Recipe #4: Crispy Braised Chicken Thighs

I cooked this two or three weeks ago, but kept putting off blogging about it because I was so "meh" about the result. It was the first recipe I attempted that I have no desire to repeat, which makes me sad, as it's from Thomas Keller's Ad Hoc at Home cookbook. I sort of expected to be the most awesome thing I'd ever cooked just because of the Keller magic.

I don't think I cooked it wrong. I don't think the recipe is bad. I just think that Crispy Braised Chicken Thighs with Olives, Lemon, and Fennel isn't quite my thing. I'd never eaten fennel before. At least, I'd never cooked with it, and can't recall eating it in a restaurant. I'm glad I've tried it, but I'm not wild about the flavor. The overall effect of the recipe was both bland and bitter, though my husband did say the house smelled like a fine French restaurant when he came downstairs for dinner that night.

Anyway, here are the ingredients:



And here's the final result:



It looks kind of pretty, at least.

Recipe #3: Beans

A brief post this time, since I forgot to take pictures and this was a pretty simple recipe anyway.

My attempts to work with dried beans have historically gone poorly. Cooking the beans isn't hard, but the recipes I've tried have typically involved long lists of ingredients with endless chopping and rooting through the spice cabinet...only to turn out bland, not worth half the trouble.

One of my vows with this project was to actually use the cookbooks I've bought or received as presents the past few years. This weekend I decided it was time to break in The Pioneer Woman Cookbook, which is very much a home cook's cookbook. I'm still working up the courage to try Keller or Bourdain for myself.

I was going to try one of the cubed steak recipes, but I was sufficiently daunted by what Amazon Fresh was charging for the 2 lbs the recipes called for that I decided to try beans instead. And they were very basic beans. I just simmered four cups of pinto beans with some bacon, and during the last 20 minutes stirred in salt, pepper, chili powder, cayenne pepper, and garlic powder until it tasted good. I then served it with cornbread and salad, with assorted additional toppings--salsa, sour cream, cilantro, red onions, cheese. And it tasted better than any of the elaborate bean recipes I've attempted in the past.