June 16, 2016

The cookbook I used for the June meeting was An Essential Guide to Cooking and Entertaining.

This cookbook included recipes from the members of The Chew, a television program.

I only did two recipes from this book, and I decided that I would not use anymore.  Not that the recipes were bad but that they were nothing special.

The first recipe was Carmelized Onions and Sausage Puffs on page 119- it was easy to follow and not expensive to make, however, the taste was less than Nothing Special but better that Ugh and that was only for the taste of the onions and the sausage.  The puff pastry came out very greasy preventing the pastry from puffing correctly.  I do not know how big the pastry sheets they used were, but, the ones I bought were way to small for the amount of sausage required.

The second recipe was Chicken Meatballs Marsala on page 17- easy to follow recipe, not expensive and taste was Good for the meatballs and Nothing Special for the sauce.  If a new to cooking person were to try cooking this recipe they would probably start crying.  It does not tell you how many or how big the meatballs are, whether to crowd the pan or not and whether or not this can be made ahead and reheated, also 2 Tablespoons of oil might not be enough to fry the meatballs.  The sauce needed something else, straight Marsala gave it an off taste.

The next meeting will be August 18th.