Tag: Italian

Making it Work > Italian

Another Giada Recipe – Chicken Saltimbocca

Posted on by pioneerintrees

Once you have cracked the cover of one of Giada de Laurentis’s cookbooks, you won’t be able to make JUST ONE recipe. Nope. Right now my cookbook has 3 scraps of paper sticking out of it … and it doesn’t go back on the shelf till I’ve made each one. (Soft rule… gets broken… whatever.) 

So when I was making the Simple Bolognese sauce last week, I considered making something NEW from the cookbook. EGADS! A NEW RECIPE?? … AND ON A WEEKNIGHT! (Yes, I confess, I generally make tried and true recipes during the weekdays since I have less time. I’m no Dana K.) But this one seemed pretty quick. So I bought the ingredients on the weekend and while the Thai Squash soup was simmering, I whipped it up. Just like that. BOOM!

CHICKEN SALTIMBOCCA.

Doesn’t that sound impressive? Well, yes, dammit, it IS. Very very impressive.

smashed chicken pieces
proscuitto
first attempt

AND it’s actually dead easy to make … flatten the chicken (I think I applied a bit too much force), lay a piece of prosciutto on it, top that with spinach, and roll up. Well ok, it’s not THAT easy. You have to defrost the spinach, season it and add some olive oil. You also have to grate some parmesean and lay THAT on top of the spinach. WHICH. I. FORGOT. So I had to unroll all of my beautiful rolls. Very funny. Ha Ha.

Last part is dead easy too. Sear in a pan till brown on all sides. 

cooking da chicken
2 min. each side. Ok, this was sticking a lot and it got a LOT messy in there … next time, more oil…

Finally, you add chicken broth and a squirt or so of lemon juice and simmer till it’s cooked. Take the chicken out, thicken up the sauce and serve! 

final chicken
MY VERSION. I don’t think the green bits are not supposed to show. Nor the prosciutto. Whatever. 

Despite it looking like it was made by a 5 year old, it was AMAZINGLY good. And impressive anyway. Shut up Dana K. 

Giada's chicken
That’s me holding open the cookbook.  Nice chicken, Giada.

(You’ll notice that Giada’s version is not BURSTING. Isn’t it tidy and perfect? Ah yes. And so it goes.)

You can find the recipe for Chicken Saltimbocca here.

spaghetti!

Best Ever and Dead Easy Bolognese Sauce

Posted on by pioneerintrees

You know when you’re driving home from work and you suddenly think – Oh shit! What are we having for dinner? Ya, well that never happens to me. lmao

I’m going to present you with a tried and true, dead easy pasta sauce. I learned it from one of my all time favourite TV cooks, Giada de Laurentis. I met her back in the day when I used to watch the Cooking Channel as I burned calories on the treadmill. It was the only way I could get through it. (I think that’s irony… yes?) Anyhow, Giada introduced me to easy Italian recipes, and taught me a TON of cooking tips in the process. I use her her first cookbook, Everyday Italian, regularly. It was given to me in 2005! Now that’s almost vintage. 

giada cookbook
An oldie but a goodie.

What I like about this sauce is that you can put it together with very basic ingredients and it’s FAST. … although making it without fresh basil kinda sucks, so you will want to have a little forethought and pick up a bunch of the fresh stuff. Oh and you must have some pecorino romano or at least parmigiano reggiano. 

handful of basil
Nice photobomb, Annie!

Oh and one more MUST … a can of crushed tomatoes. I always keep cans of crushed tomatoes in my pantry, SPECIFICALLY for this recipe. It simply is not the same with any other kind of tomato product – whole, crushed, sauce, etc… You NEED to have a can of crushed tomatoes. It creates the perfect consistency without any need to fart around with simmering down a watery sauce or thickening with tomato paste. Who the hell has time for that? NO ONE. Ok, lots of people do. But not me.

When you grab all of the ingredients that you will have on hand now that I’ve told you, it will look kinda like this (plus a can of crushed tomatoes that I forgot to put in the picture): 

ingredients
Those are heritage carrots. The orange one was purple before I peeled it. Yes, they’re very fancy carrots…

And here’s my beef about beef. I’ve decided that I am no longer buying grocery store ground beef, because it’s just plain STINKY. When it cooks it lets off a fuggy dead cow smell … and my neighbour, a cattle raiser (or whatever the hell she’s called), told me that the smell is from the crap ass chemicals in the beef. Buy the good stuff and as it cooks all you’ve got is beautiful smelling chuck. AND SHE WAS RIGHT!! 

market
hamburger1

Let this sauce simmer for as long as it takes to cook your noodles and then it’s ready to eat. Nothing to it.

spaghetti!
Ta Da!

I could type out the recipe into my fancy widget, but Giada has the recipe on her website, and you’re gonna want to visit Giadzy! It’s a great site. 

Get the recipe here.