Broccoli Ravioli

We made ravioli tonight from scratch. Well, Aaron started making them then had to take a long phone call so I ended up doing a bunch of it. I don't have the recipe on hand. I don't know that Aaron does either; the first thing we did was swap broccoli for spinach and then things got out of hand from there.

I'm hoping to try it myself in the next few days, minus the parts that didn't work out so well. Then I'll write it up properly.

Seville Chicken

This recipe comes out of the same cookbook as last time. Again, I changed it a bit more. Again, it was delicious. The biggest deviation I take from the recipe in this case was the replacement of slivered almonds with dried cranberries. I did it wrong. As I did them the cranberries were fine but very unremarkable; they could have been awesome.

Ingredients:

5	boneless skinless chicken breasts
1 1/4 cup	uncooked brown basmati rice
2	chorizo links, cut into chunks
1	onion, chopped
1	orange, peeled and sliced, with a thin section of rind reserved
3/4 cup	white wine
2 1/2 cup	chicken broth
2	garlic cloves, crushed
1/2 cup	dried cranberries
	flour
1	yellow bell pepper, sliced
1	red bell pepper, sliced
6	roma tomatoes, diced
1/4 tsp	thyme
	olive oil
	salt
	black pepper
	flour

Procedure:

To the flour add salt and pepper to taste. Dust the chicken with the flour mixture and fry in olive oil until well browned. It's fine if your pan is not large enough to easily fit them all frying at once; you can just do them a few at a time. Don't worry about cooking the chicken through as it'll cook for plenty of time later. Set the chicken aside. The recipe book recommends that you only need about 10 tsp of olive oil to fry all of the chicken but I found about twice that much to be appropriate.



Cook the garlic and onions for a few minutes in the used oil. Once they begin to brown, add the bell peppers. Cook until they soften a bit add the chorizo and stir fry some more.



After the chorizo gives you a bit of fat in the bottom of the pan add the rice and cranberries. Stir this around on high heat for a minute or two to tease the rice a little bit. I'm not sure exactly what this does, but I did it and it didn't seem to hurt anything.



Add the tomatoes, the broth, and the wine. Also stir in the thyme and the orange peel. Bring this all to a simmer and return the chicken to the pan. Simmer for about an hour, until the chicken and rice are tender. Just before serving, stir in the orange pieces and allow them to heat through. Serves five.



This recipe is supposed to have almonds instead of cranberries. I forgot to get them at the supermarket so I worked with what I had (and hey, cranberries go wonderfully with orange). The mistake I made was assuming for some reason that cranberries should be cooked as if they are almonds. Since I added them with the rice they got to simmer for the full hour. Over the course of that time they plumped up and basically lost all taste. I think the best way to do it would be to add the cranberries ten minutes before serving (or perhaps even right at the end with the oranges). That way they would still be sharp and firm. In that case a hint of cinnamon may also have been appropriate, or maybe even a bit of brown sugar.

The chicken was another deviation I took from the book. They recommended thighs. I used breasts. I think they suffered for not having skin; the flour didn't adhere to the chicken very well. The pieces are also huge. I think a better way to do it would be with chicken chunks, maybe a sixth of the size of the breast. They're more convenient to eat as well as having more surface area to hold onto the fried crust.

The recipe specifically wanted crushed garlic. I cut it into chunks and crushed it using the bottom of a mason jar. It was a bit juicier than I'm used to from mincing garlic but I don't know that the difference is relevant.

This recipe will be revisited. It was really quite delicious. I think it helped that I haven't cooked with thyme before. It's a nice little spice.