Cooking Week 23: 20 minutes or less pan fried pork

20 minutes or less is a lot harder than you think.  My first idea of a meal that I usually make that I thought for sure would be under 20 minutes (garlic, olive oil, pasta, and broccoli) took only 10 minutes cooking time, but more than 20 just to boil the water.  Fail :(

My next plan was stir fry.  I picked out a recipe which I'll be making tonight only to realize that it requires the chicken to marinade for an hour.  Fail again.

What I wound up with instead was something I wasn't planning on using for the challenge, but I realized after the fact in fact only took about 12 minutes to make!  This is why there are not many pictures of my pan fried pork cutlet.

I found the recipe on Pioneer Woman's site (I love her!) and am very happy with it.  Basically you heat some oil and butter in a skillet while you dredge the pork cutlets in a spiced flour then  fry about 2 minutes on each side.  Super quick and very tasty.  I paired them with some microwave broccoli and roasted potatoes not included in the 20 minute challenge (as they took about 25)

This will definitely be a repeat recipe for me, although the boy requires I serve gravy with it next time.

Sheep!

The previously mentioned party was for my friend and ex-coworker who moved to NYC who is back for a few weeks before she goes galavanting around Europe for the summer.  Said friend LOVES sheep ( I suppose this makes it appropriate that she'll be spending 6 weeks in Ireland then) so I decided to make the sheep cakes pictured on the cover of this book.

Mine didn't come out as nicely as the books but she was thrilled with them.

The base is made of pound cake and the heads are milano cookies.  You dip them in melted frosting tinted black.

I had problems with the melted frosting hardening on the cookies and sheep feet.  I had them in the fridge and freezer FOREVER, well past the suggested 30 minutes, and they were still tacky when I was working with them.  Perhaps I had too much frosting on it, but I was thinking it would have been a lot easier if I had used chocolate ganache instead of frosting.

If you want to give them a try check out the book from your local library and try your hand at the sheep or any of the other ADORABLE creations in the book.  

Cooking Week 22: Cherry Tomato Tart

So I really wanted to do a Nutella tart since I heart Nutella so much but I realized despite my many many pans I do not own a tart pan.  I could have made it in a pie pan, but I think that then makes it a pie rather than a tart.  The line between the two is so fine.  Instead I made a puff pastry cherry tomato tart.

I found the recipe here.  Well actually I found it on Pinterest which led me to that site but you get the drift.

I think I used too much olive oil since it started to pool a pit when it came out of the oven but it was delicious.

I forgot to take prep pics as I was doing this VERY shortly before a party and was in some what of a rush :)

Definitely delicious though and I'd make it again in a heartbeat.