30-Minute Meals: Skillet Chicken Pasta with Broccoli and Sun-Dried Tomatoes

This is the second in my series reviewing 30-minute meals from Mel's Kitchen Cafe (previously: coconut shrimp curry). This time I tried skillet chicken pasta with broccoli and sun-dried tomatoes.

It's one of those recipes where you add dry pasta to a sauce, and (in theory) the pasta absorbs just the right amount of liquid to cook and leave a nice sauce. In this case, you saute some chicken (remove it from the pan), saute aromatics, add liquids and pasta, and cook. Add the veggies towards the end so they don't overcook, and finish with cream, Parmesan, and the chicken.

I was a bit skeptical, thinking it might be bland or watery. It was great, though.

Very flavorful, and super easy. The husband and kids all loved it. I think you could bulk up the veggies a bit if you wanted to - maybe add some peas and artichoke hearts? It's really good as-is, though.

Verdict: Success! Quick, easy, and yum.

Sweet Potato Fries, Take #1

I've had a hard time finding a baked sweet potato fries recipe that doesn't just result in limp pieces of baked sweet potato. This recipe from The Art of Doing Stuff promised to make them crispy and fry-like, and included sriracha mayo.

You cut up the sweet potatoes, soak them, coat in cornstarch and oil, and bake.

Here's what mine looked like right before going in the oven:

And when done:

As part of a meal with crockpot jerk chicken and citrus slaw:

They were NOT a hit (except for the sriracha mayo, that was tasty). The cornstarch made the fries gluey and gave an off taste. They were definitely not very crispy. The recipe says you have to play with the cornstarch and oil proportions - and I also thought I might have cut them too thick - so I tried again on another night, with thinner fries, less cornstarch, and more oil. I also baked them longer. The results were similar - mushy and gluey.

Verdict: Didn't really work. Maybe you could do batch after batch and find just the right methods, but I'm not going to keep trying. On to the next sweet potato fries recipe....

Double Recipe Test: Crescent Rolls and Kentucky Hot Brown Bake

This crescent rolls recipe is a very frequent pin. I was totally excited to find that it's from the Nomemade blog, from my way-back-when hometown of Nome, Alaska.

Less frequent, but still intriguing, is a pin for "Kentucky Hot Brown Bake" a casserole-style take on the Kentucky Hot Brown sandwich from Eat at Home. The recipe calls for canned crescent roll dough, so I thought I would try the homemade version and do a two-fer recipe test. These are the images I pinned:

The crescent roll recipe is a simple yeast bread recipe. It calls for powdered milk, and I've heard that you can't sub fresh milk. Something about the powdered variety makes the rolls really tender.

The Kentucky Hot Brown Bake is dough layered with turkey, bacon, tomatoes, and Swiss, with beaten eggs poured over.

The crescent dough came together really easily. One issue: the dough was waaaaay too sticky. I ended up adding almost an entire additional cup of flour.

Once that was resolved, everything went smoothly. I made crescent rolls out of half the dough, and saved the other half for the bake. 

Size discrepancies due to lots of "helping" by a certain 3-year-old. 

They came out GREAT! They were absolutely delicious, tender and fluffy. They just disappeared off the table at dinner. The batch that you see above was eaten in one sitting by three adults, two preschoolers, and two babies.

Next application: Kentucky Hot Brown Bake.

The recipe is simple: layer uncooked dough with sandwich ingredients, pour over beaten egg, repeat layering, pour on more beaten egg, then bake. This is it before I baked it:

I was leery that it might be overly rich and greasy or soggy, but it actually turned out quite well. I think it might be best suited as a brunch dish.  At the very least, you want a nice green salad on the side to make a more balanced meal.

Verdict: Crescent rolls = delicious, a real keeper. Kentucky Hot Brown Bake = A tasty and different brunch dish.