Creative License-8/12/09

Two posts ago I complained about bland recipes. Tonight, I decided not to settle for bland and did my own doctoring. I made the Spiced Chickpea Sauce from the Last Touch section in this month's Gourmet. I gave it a little taste test before I mixed the sauce with pasta and decided it needed some help. The chickpea and spice combination was Mediterranean in style so I added some feta cheese and chicken to give this sauce a little zip. It was bland and really needed some help.
For dessert, I made the Gianuia Gelato, a hazelnut chocolate gelato that smelled and tasted like a frozen jar of Nutella. I really liked this gelato. I'm not a huge fan of chocolate ice cream but the hazelnut flavor added a complexity that made this gelato very good. It made the extra time roasting, steeping, and straining the hazelnuts worth it. The only problem I found was how hard the gelato became when it froze up. I have to assume this was because of the lower fat and higher water content in whole milk instead of the heavy cream used in traditional ice cream recipes.
Spiced Chickpea Sauce-C
Giandula Gelato-A-

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