Couscous with Chicken Sausage Ragu

(No picture today D:)
Couscous with Chicken Sausage Ragu

Type of dish: Almost a whole meal -- side of vegetable needed
Type of taste: Warm, chunky, moist

This Wednesday my mom and I cooked Couscous with Chicken Sausage Ragu, found here (#47). I must warn you, we used quinoa instead of couscous. We have a huge bag of quinoa, so we decided to use that instead of having to buy a thing of couscous. I think it tasted just as good! We also steamed some cauliflower! For this recipe, I was a little confused by directions, because I think we got the wrong sausage. We got these small, already-cooked sausages, so I had to improvise. I think it was good for my cooking skill, though, because I had to make things up and stuff. I just threw a bunch of stuff in the pan and cooked it all.



Assessment:

Recipe: Alright
The recipe did not give a lot of specific directions, but you do not really need them for this recipe. I just winged it and it tasted just fine.

Difficulty: Really easy
You literally throw stuff in a pan and mix it around, although I probably should have cut the chicken sausage beforehand, instead of trying to slice it with the wooden stirring spoon... While the stuff is cooking, you boil some couscous (or quinoa if couscous is too mainstream) and put some cauliflower in a steamer.

Time: 15 minutes
This was super-speedy-quick. It might have taken a few minutes longer than 15, but it was definitely really fast.

Taste: Pretty good
Yum, yum! It was not my favorite dish in the world, but it was pretty good! I enjoyed the meal, and so did my family. It is great for the short amount of time it takes to cook.

Next time: Get more stuff
It didn't really make much, especially now that I am cooking for five (my brother came home for the summer a few weeks ago). It also didn't help that one of the sausages was missing (ahem ahem thief ahem ahem). It filled us alright, but there were no leftovers and I was not completely satisfied. Of course, by satisfied I mean filled to the brim with no room left.


Overall: 7 out of 10
The taste was pretty good, but not great. I am a big fan of the easy, fast cooking, though. I might make this again, but it was honestly not my favorite.

(Oh, and I did make banana pancakes. They were good, but nothing special. We make them a lot.)

Next week I will be cooking something, if the universe does not blind me with the sun.

Chicken Bacon Pasta

Chicken Bacon Pasta

Type of dish: Almost a whole meal -- side of vegetable needed
Type of taste: Italian, creamy, warm

This Wednesday my mom and I cooked Chicken Bacon Pasta, found here. We really enjoyed it. It was not very hard to make, although we did have to do some planning. We had my dad grill the chicken, so it does need someone else to grill, but if was fairly easy. We had to do a little configuring, but once we started cooking it was easy. My family all really liked this and I think I would do it again. It is a really good dish.



Assessment:

Recipe: Fairly easy
The recipe was easy to follow, but some planning is required beforehand for everything to work out right.

Difficulty: Pretty simple
You cook bacon, start boiling some pasta, and then you marinade chicken and heat up some stuff in a pan. Then you just throw it all together. Pretty simple, although it does require multiple steps.

Time: 1 hour
This was a fast meal, but you have to cook bacon beforehand, which took like twenty minutes. If you get bacon that is already cooked or if you cook it during or just do not use bacon, it will save time.

Taste: Great
I really liked this dish. It was a little hot, (plainchicken.com seems to like to put red peppers on stuff) but I really liked it. I did the half red peppers like she said and it helped. We marinaded the chicken in caesar salad powder stuff and some oil and spices. I thought the tastes all blended well together and I really enjoyed it! I was not very hungry but I ate two helpings of it.

Next time: Switch something out with the bacon
It is always a hassle to cook bacon and I would like to try this with something else, like some cheese or a vegetable or something.


Overall: 8 out of 10
This dish was not as simple as others have been, but it really does taste good. I am sure it would taste better if I did not burn the bacon next time! I would make this again.

Next week I will be cooking Banana Pancakes, if the universe does not take away my cooking privileges because I threw up on its rug.

