Monday Night: Dinner and a Movie

Pasta! Let's have some pasta! Monday nights seem made for pasta and a movie, don't'cha think?

I really like cooking, but for the most part I don't really bother following recipes. Lucky for me, things usually turn out pretty well! I felt like spaghetti with a cream sauce so I looked up a couple recipes. (Actually - I really felt like having some kind of lasagna or stuffed shells, but the fact that I am oven-less prevented me from going through with that plan.) So stove top pasta it was!

I wanted chicken breasts, but they don't have any at any of the supermarkets here (at least not de-boned and skinless) so I ended up buying a whole chicken and hacking it apart once I got home. No problem, though - I threw away the skin, set aside the hunks of meat, and threw the bones in a pot with some water, vegetables and spices to make some chicken broth. That turned out well. While that was simmering, I chopped up a bunch of eggplant, mushrooms, onions, and garlic! I stir fried that a little bit, then dredged the chicken meat in some flour with pepper and browned that in a pan. (I accidentally threw in just a little too much salt in the broth - so I avoided it for the rest of the cooking.) Then I threw in some wine.

At this point, I thought to take some pictures. Here some broth gets ladelled into the mix:

And that all partied on low heat for awhile, making sure the chicken was cooked through.

Then the veggies jumped in with the mix and I zested a lemon and dealt with some some wee tomatoes. This one was pretty happy to see me:

until I explained to him how he was going to be halved and thrown into a pot!

Some cream and milk, and chopped parmesean and the tomatoes are all together now:


Pasta is cooked, and the sauce is spooned over it and it's sprinkled with the grated lemon zest!

Yummmmmmmmmy!

Really, I thought the best things about this dish were the tomatoes and lemon zest. They added a bit of tangy zing to the meal. It was really very delicious, though!

Oh, and just for the hell of it, here's a meal from last Monday's comfort food and movie night, shrimp and veggies in a curry (korma) sauce with paneer.

I threw a few cashews on the top and enjoyed it with a nice bowl of rice. It was really good too.

Man, I wish I had someone to cook for other than myself, though. It just makes for a happier meal, I think, if there's someone to share your dinner with. (And better yet, someone to say "Damn, woman, this is some good food!")

By the way, last Monday's movie was "Miss Potter," which I enjoyed. It made me homesick, thinking of my mother. This week's selection was "Happy Feet," and I really loved it. The animation was fantastic. I highly recommend it!