinner. A much better result than my two cookie sheet burns, sliced fingers and burnt frozen pizza fiasco... Now the only thing to worry about is well my next meal...
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