Month: May 2020

Ever make the same dish in a span of two weeks because it was that damn good? Well, I generally don’t as I’m usually a stickler for variety and avoiding recent repetition, but this dish was THAT DAMN GOOD.

Featured here is my rendition of Bon Appetit’s Spicy Baked Pasta with Cheddar and Broccoli Rabe. I am 150% sure that if you do follow the recipe step by step, you won’t be any less pleased than I was with my version. But you know me, I don’t like following rules in the kitchen 😬 Also, when I first browsed the recipe, my immediate reaction was “But where’s the meat?” And nothing was going to stop me from adding The Meat (except perhaps coronavirus which thankfully has not yet affected my meat intake).

So here’s what I followed and here’s what I changed.

Continue reading “Change the Cheese, Add some Meat – It’s Yours” →

Many friends have been asking good questions during this time of global pandemic such as “What can I be doing right now?” despite the restrictions before them. I reflected on my not-so-recent-anymore goal (see my last post July 2019) of committing to making something new once a week and realized I had basically achieved that goal only once since then. (Judge me – but I’ve already confessed I’m horrible with these “commitments”) So what better time than now to reawaken that goal?

One new and fun thing I’ve been doing since this crisis hit is reading and flipping through magazines – physical ones. Previously I had several ones I’d subscribed to digitally but right before the virus hit, I had received a gift of 4 print magazine subscriptions for a year and I thought “why not?” I have been especially thankful for them these days because it’s allowed me to enjoy images of delicious drool-worthy food without being on an electronic device.

Well, eventually the images look delicious enough to tempt one to attempt making them. And so I decided to try. Both risotto and pesto were things I’d always wondered how on earth one makes, and this was my chance to make both in one shot! And boy was it so much easier than I ever could have imagined!

Continue reading “Making Real Simple’s Pistachio Pesto Risotto My Own” →