( #75 Chicken with Fennel and Tomatoes )

In honor of Jason leaving tonight, I wanted to make something special and since I had fresh peas in the rotter, I decided to attempt a recreation of one of our favorite restaurant meals in London.

( #72 Roasted Chicken Breasts )

This was one of my Internet Synthesis Specials. I looked at about a dozen different recipes and finally decided to work from this one, with additions from other recipes and incorporating my crypto-bean strategy. In the end, here's what I came up with:

( #62 Sausage Kale Soup )

( #58 Soft Boiled Duck Eggs with Warm Anchovy Vinaigrette )

( #57 Seared Sea Scallops with Salsa )

( #48 Roasted Chicken Thighs with Rosemary, Red Onions & Red Potatoes )

Inspired by our most recent trip to Il Buco, I decided the time had come for me to figure out how to make beef carpaccio at home. I looked at several different recipes online and here's what I ended up doing:

( #46 Beef Carpaccio )

One of the motivations for doing this challenge was to actually use some of my many cookbooks that are too often ignored in favor of searching the net for what I want to make.

I started with The New Basics Cookbook:

( #26 - Pork Chops and Scalloped Potato Casserole )

Tonight we had the pleasure of saraheeyore and wellstar's company for dinner. With reference to both this recipe and this one, here's what I came up with:

( #24 Polenta with Mushrooms )

Straight out of Twist of the Wrist, this was my first frittata. Jason is dubious about eggs, but I figured (correctly) that he would scarf down just about anything topped with prosciutto, arugula and shaved parmesan. It was fun to cook and came out just as expected, or a little better. Somehow I'd never shaved parmesan with a vegetable peeler ( Read more... )