Vertical Pear Salad, Chicken Saltimbocca, Quinoa Genovese, Orange Brownies, etc (Entertaining)

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Vertical Pear Salad, Chicken Saltimbocca, Quinoa Genovese, Orange Brownies, etc (Entertaining) Friday, October 29, 2010, 10:40 PM

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My grandparents were in town and offered to take us out to dinner. Well, we decided to cook instead. The menus we printed and put at each seat is above. It is probably easier to go course by course.

Vertical Pear Salad

This was the first thing we planned too. We got the idea a while ago from here (local) but we did it with spinach, grated cheese and toasted pine nuts. Meredith made a really nice vinaigrette with the orange juice leftover from dessert (below). We also used the orange juice to stop the pear from turning brown.

First I sliced a small bit off the bottom to get it to be flat, then we sliced it into three slices. I cut the core out of the middles ones and then we assembled the salad. We used a toothpick between the layers to hold it together. We were sure to tell our guests to expect two toothpicks so they do not get it by accident.

It was good but you didn't get much salad. Still, you had a whole pear. The pears were locally grown and had been sitting in a brown bag for a week. They were perfect!

Dinner: Chicken Saltimbocca, Brussels Sprout, Quinoa Genovese

The chicken saltimbocca (done previously) was very good. It was just flattened tenders, with a slice of prosciutto and then some sage leaved. After folding (not rolling), we dipped it in just flour and sautéed it. For this, we prepped it fully and then I excused myself during the appetizer and sautéed it. They were good.

The quinoa was very good. Meredith just kind of came up with it. It was quinoa, some chicken stock and then a lot of basil (the Genovese region of Italy is known for basil and pesto). Then she added some steamed broccoli and grape tomato halves. Plus a bit of pine nuts, garlic and Parmesan. It was very good.

The Brussels sprout were pretty good but a bit overdone. We had to push dinner back a bit so they got a tad crispy but not too bad.

Dessert: Orange Brownies in Orange (No sugar added, low fat)

We had seen something about cooking cake in an orange on The Kitchn recently and liked the idea but wanted to change it to brownies. Then, I googled it and found a Today Show thing on it. Well, their thing had the author of Cooking for Geeks telling them about this. I own his book and found it as well.

I cut off a medium slice from the top to get a nice opening. I then used a paring knife and cut around the opening. After that, I used a spoon to hollow it out a lot. Note that I didn't cut the bottoms because I didn't want it to leak. This led some to fall over but that looked even cooler (see photo below).

We used this recipe without walnuts. Also, we added a good amount of orange rind (from the slices) and some orange juice to the batter. It was low in points (see below) and okay. Honestly, it still tasted a bit fake but that is to be expected. I, wanting to have my brownie and eat it too (hahaha), want to find a recipe with similar points that taste better. We also served decaf coffee with dessert.

Rough Points Calculation

The pear salad was 1 for the pear and next to nothing for the very little bit of dressing. There was cheese and pine nuts but not much. I am not really sure about the nuts but lets just say 3 total to be safe.

Dinner: The chicken was 6 per person (calculated previously). The quinoa was 1 cup dry total. That is four servings for four people. And we had a good amount leftover. Forget the leftover and say 3 per person, plus one for the other stuff. The Brussels sprouts were zero. If I recall correctly, the bread was 3/serving and 7 total servings. So that depends (but still not bad).

Since we can assume there will be more than 3 servings, we can count all the fiber

The whole meal, with 5 points of bread, is therefore 3+6+4+5 (bread) + 4=20. A lot but not bad for such a nice big meal with company!

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