And, the secret ingredient is...

My birthday was last week - midweek - and that always makes for a difficult on-the-day celebration.  The weekend prior, our family celebrated with tickets to see the Lion King during its run in Austin and dinner at one of my favorite, local, real deal Chinese restaurants (the kind with the whole, roasted ducks hanging with beaks and feet and various and sundry seafood in bubbling holding tanks). The show was spectacular and so was the roasted duck.  The combination of those soft, pillowy, white  steamed buns filled with that moist and delicious duck meat and crispy, seasoned, lacquered skin. Top that with some thinly sliced green onions and some hoisin sauce and you have a sandwich made in heaven.

So, when the actual birthday rolled around, it was up to me to decide what I wanted for my birthday meal... and to make it. Because I received pasta roller attachments to my mixer for Christmas, I thought a pasta dish would be a good place to start. But what to top it with? I received my bi-weekly box of veggies as part of our membership to Johnson's Backyard Garden, a local CSA and there was beautiful chard in it. Now, we were getting somewhere. Next, it was off to the grocery store to see about a protein.  Scallops looked fabulous and I've been wanting to make them for a while. I also picked up some fresh mushrooms to add to the mix and I was all set.  

Here is the final product:  Seared Scallops with Beurre Blanc served with Sautéed Chard and Mushrooms over Homemade Fettuccine. 

Pretty good, no?  Those seared scallops were beyond fabulous. The beurre blanc sauce was so tasty. The chard and mushrooms were a wonderful addition as well. But, let me let you in on a little secret. That pasta? That pasta? Not good. Looks good; tasted fine -  but the texture was….ummm...how do you say? More than "al dente" - tough, and a bit chewy.  So, what happened? Ahh….the secret ingredient - stress.  I know it might sound a bit cuckoo to think that what you cook might be affected by how you're feeling. But,  as I was making this pasta, the kids came home from school; we had a science fair project to work on; we had the usual evening homework that was due on Thursday, too; we had a pinewood derby car to get prepped for painting. There was just too much going on for me to really and truly put all of the time and care, and love into this pasta that it requires. I rushed, I was stressed and I lost my focus and it showed up in the pasta.  So you might be thinking, "If your answer to good cooking is don't cook when your stressed, then I can never cook again -- I'm always stressed."  That's not it at all.  Just take your weeknight schedule into consideration. What could I have done differently to avoid this set-back? 1) I could have made the pasta on the weekend and kept it in the fridge or freezer. 2) I could have chucked the pasta portion of the dish and just had the scallops with chard and mushrooms and sauce. 3) I could have cooked boxed pasta. So, the answer isn't to avoid cooking anything at all, but instead, to know when to dial it down a notch.  Nevertheless, we did enjoy that dinner - even if we needed a [steak]knife to cut that pasta.

Tune in tomorrow for the recipes~

Happy Cooking!
sld

Tweet