Two New Recipes

I recently read Hungry Monkey, a Christmas gift from Edie. One thing the book accomplished was to inspire me to try a few new recipes. Calvin isn't yet eating from our table, but I dug into my copy of The Best 30-Minute Recipe and found some new ones to try.

I'm not going to post the recipes because Cooks Illustrated is good people and you should buy the book. Plus I'm too lazy.

First up was skillet lasagna. Instead of the meatloaf mix I bought some italian chicken sausage from Uli's at the Ballard Market and squeezed it out of the casings. I also added a bunch of extra basil because I like some basil in every bite. The big innovation in this recipe is that the pasta is cooked in the sauce, eliminating the need to boil water or dirty an extra pan. It worked pretty well, although the sauce was definitely gluten-ier than normal. I'm not sure if that was a positive or not. I might give the technique another try on normal pasta night, but otherwise there wasn't anything exceptional about that particular recipe.

Next I made a hash. In Hungry Monkey, Amster-Burton goes on and on about how duck leg hash is a staple at his house. I'm a big fan of breakfast-for-dinner, so it sounded pretty good. The recipe in Hungry Monkey is just frozen hash browns sauteed in duck fat with some duck mixed in. The 30 Minute Recipe version is a corned beef hash with bacon and onion. I subbed some nice Loki Fish Company smoked salmon for the corned beef and topped it with fried eggs instead of poaching in situ, which is another one-pot trick. It came out pretty well. The bacon and salmon were a nice salty combo with neither overpowering. I used a little sour cream, Edie used ketchup.

Both took a bit longer than 30 minutes, but I chalk that up to first-time slowness. I could get the hash down to 20 with no problem.

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