Plating...............

I thought about what foods would go together and what I would like to do. I thought about foods that I grew up with and loved to eat. I thought it would be easy, I had eaten the food so many times before. Then I thought about what plate I would put it on. Would I go with the square ones that I have been using, or would one of the new ones that I bought work? No I settled on the country blue ones that I had in my cabinets for awhile, since I was going with a southern meal I thought the plate would work. The ones I bought were really for a Italian meal or maybe a dessert.

Then came cooking, the meal seemed easy enough, the collard greens should go on first since they would cook the longest. Then I baked the cornbread and while it was in the oven I made the mayonnaise for the tartar sauce (even though I knew I would be the only to eat some of it).

Then I put the tomatoes in to roast and fried the catfish. I had already made the garlic chili oil for the plate.

Next was putting it all together, I made different shapes of cornbread (round and rectangle) and decided that since I was going to use a round plate that I should use the rectangle cornbread to start off the plating. Then came the greens (I remembered the little plate and it worked great) on top of the cornbread (I loved the juices soaking into the cornbread). I didn't leave the piece of ham on top so it would show in the picture. Then the catfish, I should have used tongs and not the spatula; I would not have knocked over the greens. I tried the decorative oils and again I so need more practice. When I tried it on a empty plate it worked great; when I did it on the plate with food not so good. I will continue to work on it. I treid to make a cannel out of the tartar sauce it worked until it hit the hot fish and started to melt. The tomatoes were easy I just don't know if three is enough, but then again that's another food I can eat my weight in. :)

When it came to eating everything was good. I actually needed more of the garlic chili oil for everything. The only thing I think didn't match with everything was the tartar sauce I would serve it on the side and now a day later I remember the lemon. It is still in the fridge, I guess I can make lemonade.

Chicken Marsala

When I started out on this assignment, I thought I knew what Marsala wine was. However after going to the first store and seeing that they only had a lighter Marsala I thought they didn't have the one that I wanted. So I went to another store, after talking to the lady there she said the same thing the lady did at the last store; Marsala wine can be red or a white-ish color wine. I thought the last bottle that bought was a dark red. At least I had the wine.

Then on to the cooking everything went well, I sauteed the mushrooms. Then my son who said he would never eat mushrooms decided that he wanted to try one. Bad mistake because it became a battle to keep him out of them until dinner. So I put him to work on making pasta. I was able to flambe the Marsala - again a bad mistake with both of my boys in the kitchen because now they want to do it. So if hear of a house on fire do to a kitchen fire you will know it was my boys, but don't worry one of them wants to be a fireman. :)
The other one wants to be a chef so it all should be good. Hopefully they won't do anything without me home.

I do think I like the veal better, the chicken wasn't bad it just wasn't as tender as the veal. My kids loved it, even my nine yr old. It probably become a regular in our kitchen.

I have to leave off my pictures for today, my computer is not recognizing my phone (I should have used the camera) I have to wait til Jess gets home to try and fix it. If she can't fix it I won't be able to get it fixed until Saturday when my husband gets home.

As you can see Jess was able to get the pictures off my phone. Now if she can just help rearrange the pictures. Good thing I'm not taking a computer class.