Cookbook Project, Books #45 and 46
May. 1st, 2009 09:13 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ladysprite"Casseroles & One-Dish Meals," Betty Crocker
Yep, it's another glossy checkout-lane pamphlet. Better get used to these, I've got dozens of them. This is one that I bought for myself, and it's one that I've used more times than I can count - if nothing else, it's got a surprisingly good recipe for quick red beans and rice that I use almost monthly.
I wanted to try something different for this project, though, and there was a recipe that had honestly caught my eye since the first time I looked through the book - Garden Risotto. I never made it, though; partly because the fresh veggies require either planning ahead or same-day shopping and partly because there's a part of my brain that cries out, 'but risotto is HAAAAARD!' But I've picked up a few techniques since starting this project, and lost a lot of my fear of unknown techniques, so I decided to go ahead and try it.
It was not bad at all. Not change-my-world good, but it made a nice light, vegetarian dinner, and I'm always happy for recipes that use zucchini - come end of July, I'll probably dig this one out again. And it's fun to work with yellow peppers; not enough recipes call for them.
"Easy Summer Recipes," Betty Crocker
Okay, this was an all-glossy-checkout-pamphlet week. I need to start mowing through these things if I don't want to wind up at the end of the year with nothing to cook from but a stack of Betty Crocker and Pillsbury booklets. This one was a hand-me-down from![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
umbran's parents, and I've never used it before. But Tuesday was indistinguishable from summer, and desperately called for a salad-based dinner.
The Italian Bread Salad in this cookbook bears no resemblance to any other version of panzanella I've ever seen - it calls for quick-sauteing zucchini and bell peppers (red, this time), and doesn't have any tomatoes. But for all that it's an extremely variant recipe.... it's good. Quick, doesn't heat up the kitchen too much, and the flavors wind up mixing together really well, a bit to my surprise. This will almost certainly go into my rotation of summer salad dinners, subset 'too much zucchini.'
(is it garden planting time yet? please?)
Yep, it's another glossy checkout-lane pamphlet. Better get used to these, I've got dozens of them. This is one that I bought for myself, and it's one that I've used more times than I can count - if nothing else, it's got a surprisingly good recipe for quick red beans and rice that I use almost monthly.
I wanted to try something different for this project, though, and there was a recipe that had honestly caught my eye since the first time I looked through the book - Garden Risotto. I never made it, though; partly because the fresh veggies require either planning ahead or same-day shopping and partly because there's a part of my brain that cries out, 'but risotto is HAAAAARD!' But I've picked up a few techniques since starting this project, and lost a lot of my fear of unknown techniques, so I decided to go ahead and try it.
It was not bad at all. Not change-my-world good, but it made a nice light, vegetarian dinner, and I'm always happy for recipes that use zucchini - come end of July, I'll probably dig this one out again. And it's fun to work with yellow peppers; not enough recipes call for them.
"Easy Summer Recipes," Betty Crocker
Okay, this was an all-glossy-checkout-pamphlet week. I need to start mowing through these things if I don't want to wind up at the end of the year with nothing to cook from but a stack of Betty Crocker and Pillsbury booklets. This one was a hand-me-down from
umbran's parents, and I've never used it before. But Tuesday was indistinguishable from summer, and desperately called for a salad-based dinner.The Italian Bread Salad in this cookbook bears no resemblance to any other version of panzanella I've ever seen - it calls for quick-sauteing zucchini and bell peppers (red, this time), and doesn't have any tomatoes. But for all that it's an extremely variant recipe.... it's good. Quick, doesn't heat up the kitchen too much, and the flavors wind up mixing together really well, a bit to my surprise. This will almost certainly go into my rotation of summer salad dinners, subset 'too much zucchini.'
(is it garden planting time yet? please?)
