I love my apartment, and I love summer, but gosh is it hot in my home right now. Once the weather gets warm, our place heats up and just never seems to cool down again until summer is over (the perks of living on the top floor, right?). The idea of turning on the oven can just about send me into a fit of tears, so we’ve been eating a lot of quick, simple summer salads for dinner around here. My new favorite combination is can barely count as a recipe, it’s just a few quick ingredients tossed together: baby arugula, cubed cantaloupe, chopped up prosciutto, crumbled blue cheese, salt and pepper, and a drizzle of olive oil, good balsamic, and lemon juice. Need a few more summer salad ideas? I included a list of some of my favorites below:
I love digging through my Grandma’s cookbooks to see the little notes and edits she’s made to the recipes over the years (inside the front cover of the book we borrowed is a note to my Grandmother from sister-in-law, and it’s dated 1967, when she received it as a gift!). When I was home at my parent’s house this weekend, my sister and I decided to borrow an old cookbook from my Grandma and make a family favorite recipe — Chicken Champagne. Her version has those little notes written in the margins of the pages (for example, her version omits the chicken livers, PHEW!), and I’ve adapted it a little bit more to omit some of the hard to find ingredients (like shaved truffles). Excuse the grainy cellphone pictures I took of our version — we were in quite the rush to dig in — it’s far more delicious than it could ever look in a photo! Find the full recipe below:
Ingredients:
4-5 boneless chicken breasts, cut up into bite-sized pieces
All-purpose flour
Jarred mushrooms, drained
1/2 cup of butter
5 thin slices of prosciutto, diced
1/2 cup of heavy cream
1/2 cup of good Champagne (drink a little while you’re cooking too!)
Salt and Pepper
Serve with angel hair or thin spaghetti (fresh is best if you can find it, it absorbs the sauce so well)
Instructions:
Toss chicken breast pieces with flour until lightly coated, season with salt and pepper.
In a large pan, melt 1/2 cup of butter, and add chicken. Cook chicken in butter until browned.
Once chicken is fully browned, add in mushrooms, prosciutto, and heavy cream. Stir to combine and simmer for 5 minutes.
Add champagne, stir, and cover for another 10 minutes.
Season with additional salt and pepper as needed, and toss with fresh grated parmesan.
Serve over fresh pasta with additional parmesan cheese on the side, and don’t forget to pour a glass of champagne to compliment the meal!
Note: The sauce doesn’t reduce as well if you double the recipe, instead, use 2/3 of champagne and cream.
Last night I had one of my girlfriends over for some dinner and drinks on our porch — I’m determined to soak up the warm(ish) weather as long as possible — and truthfully, I didn’t have a dinner planned until about an hour before her arrival. But leftover fig spread and some tasty goat cheese caught my eye in the fridge and I went with it. A quick spin through the grocery store and I had the makings of a fig, goat cheese, prosciutto pizza — I jazzed up with some fresh chives when it came out of the oven, and had rolled some special rosemary infused sea salt into the crust. Sometimes simple is just better, and this was certainly the case — my last-minute meal was a hit, and it paired perfectly with one of the iced tea infused honey wines I picked up from last weekend in Maine!
