Anne Can Cook

I have been bad about updating again, but with reason this time--I haven't really done any cooking! For shame!
I have been too lazy/tired/absorbed by the internet to really put forth an effort. Therefore, I've had copious amounts of Pasta-Roni lately.

I'm going to try and get back into the groove. It's so easy to fall out of it.

I did make a decent stir fry last week. I say decent because it had good components and bad components. The good: The chicken. I don't know what I did to make it so tender and flavorful, but it rocked hard. The broccoli was also good, but broccoli is always good in a stir fry.
My biggest issue was the noodles I tried to pan fry. I didn't boil them long enough, and so they got crusty and weird and hard and awful. I also burned the zucchini waiting for the noodles to boil, so they were mostly bitter.

You would think, after making so many stir fries, one would cease to screw them up. Apparently that isn't true.

I also (and you can laugh here since there's no technical skill involved) made some kickass spaghetti recently. I used the suggestion off the back of Penzeys pasta sprinkle. I boiled the spaghetti, drained it, and tossed it with a little olive oil, pasta sprinkle, and a splash of balsamic vinegar. Balsamic vinegar! I love balsamic vinegar! I also gave it a good sprinkle of parmesan cheese, because that's how I roll. It was some of the best spaghetti I've had.

Anyway, I promise I'll do some legitimate cooking this week and not eat just pasta-roni.

And a note on the Nutella cookies--I think they may need a little more flour than the recipe calls for. They got a little sticky as they sat.

If I were Jane Austen, I would probably say something like, "I have failed you, gentle reader" in regards to my posting absence of late.

Luckily for all of us, I am not Jane Austen.

I have cooked and not cooked on and off for the past few weeks. I heated up a small pan of my mother's enchiladas, which I cannot claim as my own because I did none of the preparation and all of the oven work.

I helped make several stir-fries and curries at my coworker's house. Those all turned out splendidly. It is strange and wonderful to cook in a team.

I made myself a Thai curry experiment that yielded a 50 percent success rate.
I have always been mildly curious about Panko bread crumbs, since they are so frequently flouted on FoodNetwork. I used Panko to bread the chicken in my thai curry. After throwing out the first quarter of the breast due to severe burns (a skilled FoodNetwork chef I am not), the end result was satisfyingly crunching, albeit a bit bland. I had seasoned the Panko with Penzeys Bangkok Blend, though apparently not enough.



The curry overall was just okay. It started out as a stir-fry (the Panko chicken, squash, onions, zucchini, garlic, pan-fried rice noodles) that I ended by simmering in a Thai red curry sauce from Trader Joe's. The sauce dominated the dish. Fresh out of the pan, the flavor of ginger and coconut milk was very strong and not unpleasant. There was a nice after-burn that built steadily as I ate the dish.

I saved half for lunch the next day, which was a mistake. Reheating the curry brought out all the bitterness the sauce had hidden the night before. I burned much more of that stir-fry than I would readily admit.

Otherwise, not much is new in my culinary life. I poached another chicken breast last night for a quick chicken and rice dish that I also ate for lunch today. It reheated much better than the curry.