More cooking fun

I have been remiss in not updating my blog, especially with so much going on. Our cooking class continues to be a lot of fun, and we have gotten a lot of great tips. Even better, last weekend, we had two wonderful dinners with exceptional people.

On Saturday, Ethan and his friend Cristin joined us for a dinner of Chicken Marbella (from The Silver Palate Cookbook, one of my all time favorites) along with an apple crisp for dessert. Chicken Marbella is one of the easiest and tastiest recipes around: marinate the chicken overnight, throw it in a baking pan with some brown sugar and white wine, and bake. The secret is in the marinade, which includes a lot of garlic, capers, olives, prunes, red wine vinegar, oregano, and bay. We served it with fettuccine, but I think couscous might be even better.

Josh and his friend Laura joined us on Sunday for Chicken Saltimbocca (a recipe that I learned in a cooking class years ago, and that is in my mom’s cookbook) with roasted vegetables. We started out with a salad of greens, pears, and walnuts, with blue cheese croutons and a sherry vinegar/walnut oil vinaigrette. It’s one of my favorites, from the Field of Greens cookbook, another excellent book. Laura brought some delicious biscotti for dessert and we (or at least I) had tons of fun talking about food and cooking, two of my favorite topics.

As good as the food was both nights, the company was even better!

In the meantime, I haven’t stopped reading. I’m about two-thirds of the way through a fascinating and beautifully written book called A Tale of Love and Darkness, by Amos Oz. More to come on that…