Chicken Lazone

Chicken Lazone

Type of dish: Almost a whole meal -- side of vegetable needed
Type of taste: Warm, creamy

This Wednesday my mom and I cooked Chicken Lazone, which you can find here. It did not take much time at all and was very easy, although I did get spices under my nails. That miiiight have been because I coated the chicken by tossing it with my bare hands in a bowl, but who knows? I really liked the taste of the meal and thought it was creamy and flavorful without being too spicy for my tastes. I was worried it would be too spicy because of the red pepper and various spices, but it wasn't. My family enjoyed it and I might cook it again. It was enjoyable as leftovers today as well. It nukes in the microwave gracefully.



Assessment:

Recipe: Easy to follow
The recipe was very easy to follow. I had no trouble with it. Just read it beforehand to plan accordingly.

Difficulty: Super-dee-duper simple
You just mix some stuff and throw them in a pan, then you heat up some sauce, all while boiling some spaghetti. Seriously. So simple.

Time: 40 minutes total
It took forty minutes total to cook the meal from the beginning until sitting down to eat it. I'm sure cooking it a second time would knock off even more. The recipe says it takes fifteen minutes, but it really doesn't account for prep time. Still, it was a fast meal.

Taste: Very good
The taste was delicious. It is on the border between good and great, because I really enjoyed it, but my socks were not knocked off by the sheer fantastic flavor. I really like it with pasta, but I might try it with potatoes next time.

Next time: Try it with potatoes
Okay, so the expense segment didn't last long. Don't hate me. Here's a new one! It tasted really good with pasta, and I cannot really think of anything major to change if I make it again. However, the recipe suggests putting it on baked potatoes instead of pasta and I think that would be good. I might also try rice and manipulate the spices so that it is a bit spicier, sort of like curry.


Overall: 8 out of 10
This dish was very easy and simple, but it tasted very good. It did not take very much time at all to cook and my family really enjoyed it. I would make this again, but I would try it with a different base next time if I am feeling adventurous.

Next week I will be cooking Chicken Bacon Pasta, if the universe does not put me in the corner for a time-out.

Broccoli Spaghetti

Broccoli Spaghetti

Type of dish: Almost a whole meal -- side of fruit preferred
Type of taste: Plain, warm, with occasional spice

This Wednesday my mom, sister, and I all cooked Broccoli Spaghetti, which you can find here. It was really quick to make and tasted very good, but it did not fill us as much as we would have liked. We also felt like it could have something else added to it -- my mom thought fruit would be nice. We didn't really plan for fruit, though, so we just had the broccoli spaghetti. Also, we used rice pasta instead of regular pasta, so it turned out a little different than it would with wheat pasta.



Assessment:

Recipe: Easy to follow
The recipe was very easy to follow. I had no trouble with it. There was one bit I had slight confusion over, but it didn't really affect the cooking.

Difficulty: Very easy
I remember thinking "I could make this again" when I was cooking it, because it was so simple. You boil some spaghetti, pick some chicken off an already cooked chicken, cut some stuff, and sauté it all together for like ten minutes. Very simple and easy.

Time: 30-45 minutes
This did not take much time at all! It took my mom, my sister, and I about thirty minutes total. An inexperienced cook who is cooking by herself (or himself) will probably take forty-five minutes, but it shouldn't take longer than that. It is a good meal for a night where you don't have much time, because honestly is very easy and fast.

Taste: It was good, but not much more
It was very good, especially with parmesan cheese on it, but it was not great. I didn't like the red peppers, but the dish was a little plain without them. My mom liked it better with olive oil drizzled on it, but I will have to try different things if I make it again. Perhaps I'll try a different spice, or I'll add something like bacon into the mix...

Expense: $6 ($5 with wheat pasta instead of rice pasta)
Do you like my new segment? The dish cost about six dollars total to feed a family of four with little to no leftovers. It was actually a little less than that because we only used about half of a rotisserie chicken and 3/4 of a bag of broccoli. This is a good, inexpensive meal.


Overall: 7 out of 10
This dish took no time at all and it was very good, but it did not taste spectacular. It was good, but the little bits of red pepper irritated me and my mom thought there were not enough of them. I will probably have to do a little bit of tweaking to make it more delicious, but other than that it is very good!


Next week I will be cooking Chicken Lazone, if the universe does not shove me on an island in the middle of nowhere.

