Skip to main content

Weekend Cooking - The Chopped Cookbook

Weekend Cooking is hosted by Beth Fish Reads

I love Chopped. It's one of my favorite shows, but I was a little nervous about the cookbook.  I wondered if it would be a cookbook of weird food combinations. But thankfully it's full of recipes I can't wait to try. 

I have a sensitive stomach, so a key test for me when picking new cookbooks is finding out how adaptable are the recipes.  I went through the book and marked a few that looked good and looked like I could make the slight changes I would need and still have a good meal.





I chose the Grilled Chicken Sandwich with Parsley Pesto.

The adjustments I made were small and just dealt with the seasonings.  We cut the 1 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes in half (it was still a little too spicy for me) and did away with the 1 teaspoon lightly crushed fennel seeds.

The sandwich was really easy to make and was really good. The pesto was delicious but was nothing compared to the toasted buns.  The buns are toasted with Parmesan cheese, red pepper flakes and the fennel seeds. We just put the Parmesan cheese on the rolls and baked them. We enjoyed them so much we made them again the next night to eat with our pasta.


The pasta the next night we used the Quick and Easy Marinara sauce as a base for the sauce we had the next night for dinner.  It was really good and another recipe that tasted great on it's own but stood up to our quick kitchen adjustments.

I can't wait to try more things from this book!

I received this book from the Blogging for Books program in exchange for this review.

Labels:

Comments

  1. Anna@herding cats&burning soupNovember 10, 2014 at 7:14 AM

    Oh that sounds great! I'm a bit picky with seasonings--I'm a total wuss when it comes to heat--so love finding ones like that that can be tweaked a little and still work.

    ReplyDelete
  2. AmeliaNovember 10, 2014 at 1:28 PM

    That's how we are, so there is not a post-it note in the book on how much red pepper flakes we will add when we make it again.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Laurie CNovember 10, 2014 at 2:39 PM

    Love pesto in any incarnation, but the toasted rolls sound divine!

    ReplyDelete
  4. AmeliaNovember 10, 2014 at 2:43 PM

    Those rolls were great! I feel like every roll from here on out needs to be toasted with some Parmesan cheese and other seasonings on them.

    ReplyDelete
  5. BethFishReadsNovember 10, 2014 at 3:57 PM

    I too would have been hesitant about a chopped cookbook -- worried about some weird combos. But this sounds like a winner. We like hot, so we'd use that red pepper!

    ReplyDelete
  6. AmeliaNovember 10, 2014 at 5:09 PM

    We have a number of recipes bookmarked to try and all of them seem easily adaptable (like taking out the ham or adjusting the hotness level).

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Blind Date with a Book

Last year I put together a book display called Blind Date with a Book.  I found the idea through another librarian's post and thought it was great.  Last year I wrapped 19 books and 15 books were checked out.  We asked that people reviewed the book but unfortunately only two people returned reviews. Last year's books included: In the Hot Zone by Kevin Sites Night by Elie Wiesel Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon by Daivd Michaels Macbeth by Shakespear A Million Little Pieces by James Frey Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel An Inconvenient Truth by Al Gore Under the Dome by Stephen King Lawless by Nora Roberts The Sinatra Files by Tom Kuntz The Help by Kathryn Stockett The Dante Club by Matthew Pearl Ford County by John Grisham The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery The Postmistress by Sarah Blake A Beautiful Mind by Sylvia Nasar Hide & Seek by James Patterson A Vintage Affair by Isabel Wolf Gorgeous East by Robert Girardi Most of these books were ones tha
3 comments
Read more

Nonfiction November: My Year in Nonfiction

Hosted by Sophisticated Dorkiness this week This week's prompt: Your Year in Nonfiction: Take a look back at your year of nonfiction and reflect on the following questions – What was your favorite nonfiction read of the year? What nonfiction book have you recommended the most? What is one topic or type of nonfiction you haven’t read enough of yet? What are you hoping to get out of participating in Nonfiction November? What was your favorite nonfiction read of the year?  I don't know if I can pick one favorite, I looked at my list and there are at least 10 that I really enjoyed so far this year. If I had to pick my top three they would be: Caffeinated by Murray Carpenter My Beloved World by Sonya Sotomayor I Am Malala by Malala Yousafzai All three of these books really caught my attention and really made me take a look at my life.  I saw how much of a caffeine addict I really am, how lucky I was to be born in the suburbs in New Jersey, and how with hard wor
13 comments
Read more

Peek Inside a Book - Becoming

Book Beginnings on Friday from  Rose City Reader   The Friday 56 with  Freda's Voice . This week I'm reading: Becoming   by Michelle Obama It Begins:   Preface March 2017 When I was a kid, my aspirations were simple.  On Page 56: This was the doubt that sat in my mind through student orientation, through my first sessions of high school biology and English, through my somewhat fumbling get-to-know-you conversations in the cafeteria with new friends. Not enough. Not enough.  It was doubt about where I came from and what I'd believed about myself until now. It was like a malignant cell that threatened to divide and divide again, unless I could find some way to stop it.  Verdict: I'm really enjoying this look into Michelle Obama's life. It's comforting in a way to see that she has struggled with self image, self doubt and a need to be in control in an order to comfort herself.  She talks about meeting new people while cam
10 comments
Read more