First Post

In future, I'd like to post an entry for every new (to me) or otherwise remarkable meal I cook, but for this first, I will just describe briefly what I have cooked until now.

Most recently:
Pasta with Cauliflower (from How to Cook Everything)
Roughly, boil some water, cook cauliflower in it, and then pasta. Having cooked the cauliflower, fry it up with some garlic and olive oil and anchovies, and then add it to the pasta. The cauliflower, which should have been cut up fairly finely to begin with, becomes rather soft, and serves as a wonderful sauce to the pasta.

The recipe worked very well, as stated, and I was very surprised as to both how tasty and how filling it was. Next time I'm trying it with broccoli.

Pasta with Butter, Sage, and Parmesan (from How to Cook Everything)
This is exactly what the title suggests, and it's great. As the cookbook author points out, it takes about as much time (and costs about the same) as boxed mac and cheese, but it tastes better. It is remarkable only because making it made it clear to me how much better cooked food is than most prepared foods, and how little effort cooking could require.

Chicken Pot Pie (from Chanterelle)
This was a major ordeal. I made the pastry dough in advance, and then still spent several hours cooking the pot pie. The filling was, for some time, in danger of not sufficiently thickening, but a friend's help and some corn starch solved the problem. I think I either used too much chicken stock (unlikely, as I followed the recipe exactly), or I prepared the filling wrong (this is it; one should, I believe, add stock to the roux, rather than the other way around, and add the stock relatively slowly - I added the roux to the big pot of stock). The pie itself came out well enough - the crust was messy, and the filling undersalted, but both of these are minor concerns. I think the making of the pie was a very positive experience; it's greatly enhanced my confidence in the kitchen.

Chicken Parmigiana (from How to Cook Everything)
This is the first meal I cooked on my own. Everything went completely according to plan, and the recipe provided was very easy to follow. Not a particularly difficult dish, but important also in giving me the confidence to proceed further.