Chicken Pot Pie

Chicken Pot Pie

Type of dish: Whole meal -- no sides needed
Type of taste: Creamy and hearty and warm


So apparently the universe has plotted against me, because this week I did not make the Broccoli Spaghetti that I promised last week. Oh well. This week we decided to make a simple, easy recipe, Chicken Pot Pie (I do not have the recipe right now but if I find it later I will put it in, sorry), because we were also making a few meals for neighbors. Each batch of the recipe makes two pies, so we made two batches, ate one pie ourselves, and gave the other three to neighbors. It is a really, really good recipe and the pie tastes spectacular. It was also pretty easy to make! Even though we made two batches, it did not take us much longer than an hour and a half at most.



Assessment:

Recipe: Simple and easy to follow
The recipe was easy to understand. Even though my mom did most of the recipe reading, I looked at it a few times and it was very simple.

Difficulty: Easy
It was very easy. We cut some stuff up, put it in a pan, cooked it with some other stuff, then put it in a baking dish, stuck a pie crust on top, and stuck it in the oven. Very easy.

Time: Around 1 hour
We had three people working in the kitchen, but basically in the morning we put chicken in the crockpot (which took 5 minutes). Then, in the evening we shredded the chicken, cut some onions, and sautéed them together, adding random stuff until we ended up with the insides of the pie. We poured it in a pan and put a pie crust over it and cooked it for around half an hour.

Taste: Delicious... Like I'm-fangirling-right-now delicious
This chicken pot pie is sooooo good! We never have leftovers unless we make a bunch, and even then we don't have many leftovers. It makes me sad, but it does taste a lot better fresh. I want some right now...


Overall: 9 out of 10
The only thing I would change about the recipe is that the sautéing process makes a bit of a mess. Also, it is not the fastest recipe in the world. I really do like it, though, and don't know why we don't make it more often.


Next week I will be cooking Broccoli Spaghetti, if the universe does not plot against me again. Seriously, Universe, knock it off.

Loaded Baked Potato and Chicken Casserole

Loaded Baked Potato and Chicken Casserole

Type of dish: Whole meal -- no sides needed
Type of taste: Hearty and warm

Last Wednesday my mom and I tried a recipe for a delicious-looking potato chicken casserole, which you can find here. It took about two hours total to make, although not all of that time was busy work. The end result was fairly delicious, but the potatoes had not been cooked long enough, so that detracted from the taste. I would definitely cook this again, but I would cut the potatoes smaller and cook it a little longer. This dish is not a fast dish, but it is pretty easy.



Assessment:

Recipe: Easy to follow
The recipe was pretty easy to follow, although I did have to ask about a few things. I don't know if this is chalked up to my little experience as a cook, but I did not completely understand the recipe. It was not difficult to follow, it was just the tiniest bit unclear.

Difficulty: Easy
I basically cooked some bacon, then chopped up a bunch of stuff and stuck it in a pan. It was very simple and easy, but it did require a bit of multitasking (or the help of an awesome mother) to start from scratch. Next time I will cook the bacon beforehand and I will use the cubed hash browns to save me time from cutting all the potatoes.

Time: < 2 hours
The shortest amount of time it will take to cook this dish (for example, if you already have everything prepared and in the dish) will be about an hour and a half. That is just cooking time. If you start from the very beginning (raw bacon and all) at 4:30 like I did, your family will not eat until 7:00. All the chopping and preparing and cooking of the bacon takes up a good half hour to an hour. It is not 2+ hours of work, however. An hour and a half of the cook time is when the dish is in the oven.

Taste: Delicious... if you cook the potatoes thoroughly
I made the mistake of not cooking the potatoes quite as much as they should have been cooked. They weren't crunchy, but they were definitely not soft. It did not detract very much from the flavor, but it sure messed up the consistency. The casserole is mostly potatoes, so the taste is a bit blander than some recipes, but the bacon and cheese add enough spice and pizazz to keep it interesting and flavorful.


Overall: 7 out of 10
The dish was easy and delicious, but it took a long time to cook and it was a bit "eh" for that much work. My family enjoyed it, but they didn't show much interest in eating it again. I will probably make it again someday, simply because I loved the slightly plain taste, but I will be tweaking it.


Next week I will be cooking Broccoli Spaghetti, if the universe does not plot against me.