Nugget and Bean Make a Big Italian Mess

Hey there, blog readers! Today was an exciting day in the land of Nugget and Bean. The interest house where I live (and Nugget pretends to live) has organized a food co-op for Monday night dinners this semester, and this was our day to cook for everyone. Unfortunately, we also had a Writing Center staff meeting that didn't end until 5:15 PM, leaving us with a serious time crunch.

So of course, we decided to attempt a full Italian dinner: chicken parmesan, eggplant parmesan, tomato sauce, pasta, garden salad, and sauteed broccoli rabe. There was no other logical option. And by "there was no other logical option," I clearly mean, "Nugget and Nutmeg both came up with a million simple and delicious suggestions, and I somehow managed to talk Nugget into this one."

It was either this, or try to take over the world again.

Thanks to my powers of persuasion, it was decided that I would make a run to the grocery store in between my afternoon classes and pick up everything we would need to serve this menu to 10 people. I also sliced up the eggplant, salted it, and left it to sit. By the time we got back to the house at 5:30, the eggplant slices had released a lot of the moisture that would have made them soggy and greasy, and we were ready to get cooking!

Nugget made the sauce first while I got us set up. We dredged and breaded the eggplant and chicken cutlets, pan fried and topped them with sauce and some shredded mozzarella cheese, and then finished them with just a minute in the broiler. Straightforward in theory, but totally hectic in practice. Here's a breakdown of how it went:

TRIUMPH:

If you don't make your own sauce,
the aliens win.

 Nugget's homemade sauce. This was definitely the hero of the night. It took 5 minutes to put together, and then spent the rest of dinner prep innocently simmering on the stove until we needed it. Nugget loosely followed this recipe, but added her own touches: sauteed onions, a little oregano, and a bay leaf. The result was flavorful without being overpowering, and had just a little bit of kick from the red pepper flakes. SO GOOD. This experience has only reaffirmed our belief that there is never a reason to buy jarred sauce. In fact, it is so unnecessary that its existence can only be explained as part of a government conspiracy to hide the signs of the coming alien invasion.

DEFEAT:  The pasta. We pretty much forgot all about it in all the chaos of frying things, so we overcooked it and forgot to add oil to keep it from sticking. Also, we used most of the sauce on the eggplant and chicken, and didn't have much left over to help ol' globby there. Sorry, pasta.

MASTERPIECE: The salad! I made it in the afternoon, so it was fresh, pretty, and done ahead of time. Nugget also made some yummy dressing to go with it: three parts olive oil, one part balsamic vinegar, all parts delicious.

MISSTEP: The Mystery of the Missing Rapini. We remembered the broccoli rabe's existence half way into cleanup, so it stayed in the fridge. Expect it to make an appearance later this week.

SO AWESOME: The Set-Up. I love to have everything laid out within arm's reach before I start cooking, and I find it really satisfying to have all the ingredients I need arranged aesthetically. The two assembly lines in the mise en place for this meal fulfilled my every irrational desire.

SYMMETRY!

MORE SYMMETRY.

 NOT AT ALL AWESOME: The Clean-Up. My general cooking philosophy (inherited from my dad, the consummate get-it-done guy), is to clean up, wipe down, and store things away as I go. The frantic pace of this meal did not allow us to do any of that, and left us with a huge mess to deal with afterwards. Nugget and I sat at the dining room table for half an hour just trying to get up the energy to start.

I took this photo on a diagonal to represent the general
sense of chaos and disorder that engulfed us. Nugget
made a confused face to get me to shut up.
Expect vengeance photos this week.

The good news is, sitting around and pretending the mess in the kitchen didn't exist gave us a chance to tell secrets, munch on some cucumbers, and bask in the glory of a (mostly) successful meal. And when we finally got started, our long clean-up gave us ample opportunity to jam out to the Beatles (Nugget's got all the crazy harmonies). Our housemates gave us good reviews, but even if they were lying, it was still really rewarding to cook for other people. Ambition may be the Cardinal Sin of College Cooking on most nights, but every now and then it's fun to bite off more than you can chew.

... Get it? I used that expression because we're a food blog.