Thick and fast these 15 minute meals are coming now. If I'm not cooking them I'm writing about them and if I'm not writing about them... well... I should be. I seem to constantly be about three posts behind where I actually am - I'm writing this about a week after I cooked it. But I guess that's what happens when it gets to the point where I have to pretty much cook a meal every other day in order to complete the challenge. I hope Lolz isn't expecting a crazy New Years Eve - on December 31st I'll be cooking my way through whatever is still left to do and so our midnight champagne may well be accompanied by some steak medallions or camembert parcels or one of the other 20 meals I have yet to cook...
But no time to worry about that now, today was another pasta day and we went for this chicken cacciatore as some of the ingredients overlapped with a couple of previous dishes. Plus we have another half marathon on Sunday so we need to get some carbs inside us. By all accounts this was a very typical pasta dish. Pasta, tomato sauce, bit of meat, bit of veg (mushroom mostly, unfortunately). There was nothing about the dish which seemed particularly noteworthy and to be honest I was expecting another scathing review from Lolz.
It had one thing going for it - it uses the more tasty chicken thighs rather than breasts but chopping them into 1cm chunks is a lot more laborious than the book seems to give credit for. I was hunched over my chopping board for about 10 minutes doing that. With that in the pan, you gradually prepare and add the rest of the ingredients until, with everything cooked, you ponder how you will effectively mix everything together when both saucepan and frying pan are too small to hold both pasta and sauce. I basically dumped everything on the platter, hence the rather sloppy presentation.
Personally it wasn't one of my favourite pastas so far. There were mushrooms everywhere and, even though I'd reduced the quantity of passata, it was still swimming in sauce. I've also come to the conclusion jarred peppers are not designed for pasta sauce - the pickled flavour doesn't go well with the rest of the ingredients. Lolz however was very enthusiastic, describing it as "not as offensive as some other pasta dishes" - now there's a compliment!
Lolz gave the dish 8/10. Difficulty rating 4/10.
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