Eating Well

I can't remember the last time that I actually cooked something at the house. Anything I do cook is rarely no more complex than a bowl of oatmeal for breakfast, or nuking some Lean Cuisines for lunch. The only home cooked meals I get nowadays are the ones that Christine makes one to two nights a week. My new schedule has me eating dinner out M, T, W, Th. We also usually go out to a nice dinner either F or Sat. Sunday is usually eat at home day.

I've always had an idea that it would be nice to start cooking a little, maybe a meal a month. I'd find a cool recipe that sounded interesting and make the attempt. I'd buy whatever obscure cooking implement that I would need to complete the recipe and thereby build up my kitchen equipment over time. Maybe, I'd make a French dish to go along with a mini French film festival at the apartment and invite some friends over.

A few months ago I subscribed to Eating Well magazine as part of a school fundraiser for my little cousin, Adriana. There were no cycling magazines so I just picked this more or less on a whim. I have been browsing through the magazine looking at recipes over the last couple of weeks and decided to make the attempt tonight.

The two recipes I chose were

Asparagus/Radish Salad
Orange Glaze Chicken

We made a trip to the local grocery store and picked up the ingredients. Luckily, Christine has a pretty well stocked kitchen but we still had to pick up things like ground ginger, raisins, almonds along with the main ingredients.

I thought that these were relatively simple recipes but they ended up being more complex than I thought. One of the challenges, was figuring out when to start each of the parts. I'm sure cooking is more art than science, but I approached it like an engineer. I gathered all the ingredients, made a mental flow chart and tried to logically decide what needed to happen first.

First up with washing and chopping the vegetables as that could be done and set aside with no loss in quality. I thinly slicked the asparagus stalks, retaining the heads. I washed and cubed the radishes, I peeled the oranges, removing the pith, and cut in to wedges. I chopped and diced the almonds, and scallions.

I set that aside and made the flour, salt, pepper mix for the chicken. I then got the large sauce pan going with oil on medium temperature. Hmm, I'm going to need to steam the asparagus for a minute and then put them in ice water to keep them crisp and stop them from continuing to cook. Water boiling, use Christine's fancy bamboo steamer thingy. Oil is hot enough in the pan, dip the chicken in the flour mixture put in the pan, cover. Whoah, asparagus is done. Drain, put in the ice water...flip the chicken. Man, this is getting complicated. Lower the heat on the chicken. Time to start making the salad dressing. Damn, where's the Srirachi sauce...flip the chicken. Should I start boiling the noodles? Not yet. Baby, what does zest the orange mean? Chicken is browned, set it aside, pour the cup of white wine (no more, no less) into the sauce pan bring to a simmer. Where are the raisins? Whoops, forget the cinimmon stick. Ground cinimmon it is, then. We have just enough honey. A bit more salt. Time to put the chicken back in, cover. Time to boil the pasta! Mix in the asparagus, radish into the bowl with dressing. Flip the chicken. Getting close. Christine, set the table. Pasta is done, chicken is done, garnish the chicken with the orange slices, almonds.

Somehow everything is done at the same time, and we sit down to eat. Serve! And...it is delicious! The chicken is tender, there is enough sauce leftover for the pasta, the salad is spicy enough, there is just the right amount of cinimmon in the chicken. We have a nice sit down dinner at home. Success.

Afterwards, Christine gets to repair the disaster I've made of the kitchen. It was actually a lot of fun and is something that I'd like to do a few times a month.