Receta Chicken with Mushrooms, Braised Garlic Purée and Mascarpone; the update
Una cosa menos.
Mon mari's new favorite phrase.
One thing less.
It was a phrase we heard often whilst living in Andorra.
It's a Spanish phrase, uttered frequently by our Portuguese builder working in Catalan-speaking Andorra.
We'd feel right at home in the Tower of Babel.
I've been hearing it repeated several times a day.
This morning, for example, he glued down a loose bit of wallpaper by one of the new door frames, than glued 4 mopboard tiles around the same frames, fixed a loose tile going into the pantry, removed, shimmed and reattached 2 kitchen cabinet doors that didn't close quite tightly enough, adjusted a ceiling fixture and hung 2 new cabinet doors.
Mostly he's doing things that didn't get done because something more important was waiting...
While we wait for the weather to get warm enough to go on to the next project.
In between doing all the little bits, he's finishing the kitchen. I can finally retire those blue cabinet curtains that were only supposed to last a month or two. The door on the left went on this morning.
That leaves the doors and drawer fronts you see in the center, plus doors on 2 upper cabinets. Then the kitchen will be officially done.
We had one nice day last week so I got a few herbs planted and transplanted fron last year's cow trough.
I can't do seeds yet, as it still gets cold at night but I did plant a few flower bulbs.
And I filled the cow trough with flowers:
Other signs of warmer weather are appearing: The barn door is open; the summer worktable is out (old door on pretty blue sawhorses), the barbecue grill is out, waiting for a new gas tank.
And my forsythia finally bloomed - a bit late this year. It looked better before all the wind and rain yesterday, but, that's spring!
For those of you careful readers, you might have picked up on the fact that, when I made the Garlic Meatballs with Angel Hair Pasta I braised extra garlic.
I agonized over what to do with it (Ha!).
I decided I hadn't done decadent in awhile.
- Chicken with Mushrooms, Braised Garlic Purée and Mascarpone
- 2 chicken breasts, boneless, skinless
- 4oz (125gr) mushrooms
- 2 shallots
- 1/4 cup garlic purée*
- 1/2 cup chicken stock
- 1/3 cup mascarpone
- 2 tsp olive oil
- Fried Gnocchi
- Trim and slice muchrooms. Slice shallots. Cut chicken breasts into 3 or 4 pieces. Heat oil in a medium skillet. Add mushrooms, shallots and sauté until lightly browned. Move to the side and add chicken pieces, browning on both sides. Add chicken stock and garlic, stir well to blend. Cover, reduce heat and simmer until chicken is cooked through, about 10 minutes. Remove from heat and stir in mascarpone. Serve over fried gnocchi
- Fried Gnocchi
- 8oz (250gr) gnocchi
- 2 tsp olive oil
- 2 tsp butter
Heat water in a medium pot for gnocchi. When boiling, add the gnocchi and cook just until they all float, 1 - 2 minutes. Drain and rinse lightly with cool water.
Heat butter and oil in a medium nonstick skillet. Add gnocchi and sauté until light brown.
Garlic purée: Separate the garlic cloves but do
not peel. Put the garlic, chicken stock, thyme and peppercorns in a
small baking dish. Cover and bake for 60 minutes at 325F (160C).
Strain chicken stock and reserve. When
cool enough to handle, squeeze the garlic out of the peel and mash with
a fork.
It's been sunny all day....
Tomorrow I may be lucky enough to be able to mow the lawn!