Thu, Aug 20, 2009

Say Cheese!

Recently I've been cranking up the heat in my Super Ate Food Challenge for 2009. I've cooked up 2 new dishes recently - Cheesey Macaroni & Honey Mustard Chicken. Aside from cooking, I guess life has been throwing a few challenges at me, but also so much to be thankful for. Most of all, I'm getting married!! And second of all, I'm going to see Relient K play live in Sydney with the girl I'm going to marry. How awesome is that!?

This first dish, Cheesey Mac, was a spur of the moment attempt. I'd just woken up with an inspiration to try to cook it - so I quickly found a recipe and gone to shops to grab some ingredients. By the time I got home, I didn't have long before I needed to head off to a youth leaders meeting. The kitchen was an absolute mess, and so was my brain because it had to work in double time. Fortunately, I cranked out the dish pretty quickly and it looked alright (although slightly burnt around the edges).

The results? Well, I don't think it was cheesey enough, so I may have to attempt it again to turn up the cheese level. But the bacon bits were definitely a good addition (my own perogative). Overall, not a bad attempt but probably not yet as good as the packet stuff.

By the way, the only reason I didn't present the final dish without all the burnt stuff around the bowl was because I ran out of time. I did however put a lovely bottle of Corona next to it to add some atmosphere to the photo! :P

I thought it was about time I tried a more "professional styled dish" - so I looked up a recipe using a new app on my iPhone. Chicken with Honey Mustard Sauce. I guess cooking the chicken, the beans and the mash was fairly easy (especially since Samara made the mash & cooked the beans :P) - the challenging part was making the sauce. While I felt I followed the direction fairly closely, I think I ended up leaving the sauce cooking for too long so most of it evaporated and I was left with a small amount of very liquidy sauce. I definitely need to work on this sauce technique to make something thicker, but Samara & I agreed that the flavour was fantastic!

Well, that's all for now. I think that's 4 dishes down, 4 to go. Half way there and still over 4 months left in the year. Speaking of which... WOW this year has gone quickly!