I said I’d post about the rest of the lunch I made for my friend this weekend in the next post, and this is the “next” post. But because I am tired, and facing another possibility of not falling asleep till almost 3am (tonight it was “Lost” cupcakes that had me on my feet for the better part of 6 hours), I will just present the pictures with minimal words…

First up, the “Fresh Tomato, Basil and Garlic Sauce Over Angel Hair Pasta“, recipe courtesy of The Food Network courtesy of Wolfgang Puck (I loosely interpreted the “fresh” part…I have no fresh herbs so I used the dry versions. And my tomatoes were peeled and canned.  Hey, this is still fresher than buying ready-made!).  I have a thing about making my own sauces for pasta lately as opposed to jazzing up the ready-made stuff with my own touches and calling it a day.

Before the immersion blender…

After the immersion blender…

Looks like something out of Dexter, doesn’t it?  Anyway, the instructions on the original recipe don’t actually tell you to purée the tomato, onion, garlic mixture but one of the people commenting on the recipe said he puréed the sauce so I wanted to do it too.  I also thought it would spread better if it was puréed.  And the real reason — I wanted to play with my immersion blender.  The sauce tasted good, but I think next time I’ll be adding a little boost to it — such as ground Italian sausages for one.  This sauce could be a good starting point for a meaty sauce.  Ground beef, ground turkey…endless possibilities.  I’ll likely try the Italian sausages next.

And now the Chicken Marsala — a Tyler Florence recipe, again, courtesy of The Food Network.  Recipe here –>  click.

Crimini mushrooms…At first I was going to use regular mushrooms since I wasn’t sure if my grocery store had criminis, but then I saw them…And I’d never used them in any recipe before.

The reason they call it Chicken Marsala…

The sauce…

When I had my friend taste the sauce to let me know if it lacked anything, I was met with a stunned silence and a look on her face that basically told me she was in heaven.  I guess that meant it didn’t need anything more!

And it all comes together…

I’m ashamed at how blurry this is, but I wanted to put up a closeup…

I was really happy at how everything came together.  I had 2 1/2 helpings of the food.  And then some.  So did my friend.  The chicken marsala especially was quite an achievement for me considering I made it for the first time and it was perfect to me.  Well, not “perfect”…there’s always room for improvement I’m sure.  By the way, the criminis made a big difference.  It added a richer flavor to the sauce that I don’t think I could have achieved with the everyday white mushrooms.  I also added some flour I dissolved in water to make the sauce thicker.

Yeah…nothing clever or witty tonight guys.  Just me straight up talking about food.  But as always, the pictures speak for themselves.