Down the Rabbit Hole- March 14

Welcome to week #2.

This week's menu was quite an adventure- where finding all of the sub-recipes for our finished meal felt like chasing a white rabbit down a rabbit hole.

"What was served at the mad hatter's table," you ask?

Menu: Sunday, March 14
-Sauteed Chicken Breasts with Tarragon (p 27)
-Red Potato and Green Bean Salad with creamy pepper dressing (p 228)
we selected quinoa to accompany our meal

We first started by preparing the salad. But in order to make the salad, we needed to make the creamy pepper dressing (p 183). And to make the dressing, we needed to first prepare a 1/2 cup of Aioli (p 333). And to make the Aioli, you must whip up some garlic oil (p 266). Boy was that an adventure.

Our first attempt at making the aioli was...
a disaster. It resulted in a watery yellow soup. Maybe we didn't whip up the egg yolks well enough? Perhaps the garlic oil was still warm? Or perchance we added the oil too quickly?

Whatever did happen, luckily we had some Hellman's in the fridge and cooked garlic cloves we had set aside after making the garlic oil. We mashed up the tender garlic into the Hellman's, et voila!...aioli.


We prepared the rest of the pieces of this vibrant salad: green beans, chives, and new potatoes and bibb lettuce.

























Hunter, meanwhile, drew on his Eagle Scout experience to fashion a meat tenderizer out of a bottle of rum and pounded our yellow curry + sweet paprika-marinated chicken breasts to a quarter of an inch thick.

We then pan-fried the chicken and created a sauce using butter, shallots, white wine, chicken stock, and tarragon. Boy did the kitchen smell amazing!

Final Plating-


To finish our meal, we enjoyed some delicious Cheshire Cat. Johnny Depp came over to hang out, too.

Yuck or Yum
-Sauteed Chicken Breasts with Tarragon (p 27): dominique-"it was pretty good. the sauce totally made the dish." hunter- "could have used more salt but pretty good and pretty tender."
-Red Potato and Green Bean Salad with creamy pepper dressing (p 228): d-"mmmm...absolutely worth all of the steps. that dressing is phenomenal!" h- "potatoes were a little mushy but still delicious- next time we'll make sure not to overcook them. the dressing was tangy and sweet!"