Monday, July 19, 2010

Rissa says, "Do as the French do!" October 2009

I always thought I didn't like French food...until of course my best friend on FoodNetwork (you must know by now that's Ina Garten herself) showed me otherwise. My impression of it was that it was only wine-based and way too strong at that. Typically, I like wine in my glass and not my food, ha. I eventually learned that there are delicious dishes with butter, good cheeses, broths, etc. This had to be tried! So without intending to simply pull all Ina recipes (too easy), I looked throughout my cookbooks to see what could be pulled into this meal. It was a fun meal to coordinate and came out (mostly) well!



Yes, yes..this is actually more Swiss than French..but it seemed like a great fit for the menu. Fondue is a fun dish for a dinner party. But this Rachael Ray recipe was NOT a winner! The sauce came out thin and the wine flavor was too strong for my liking. We tried to keep it warm with the tealight burner and then it started to burn, and burnt wine + cheese = no good. It was just not the fondue recipe we were going for. Potato spears can be kind of a heavy item to dip as well. I'd say bread is the better option!



Now this recipe was fantastic! Make things easy on yourself and buy the pre-cut butternut squash at Trader Joe's. Roast that with the maple syrup, olive oil, salt and pepper, and voila..it's the highlight of the salad. Okay, the walnuts, cranberries, and generous parmesan amounts contribute as well. I liked the colors in this dish..very festive and fall-like. Only gripe is that like with most salad, it's not one that keeps super well. I'd say it's best when used the same day.


Two words for this recipe: labor-intensive! We should have taken a better picture..it doesn't do justice for the work that it was! It all starts with seasoning and flouring the chicken, cooking in butter for 5 minutes. Then the pan is removed from the heat, gin added to it, and lit on fire! That part is a little scary but truly added flavor to the dish, so I'd say a necessary step. After the flames die down, the vegetables are added to the pan and all simmers for 45 minutes. The recipe says to use a cheesecloth but I don't recall doing that..or if we did I'd say now you can probably skip that part. After the chicken is fully cooked, it's removed from the pan and the rest gets made into a sauce for the topping once combined with yogurt. Again, quite a bit of work..(this is obviously a simplified description). I'm sure some would say they wouldn't make because of the complexity. But it was very tasty, went well with the menu and made for great leftovers with the celery root puree.

Excuse the wine glasses in the photo..just contributing to the theme of the night. ;)
True experiment here trying celery root puree. It just seemed too bland to just go with mashed potatoes and I've heard good things about celery root (who woulda thought!). It was easy actually. Just boil the celery root, potato, and onions in milk for 30 minutes and process all together with butter. I thought the leftovers were yummy too and went nicely with the very flavorful chicken.


French in the name made this the right dessert. It was SO yummy. I'm not a fan of making pie crust or dough in general, but after watching Ina make this on her show it seemed less intimidating. The ingredients are simple and wasn't ridiculous to make. For a second we were nervous that it overcooked in my oven, but the crispy parts were pretty good, too! Very yummy pastry and serves well with ice cream.

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