Baby Bellas and Strawberries

Menu:
Chicken Marsala (#1)
Roasted Potatoes
Sauteed Asparagus
Salad with Pinot Grigio Vinaigrette  
Strawberry Tart (#2)

After a frenetic trip to the grocer and liquor store, a bag full of items and a last minute dessert addition to the menu, I started my culinary ritual of apron, spoon and music around 6:30p.  During the day, three people were added to the group, my wonderful little sister, Regina, her fabulous roommate, and Claire's sweet boyfriend Josh.  So sixty minutes and dinner for six.  Coming right up...uh...right?  Sort of.  
 

Growing up in a big Irish-Italian family of gregarious and animated people, who enjoy the revelry of life, has taught me many things.  One of which, learned really from my dad's Italian side is that, punctuality is a very loose term.  Their lateness cannot be appropriately qualified.  Not the kind of "Oh, sorry, there is a traffic accident," or "The phone rang as I was walking out the door," fifteen minute lateness.  It is a serious lateness that has caused every clock in my childhood home to tell a different time, in my mother's hopes to trick my father, and, ahem, my sisters, into timely readiness.  This has yet to work.  In any case, last night I was banking on their lateness, and I got what I wished for!  Phew.

After getting the crust made and baked for my dessert tart and putting the potatoes in the oven, I started on the chicken.  The proscuitto in the recipe is a flavor catalyst in simply every way here.  As the recipes denotes, allowing some fat to cook up in the pan after removing the chicken fills the kitchen with the aroma of supper.  

This is my favorite part of the cooking ritual.  The major items are in their last stages, and now it is really the magic moments of the meal.  Timing is important, you must watch the pot to coax a sauce.  Here, you either make it or break it.  You only have one pan of drippings and juices from the meat, so you have treat them with such care as to not lose them entirely.  

So, naturally, this is when my guests arrived.  

After very quick hellos and handing off corkscrews and wine to my father, I was back at the stove bringing my wooden spoon to the baby portabellos.  Although the recipe calls for sweet marsala, I thought dry was a better choice, so I made this substitution.  Although I love to cook with wine or cognac or brandy and other alcohol, I have yet to ignite it in the pan.  My fear of igniting my entire beautiful apartment, and my roommate and I along with it, has always overpowered my desire to pretend I am on a cooking show in my kitchen and be so fancy with my technique.  (Perhaps this fear will be put to rest during this year of cooking adventure.  Maybe.)

Because I don't have a kitchen table, and dinner is shared around the coffee table and at the counter, sitting on couches and big comfy chairs, I plate the meals I make.  Ok, fine, even if I had a kitchen table, I'd plate meals.  There is something about arranging it all, pouring the right amount of sauce and adding a dash of parsley or parmigiano reggiano that brings it all together.  It is tying the bow on the present of your meal.  Forgive me, I digress in the worst, most annoying of ways.  

The result of this first meal in my expedition was quite delicious, I must admit.  There is nothing so amazing as butter, I'm sure of it.  I'll likely write this again and again, but there is simply nothing better than real, yummy butter.  The last moment of a sauce when you add a tablespoon...or two...or three, of butter is perhaps the most important.  Allow the butter to only melt and become incorporated and then immediately serve.  Oh, butter, thank you for that.  I promise I will never fall victim to other items masquerading as you.  

298 to go.