As you know from last night's post I actually succeeded in completing my 4 goals for the weekend. So here's the full story with recipes. This is going to be a bit of a long post so I'm going to split it into two, Saturday and Sunday.
Saturday was quite a busy day for me. I had to go grocery shopping before I could even start my weekend cooking projects. Saturday at noon is not a good day and time to go to the grocery store. People are crazy and everyone is there. How is it that people who do not work (I'm looking at you retired people) go to the grocery store when everyone else is there? You have all day, every day. Go on Tuesday at noon. No one else will be there and you can take as long as you want staring at each grape in the bag, no one else is waiting to grab a bag of grapes and continue on their way. Ok I'm done, I'll talk about cooking now.
Chicken Escarole Soup:
I've had this at my husband's family's home for almost every holiday and I figured it was time to learn how to make it, plus I had escarole in my food share package and didn't know what else to do with it. So it was a win-win!
4 chicken breasts cut into small bite size pieces.
1 head of escarole - cleaned and cut or torn into bite sized pieces
1 bag of frozen peas and carrots
1 lb orzo
3 boxes of chicken stock, enough to cover all the ingredients
some fresh parsley
salt and pepper to taste
Put chicken and chicken stock in a slow cooker on high for 2 hours or until the chicken is fully cooked. Add the peas and carrots and the escarole. Continue to cook on high until the escarole turns dark green and is not stiff. Add the parsley and salt and pepper to taste. Cook the orzo per the instructions on the box. Add the orzo to the soup just before serving.
For a first attempt it's not bad. I think I can do better but I wanted to go really basic on the first try.
Gnocchi
This is one of my favorite things to make. It's a great thing to make ahead of time and have in the freezer ready to pull out any time you have guests. You'll always have fresh home made pasta!
I will admit that I have not tried this batch yet It's in the freezer for later in the week.
5 russet potatoes
1 egg
2 to 3 cups of flour
Bake the potatoes until they are tender. While they are still hot (this part is tricky, I recommend gloves for this) remove the skin and mash the potatoes in either a potato ricer or a food mill on the finest grain. The potatoes should cool enough by the time you're done ricing them that you should be able to handle them. beat the egg in a separate bowl and add to the potatoes. Add the flour one cup at a time while mixing until the dough becomes stiff. It will be a little sticky but that's ok. Roll the dough into 1/2 inch wide strips and cut the strips into 1/2 inch segments. You could roll a fork over the dough at this point and make it look like the commercial gnocchi but I don't recommend that, I think it's too much effort for a very small reward. Once you have cut your gnocchi you can either cook it fresh or freeze it so you're ready to cook it any time.
Pesto
What goes better with gnocchi but a good sauce? I made a very simple pesto and learned a very valuable lesson about cook books.
1/2 c pine nuts toasted
2 c basil packed down
1/3 c olive oil
1/2 c parmesan cheese
3 gloves garlic
salt to taste
Add all the ingredients to a small food processor (here is where I ran into trouble see below). Pulse until the basil leaves and pine nuts are no longer recognizable.
The recipe I was working from said you could make this in either a blender or food processor so I pulled out the Kitchenaid blender threw all the ingredients in and tried to pulse on puree. No good, the blade was spinning into nothing and would not pull the basil down I was able to crush a few pine nuts and the basil that happened to be touching the blade when I pushed the ON button but it wouldn't combine like I knew it should, and like I'd seen on Iron Chef more times than I can count. I still have no idea how they do it. I added more oil thinking maybe that was the problem. Nope! Still no luck. So I transferred all my ingredients partially chopped into my mini prep food processor and amazingly in a matter of seconds I had a real pesto.
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