Sunday, January 27, 2008

Stocking a College Pantry Part 2: Dinner with Friends


It is scary to try out a brand new recipe on your friends, but if you can't make them your guinea pigs, well, what good are they! Last week, I made Chicken with Shallots, Prune and Armagnac in a small, ill-equipped apartment kitchen. Using a skillet as a dinner plate, and a soup pot as a salad bowl, it felt very college, but truth be told, everything turned out magnificently.

Though the recipe involved a few ingredients that don't pertain to the college kitchen (prunes, brandy, fresh thyme), there are two new additions to the "Virtual Pantry"

Shallots: A type of onion the shallot has a pungent garlicky scent and flavor. Sauté them in olive oil before making a soup, a sauce or to flavor the oil before browning meat. They are also really wonderful in salads, either fresh or crispified. Shallots are a great source of Vitamin C and fiber. They also contain six times as many phenols, cancer fighting phytonutrients, than their mild cousin the Vadalia.

Chicken Broth: Could you get an ingredient more versatile? You can use this broth to extend a sauce, to stove-top cook chicken (like this recipe) or to form the base for your own soup.
Try adding this flavorful broth to mashed potatoes for a richer, more luxurious flavor without adding a lot of fat or calories

2 comments:

Marshal McNiven said...

Great post Ellie. You should make a cook book of your favorite recipes that the average college student could handle...simpleton cooking?

Ellie Barczak said...

Simpleton cooking....Its something i'm working on. Actually, I'm thinking about recipes that can be made with a minimum of added ingredients. Spice combinations will be the key! of course you have to buy the meat!