What's cooking Wednesday and March Moment Day 26

Welcome to another week flipping through the pages of A Taste for Justice: A Bridgehead Cookbook. This week I made a recipe that was, like last week's, very easy however I didn't like it quite as much as the pork recipe from last week. The recipe for this week had rum in it and it was a little too overpowering for me. I would give this only a 3.5 out of 5 if I was a rating kind of girl. However, if you like to cook with rum then I definitely recommend this. By the way, Emily really liked it. Well, she really liked the cashews.


Cashew Chicken in Raisin Sauce

5 tbsp raisins, small, dark and seedless
5 tbsp rum
1/4 cup butter
4 chicken breasts, halved, deboned and skinned
slat and pepper
3/4 cup chicken stock
1 tbsp cornstarch
1/2 cup light cream
1/2 cup cashews

Soak raisins in rum and set aside.

Heat butter in heavy skillet. Add chicken, salt and pepper to taste. Cook over medium heat until tender, about 30 minutes. Remove chicken from pan and set aside.

Add the stock and bring to a boil. Mix together the cornstarch and cream and add to the stock. Bring to a boil again, stirring continuously for 3 minutes. Add soaked raisins with liquid. When ready to serve, add cashews and reheat the chicken in the sauce with lid on.

That's it. Really, can you find an easier recipe that also has a decent shi-shi factor? Maybe I didn't give this recipe enough credit above. I mean, I did steal a few extra bites from Emily's plate after she had picked out and eaten all the cashews, including some of mine. I did like it, I just found the rum stronger than I expected. But, served over rice (I made a mixture of brown, white and wild), it was really quite good. Okay, maybe a 4 out of 5.

Clearly I won't be asked to come to Beijing. I'm a waffler.

And a quick foray into a small moment for today.... I had a surprise visit from Louise, Emily's first daycare provider. Louise and I became very good friends while Emily was with her. Emily only left because Louise closed the daycare (after ten or so years) to attend teachers' college. Now she is done, living back in Ottawa and supply teaching. She had the afternoon free and came by for a visit. I haven't seen her in about 18 months and it was so great to hang out with her and watch Emily fall in love with her all over again. Really, it made me miss her that much more. Hopefully we'll see each other more often over the next few months. Emily had Louise reading to her pretty much as soon as Louise walked through the door. Probably the words going through Emily's mind were "fresh meat."