april food

Risotto with Peas and Prosciutto

Our second try at risotto—this time much more successful. No cheese and just a touch of cream, with the addition of the peas and prosciutto, made Matthew liked this time around much, much more. Actually he really loved it, which is a ringing endorsement. Go me.

Source: A combination of several different recipe ideas

Roasted Chicken with Lemon

The recipe that I took this from actually used fish here, but I never ever cook with fish because we both really don’t like it. So, it might have been better as a fish recipe, but it was still fine with chicken. Nothing to write home about, but it was a good meal.

Source: Food Network website

Fried Smashed Potatoes with Lemon

Here’s how this dish went: boil baby potatoes, smash them with the palm of your hand into disks, pan fry them, and coat them in a lemony dressing. It would have been delicious, but the lemon was a little overpowering. Next time we’ll leave out the lemon dressing and call it a jour.

Source: Food network website

Herbed Pasta Primavera

Similar to something I made in February (I believe), this dish was basically a mixture of pasta and vegetables (carrots, green beans, zucchini, green onion). I wouldn’t normally think of carrots and green beans with pasta, but there you go. Not bad.

Source: Better Home and Gardens cookbook

Foccacia

This was amazingly fantastically delicious. Focaccia is an olive oil and herbed bread, if you didn’t know. This recipe made a whole 12x17 pan of bread, and boy I could’ve eaten the whole thing in one meal if my stomach would have had room. Matthew also loved it. Definitely a winner.

Source: Elly Says Opa blog

Chicken Piccata

Eh. This was all right. I don’t really have anything else to say about it. 

Source: Simply Recipes blog

Sweet and Sour Meatballs

These were great! I was a little dubious, because I don’t really like barbecue sauce, but we used J'dawg's bbcue sauce and they turned out really delicious, and more significantly, Matthew loved them. Success!

Source: Another food blog

Chicken in Tarragon Sauce

This was one of those recipes that was a “well it wasn’t super amazing but it was something different and expanded our culinary horizons a bit and it wasn’t bad” sort of recipe. 

Source: Yet another food blog  

Let's see... over all, I think that the foccacia, meatballs and risotto were the favorites from this month. Hey we can have 3 favorites...it's hard to choose!