Attempting to Cook: Chicken Stuffed with Philly and Basil etc etc...

Let's just get this out there...I'm a terrible cook. Or at least, it's not really something I am known for. Whenever the word "cook" comes out of my mouth, anyone that knows me within a 10 mile radius has a heart attack and then faints from the shock. To be clear, it's not that I can't cook, I just well...don't. I'm what you'd call 'an instruction based-cooker' I can do exactly what the little writing on the box tells me, so long as it isn't complicated, but more than that and I'm stumped. Creativity is not my forte when it comes to food, nor is cooking lingo, half the time i don't know what they mean (seriously...how exactly do you 'sweat' an item of food, at least hygienically).

So, filed under my "personal growth/I have too much free time on my hands" improvement regime, is my 'try some new recipes' cooking adventure.

This week's menu (most of it impromptu, and based off of what I had in my fridge):

Starter: Spinach salad with cucumber, red pepper, tomatoes, feta, salt and pepper and a dash of olive oil: This was a bit of an afterthought, and something for us to eat while waiting for the main to cook. It's salad, but one of my favorites.

Main: Chicken stuffed with Philly (spiced) and wrapped in parma ham:
Okay, I did some tweaking to the recipe i used for this, which I dug up here.
1) IQ and Rifha, my two guinea pigs friends are both Muslim, and follow a Hallal diet...meaning that the parma ham was a big no-no. I would now like to take the opportunity to point out that, while inquiring around the local grocery stores if they had turkey bacon no less than five different people laughed at me for even suggesting it, including bystanders. I wound up finding a lovely beef alternative, known as Chiavennasca. It's a dried beef, seasoned with all sorts of tasty spices, and I'd never heard of it before, but it worked just fine, although may have been a bit drier than parma ham or streaky bacon.

2) The recipe called for basil cream cheese, but i wasn't able to find that, or the garlic herb flavor so instead i just bought plain (light) cream cheese and stirred in my own spices - garlic, more garlic, fresh basil, dried basil, and some various 'mixed spices' that I inherited from a friend when she moved back into the states...the result was probably the tastiest part of the meal. Seriously...Rifha and I wound up fighting over who got to eat the leftovers...delicious.

The chicken turned out decently, and it's nice to know that even with my minimal cooking skills I didn't completely botch it. Overall it was pretty good, if not the most exciting thing I've ever eaten (but hey, it didn't taste like death so that's good). The Chiavennasca was a good substitute i feel, and is something i will remember for the future if a recipe i am trying calls for bacon/parma etc etc.

Verdict: Probably not something I'd actively go "wow i'm really craving this" but definitely something i can whip up easily if i need to. Tasty, if not memorable. But sometimes you need that.

Dessert: Baked Apples with Amaretti and Marsala Filling
Again, this was off the cuff, but one of the few recipes i'm pretty comfortable with. My oldest brother is a chef, and good at what he does. This is the recipe he first gave to me several years ago when I was finishing up a research internship in New York City. Basically, I hadn't had the best time (not horrible, just boring) so I wanted to go out with a bang. These were my secret weapon. I'm also a big fan of them because it's a recipe I feel comfortable enough (as i discovered that night) to just whip together without measuring and prepping etc etc. My only issue with them is that I still absolutely suck at getting them to look good. This is where watching too many cooking shows (and listening to my brother rant) is either a bonus, or a negative...I understand the virtue of plating, but it tends not to work out well for me. Also, while I personally am a huge fan of this dessert, I'm not so sure Rifha and IQ were as into it as I was, it's not to everyone's taste, but I love it.

Verdict for the evening: Tasty if not memorably so, and no one died! I consider that progress.