Chicken Breasts with Whole-Grain Mustard Sauce

*Post by Angela.
Right now, I have 5 huge, hard-covered cookbooks on my living room table (plus a handful of cooking magazines).  Every week, Mark and I salivate over the gorgeous photos in these cookbooks, picking out recipes we'd like to make/think we could handle making.  Yet every time I cook, I find myself running to the Internets (all hail the Internets!) to find recipes.  I think it's mostly due to the fact that most recipes I find online (especially those from allrecipes or recipezaar) have suggestions and alterations posted from people who have actually made the recipes; it might also be because I can no longer read anything that isn't on a computer screen.  Whatever the reason, I've decided to make a very, very belated New Year's resolution (maybe an April Fool's Day resolution?  That makes no sense) to use my cookbooks more, and decided to try another recipe from my Williams-Sonoma cookbook - with my own little spin, of course - chicken breasts with whole-grain mustard sauce.  The result was juicy, tender chicken with a pleasantly piquant and creamy sauce that's versatile enough to use on the protein of your choice. 

Click below to get the recipe!

Curried Chicken Salad

*Post by Angela.
When Mark lived in Chicago, his favorite restaurant was a tapas place called Cafe Ba Ba Reeba, and his favorite dish there was the chicken & curry salad.  Now, I don't know much about chicken salad.  It was definitely not something we ate at my house growing up, and I've probably eaten it less than a dozen times as an adult.  But I've liked the chicken salad that I have eaten, and I'm intrigued by the combination of flavors and textures.  I've tried making curried chicken salad once in the past, and it turned out okay, but not great.

Because I'm the best girlfriend in the entire world (and because I felt like chicken salad had the kind of consistency that might not offend my very sensitive throat), I had the urge to give it another go with a recipe from Dave Lieberman, the man responsible for my very successful cauliflower soup last week.  The recipe is pretty darned simple, and result was much better this time around, like a piñata full of yummy flavors and textures in your mouth - I'm starting to think that this Dave Lieberman character might deserve a place on my Food Network all-stars list (along with Tyler Florence and Giada De Laurentiis).

Click below to get the recipe!

Tandoori Chicken with Basmati Rice and Indian Dahl with Spinach

As you may have guessed from my recent posts, I haven't done much cooking lately - I've either been too busy/tired/lazy, or I've been out of town.  But the other day, I felt an undeniable itch to get back in the kitchen and make myself a nice, well-balanced, healthy-ish home-cooked meal.  As I've made a pledge to try to cook "outside the box" more, I decided to try out Indian (a cuisine I rarely eat, much less cook, but generally enjoy) with Tandoori-Style Chicken and Indian Dahl (for all you vegetarians out there!).  The recipe for the chicken I got from my Williams-Sonoma cookbook; then it was just a matter of finding a vegetable side dish to complement it.  I found this one at allrecipes, and the best part is that it called only for spices I already had (with the exception of the garam masala)!  Strangely, my vegetarian "side" dish turned out a lot better than my chicken entree, but I think with some practice in cooking Indian cusine, I can turn out tastier dishes in the future.

Click below to get the recipes!

Chicken Piccata

I was...sort of limited with the ingredients at my house, given I bought the very last package of chicken available at Soviet Safeway.  It was this:

I decided to try to make chicken piccata, throwing together all of the appropriate dried herbs that I had in my pantry.  All told, the meal worked out incredibly well.

Click below for the recipe!

Chicken Arroz Caldo

Another icy day, another opportunity to make one of my mom's comforting Filipino dishes.  Since I had a little extra time this evening, and I had all the ingredients I needed at home, I decided to make chicken arroz caldo.  Should last me at least a couple of days.  One of my fellow D.C. Filipino food bloggers has a great entry on the background of the dish here.  As with all Filipino dishes, everyone has a different version of this dish, but they're all filling, flavorful, and delicious. 

Click below to see the recipe!

Chicken with 40 cloves of garlic and cream-braised Brussels Sprouts

Okay.  I made two things tonight, one that looked beautiful*, and one that turned out...um,  unattractive (the more accurate description involves terms that would be inappropriate when discussing items to be eaten).  I was incredibly tempted to only post pictures of the element that  looked nice. But, in the spirit of honesty, I've decided to post both.  Also...while Mark enjoyed both, he did comment that I've made better sprouts and better chicken.  I liked both, but I can't really say I disagree.  I may try both again at some point, but for now?  On to other experiments.  

Click below for the recipes!

White Chili

I was not feeling so hot today, and was craving something comforting and warming...that would not require very many extra ingredients in addition to what I already had at home.  I adapted this recipe for White Chili at simplyrecipes.com, one of my very favorite food blogs.  While this recipe is a little time-consuming, it was completely and totally worth it, particularly on a lazy Sunday night.  Or a sick day.  Tasty, filling, soothing, great for leftovers, and pretty darned cheap.  Since I already had chicken stock, I decided to sub chicken in for the turkey in the original.  I also bumped up the seasoning, since that is how I do.

Click below for the recipe!