weekend

Friday M worked from home, and for brunch I made us a diner-style omelet (From America's Test Kitchen 2009) that was quite good. I've made the basic recipe before, but concocted a filling this time based on what I had in the fridge: Black Forest ham, asparagus, and Swiss. I do love this omelet method: there are only 5 eggs in it (serving two), but after you beat the eggs to triple their volume and then fold in about 1/3 cup of whipped cream, it becomes quite an imposingly fluffy and very filling breakfast.

Friday night we were to have friends for dinner as they passed through on their way to the beach, but sadly they were stranded for several hours in the middle of Kentucky after their car broke down and didn't quite make it in time for dinner. It was hardly an inconvenience to put the extra chicken into the freezer and pare down the easy recipe I made to serve two. I really liked this method (from Daisy Martinez) of starting boneless skinless chicken breasts on the stovetop, then adding a sauce and moving them to the oven covered with foil to finish. Although the orange juice/lime marinade didn't knock our socks off, it added some interesting flavor. I would just be sure to season the meat with a little more salt and pepper before cooking it next time. With this I made the black bean rice from CI's Restaurant Favorites, and an intriguing new recipe, pandebono or Colombian cheese bread.

I should start a new paragraph for this. It's funny---I picked up a box of yucca flour (= tapioca starch) in the Hispanic section of the farmer's market a couple months ago because I remembered reading someone somewhere  raving about something called pandebono, but I couldn't for the life of me find where. I began to think I had dreamed about something plausible that didn't exist (as often happens with me), so I googled around, discovered that it does exist and call for the yucca flour I'd bought, and settled on this recipe, which people who commented had actually made rather than filling the comment box with absolutely useless remarks like "wow lol looks tasty!" (Sorry, pet peeve.) I used all queso fresco rather than feta, per other recipes I saw. Mixing this bread scared me at first, because one egg for that much dry stuff plus semi-wet cheese did not seem like enough moisture. It really didn't come together until I learned how to squeeze a handful of the mixture several times, holding for a few seconds and passing to the other hand---it's hard to describe, but sooner or later it would cease being a frustrating mass of crumbs and become a very tidy ball. For an incidentally gluten-free bread I was very impressed with the results. The flavor, while maybe a bit sedate to an American palate used to the sharp flavors of cheddar and a continual onslaught of sodium, is delicious and somehow pairs well with the chewy texture.

**Edited 4/14/12 to add: Since I've gotten a food processor I made these delicious cheese balls again, and realized how much less work they are to shape when mixed that way. Just wanted to note that; if you have a food processor, it's definitely worth getting out for this. And if not, I still think they're worth a little extra work. Yum.

The photo above was Saturday night's dinner in the making: another Daisy Martinez recipe. This was a creamy pasta sauce with basil and artichokes (I use one 12-oz bag of Trader Joe's hearts rather than the 2 9-oz boxes she calls for, which seems like it would be too much to me). I used pancetta instead of the prescribed serrano ham or prosciutto, and I daresay it worked fine. I liked this sauce a lot, and while M said it was a bit girly, he got seconds.