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.

GCC: Menu 23 - English Muffins

March 08, 2011 by Monica in Bread, Breakfast, Gutsy Cooks Club

You know when you have every intention to do something. You plan it, you set reminders for it, you HAVE THE TIME TO DO IT.

But, for some unknown reason, you just cannot, for the life of you, complete it.

Enter our choice last week of Gutsy Cooks Club. English Muffins from scratch and then you take those muffins and make the ultimate dish that said muffins were made for. Egg Benedicts.

As you can see, the English Muffins part got DONE.

The egg benedict part? NOT DONE.

Can I give myself a C+ for effort?

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.