GCC: Menu 24 - Irish Stew and Ficelles

March 13, 2011 by Monica in Bread, Cookbooks, Cooking Club, Dinner, Gutsy Cooks Club, Main Courses, Meat

This weeks Gutsy Cook Menu is a tribute to the upcoming Saint Patrick celebration. Chosen by Shandy of Pastry Heaven, it was the perfect Saturday night dinner. The Florida weather even cooperated, since we were enjoying a nice sunny, COLD day. Perfect for a stew, with a crusty homemade bread. There was a third option of dessert – French Apple Tart, which I skipped.

I’m not a huge meat eater, in fact I really try not to eat meat at all, but lamb is just too good to pass up and this weeks stew called for lamb as the main protein ingredient. While it is a bit pricy, the fact that this was feeding only 3 of us, and one of those was a child, I got away with spending about $14 bucks for 1 pound. And it was just the right amount and we still have some leftover for Tom to take to work on Monday.

As like any savory dish I try out of a cookbook, I tend to use it as a springboard for me to put my own twist on it. And this one was no exception. The instructions tells you to pretty much layer all of the ingredients in a heavy casserole, season and bake for one and half hours.

Raw.

I just could not bring myself to follow this.

ABC: Old-World Braided Coffee Cake

March 01, 2011 by Monica in ABC, Baking, Baking Club, Bread, Cake, Cookbooks

This was our choice for our monthly Avid’s Baker Club where we are working our way to baking the recipes from Flo Braker book “Baking for all Occasions”. So far everything that I have made from this book has been a success, remember the Lemon-Scented Pull-Apart Coffee Cake?

Flo mentions that this cake is “reminiscent of recipes from eastern Europe” where apparently they like their yeast-leavened cakes.

Cake you say?

Yeah, I know, it say’s Coffee Cake above. But, you tell me, does that picture above look like a cake to you?

Yeah, I thought you would agree with me.

Because that looks alot like a bread.

GCC: Menu 22 - Chicken Biryani (Part 1)

February 27, 2011 by Monica in Chicken, Cookbooks, Cooking Club, Dinner, Gutsy Cooks Club, Main Courses

Tom and I love Indian food. Ok, maybe that is not accurate, because I been also saying that I love Italian food, and Mexican food, and Latin food ok, I think I also said here that I like Thai as well – Ok, I come clean, I love ALL FOODS. But Indian food is one of my top five.

Like anything that is new to me, I experience it first at a restaurant and then of course I come home and hit the Internet to find it and make it a home. So when our host of the month, Cynthia and Sam choose the menu for this week in our Gutsy Club, I was really excited, since this is one of the dishes we tend to order in our local Indian restaurant. As I wrote on our Gutsy Cook pre-post, Chicken Biryani, happens to be the most popular Indian recipe around the globe. In India, every region has it’s own version. Some biryani recipes can take hours to prepare. The books recipe is quick and easy since the chicken and rice get cooked together. In less than 30 minutes I had food in our table making this a perfect dish for any day of the week.