Experimenting in the Kitchen

I mentioned in an earlier post that one of my girlfriends, for her New Years Resolution, set a goal of cooking one recipe out of every cookbook she owns during 2013.  She apparently has quite the collection.  I thought it was a fun idea and contemplated taking on the resolution for my own.  I even took a photo of my cookbook shelf just in case I decided to take on the challenge and blog about it. 

I figured I'd need to cook about six new things a month in order to get through my nearly 70 cookbooks.  I'm far from that goal but I have been trying some new stuff.  Just in the last few weeks I've cooked three new things out of two of my newly acquired Rachel Ray cookbooks from our local used bookstore.  You may be able to tell from the photo that I own several, about 10! 

Without fail, Rachel Ray's recipes always take me more than the 30 minutes advertised, usually because of how long it takes me to prep everything; however, her recipes and her food NEVER let me down. 

Tom and I come from two different schools of thinking when it comes to entertaining and hosting friends for dinner.  Tom likes to make something foolproof.  Something he's made countless times and he knows will come out.  I, however, like to use the opportunity to make something new.  Something I've NEVER made before.  For me, company is the perfect excuse to make something fun and different.  Something I wouldn't necessarily make just for the two of us.  While my philosophy makes Tom a bit nervous, I think you could ask him and he'd say that it usually turns out.  Even the pork chops and cherry recipe I made many years ago.  He was clearly skeptical about that one but it turned out delicious.
    
So the first new recipe we tried recently was Spinach & Artichoke Mac 'n' Cheese from Look + Cook.  A good excuse to buy a type of cheese we've never had in the house - Italian Fontina.  And a foolproof recipe if there ever was...spinach, artichokes, pasta and cheese.  How can you go wrong with that delicious combo.  And just this past week we've tried Spinach-Artichoke Cheesy Tortellini (easy to pull together because we already had frozen spinach and canned artichokes in the house) and Smoky Sweet-Potato Chicken Stoup both from Express Lane Meals. 

I picked the stoup because we had a large sweet potato in the house I wanted to use and it also gave me a chance to cook with something I've seen in several recipes but never used, chipotle chili in adobo.  A can includes a bunch of smallish chilies and the recipe called for one.  I thought one didn't seem like enough so I pulled out another three.  I'm glad I didn't think to just dump in the whole can because the chilies are pretty hot and probably would have made the soup unbearable to eat.

So, while I'm not keeping up with the goal of six new recipes a month, we're still eating well in the Dalrymple house.