Spring Fever

Yay for being April! Actually, I guess it's still technically March, but it's April in my mind. I can't even express how burned out I am with school right now, and how ready I am for this semester to be over. The timing is horrible, of course, because I still have a 10-page paper, a test and 7 art projects to go before I can even start thinking about finals. Which is why today I decided to be super responsible... and skip half my classes doing entirely non-school related things, like cooking, watching Project Runway, and, of course, blogging.

I have been more responsible than I'd like to be, though. For instance, I haven't spent my time finishing this:

Crochet is seriously gangsta. I have to admit that I lost motivation for this project 50% through. Just as I was getting really excited that I'd finished the first glove, I remembered--gloves come in pairs :( I still occassionally wear just the one glove, though, much to Chris's chagrin I'm sure. It keeps me surprisingly warm, and I feel like it's some sort of fashion statement. I have the yarn to finish it, though, so maybe I will someday.

I've also managed to restrain myself from making another one of these:

It's kind of weird, but I've been on a sort of homey, crafts kick recently where all I want to do is sew, crochet, and home decorate (though since we're planning on moving for the summer, I haven't bothered with any decorating). As a part of that, I decided that I wanted to learn how to knit. After doing some online research, I ended up buying Knitting for Baby, because I heard it was perfect for people who'd never knit before--it explains it well, and every project introduces a new concept in order of difficulty. The hat above is the very first project in the book, and I think I did pretty well--I only dropped 5-10 stitches, and all of those were in the first half of knitting. I have no immediate use for it, though (and anticipate not using it for quite some time--after Suzanne's blog announcement, I figured I should clarify this), so I guess I'll just have to box it up for later. Once this semester's over, I do want to make another hat, maybe this time in a boy's color. The next project in the book is a blanket, and I want to do a really good job, so I figure I could probably use some more practice before starting on that.

However, I couldn't restrain myself from making this:

Recently, I decided that I want to work on my food photography, so I'm going through my favorite recipes, cooking, and photographing them, and I'm going to compile them into a little cookbook that I might publish online using Lulu or mypublisher.com or something. I had actually never made this recipe before--I was just online and had somehow wandered onto the Johnny Carinos website and I realized that I had to have Italian food. Immediately, if possible. The description of Chicken Milano looked good, so I started looking up recipes and eventually found this one, which is actually a copycat recipe of the Chicken Pasta Milano at Macaroni Grill. It turned out great, though there were some mishaps along the way. First of all, it called for 4 chicken breasts, and after skimming over a few reviews I found that most people thought there wasn't enough sauce in the recipe, so I figured that since I was cooking for two, I could half the chicken and be okay. Turns out there still wasn't enough sauce (so anybody who'd actually made the full recipe would've really been in a bind!). So next time I'm halving the chicken again (because there was too much of that for my taste), and I'll probably still double the sauce, and then it might work out. The second problem was with the basil. Basil is the last thing you add to the sauce, so I was almost done when I happily added the two tablespoons the recipe called for. It was right as the second tablespoon went in and the little green leaves were spreading everywhere that I had that heart-stopping moment of fear--was it 2 tablespoons of fresh basil, or dried? I had used dried, but as I looked at the overabundance of green now permeating the sauce, I was very much afraid that it was referring to fresh (and there's a definite difference between 2 tbsp. of fresh basil and 2 tbsp. of dried!). So I immediately added more half and half to thin out the green, then took my handy dandy strainer to see how much I could get out. Unfortunately, I couldn't really take out the basil without also taking out a lot of sundried tomatoes, though in the end that might have been a good thing, because there really were a lot of sundried tomatoes. However, miraculously, the recipe still tasted good, which for me means it's a keeper. I just need to quarter the chicken, double the sauce, half the basil, and maybe use less sundried tomatoes, and I'll be set (seriously, who wrote this recipe??).

Here's the recipe with my edits:

Chicken Pasta Milano (serves 2)

2 tablespoons butter

3-4 cloves garlic, minced

3/4 cup sun-dried tomato, chopped

2 cups chicken broth, divided

2 cups half-and-half (original recipe called for heavy cream, but this is healthier)

1-2 boneless skinless chicken breasts (your choice, depending on how much meat you want)

garlic salt

pepper

2 tablespoons olive oil

2 tablespoons basil

4-5 oz. fettucine pasta, cooked and drained

In a large saucepan, melt butter over low heat. Add the minced garlic and cook for about a minute. Add tomatoes and 1 1/2 cups of chicken broth. Increase heat to medium and bring mixture to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer uncovered, for about 10 minutes. Add cream and bring to a boil again, stirring frequently. Simmer over medium heat until sauce is thick.
Sprinkle garlic salt and pepper over both sides of chicken. Heat the olive oil in a skillet, then add chicken and saute until chicken is no longer pink in the middle (about 4 minutes each side should do it). Remove chicken from skillet and set aside somewhere warm (like a warm oven). In the same skillet, stir 1/2 cup chicken broth with the pan juices, and bring to a boil; reduce slightly and add to the cream sauce. Stir in basil.

Slice chicken and serve atop the pasta, coat with the cream sauce.

An alternate way is to slice or cube the chicken and mix it in with the sauce, then serve that over the pasta.