Chicken goes to spa and pears visit coconut milk

Spa chicken and barley casserole 

Pear and caramel cream sauce 

Yesterday I cooked a simple meal from the cookbook, my cooking every recipe plan.  This was called Spa Chicken, although I have no idea why.  My first thought was that the chicken was treated well, like it had visited a spa.  If so, the visit ends poorly because the chicken became dinner.  Maybe this meal was once served at a spa.  Basically chicken is simmered in a liquid with whole crushed garlic cloves and fresh thyme.  I cut the chicken into strips and squeezed lemon juice over the meat.  After simmering in the flavorful broth, all we tasted was lemon juice.  That was fine by me, because I actually don’t like chicken.  The side dish was from a Frugal Gourmet cookbook written to celebrate Christmas.  It was a barley casserole, and I loved it although everyone else found it plain.  I melted butter in my serving, and, well, I am the person who prefers vanilla ice cream to any other flavor, so plain is good by me.

 

My first dessert from the cookbook was pear halves cooked in caramel.  I rushed this one, I suppose, and it was plain also.  First I cooked sugar in water, once dissolved I added the pears. When the sugar water turns dark and caramel colored I add cream.  My substitution was coconut cream.  My problem was, the sugar water never turned dark, and I finally decided to add the cream and move on.  I imagine I will try again sometime.  The day before I saw a recipe cooked on PBS with pears covered in melted chocolate and pistachios.  I really want to try that one, but I can’t find the recipe online.  I have searched online with keywords such as pears with chocolate, pears with pistachio; pears cooked by Scottish Accent Man, and have had no luck yet.  This would be so much easier if I had a better memory.  

 

Next week I will be at my dad’s house, and he will be the lucky victim of my cooking experiments.  

Cooking the pears in the sugar water, above, and after adding the cream, below