Dear readers,

Over Christmas, I was very thoughtfully gifted The Tucci Table cookbook, and so I of course got right to work in making a handful of recipes this past week! The only recipe I did make and didn’t take a photo of was the Israeli Cous Cous with oven roasted cherry tomatoes and roasted garlic, but I can confirm it was ABSOLUTELY delicious!!

Chicken Noodle Soup

The biggest thing I would say about this is to give yourself enough time to make it – I made the incorrect decision to just wing it all around 4pm, and didn’t realize the soup needed 2 hours to simmer, on top of the 40 minutes the thighs needed to cook….whoops. BUT on the whole, Chicken Noodle Soup is a very special dish in my life because it was the very first thing that Frankie ever cooked for me just a few weeks into our courtship (we were not in a relationship yet but his effort put in a huge plug towards making that official…though we like to tell everyone we knew instantly we were for each other, which honestly is actually true! Insert ah’s and that’s so cute here). But I will say that next time, because I’m not always a big fan of thighs, I would actually do chicken breasts (either slow roasted with the thyme and on top of onions as the recipe tells me to) OR onions and thyme in the instant pot…tbd as I need about a month before I want to make this again my way. The other thing is the wide noodles – they are way too thick. Next time I will use thinner noodles just because the thicker ones got super sticky with each other and made the leftovers a little coagulated. BUT the flavor totally knocked our go to soup out of the running period…definitely worth the time and effort!

Pasta with Fresh Cherry Tomatoes and Basil

This recipe was super easy to make, especially on the fly because the work week was IN. SANE. None the less, I will say that next time, I’m going to add in some roasted tomatoes separately if only to enhance the flavor. I also used 1 1/2 containers of cherry tomatoes because I felt it needed them, but otherwise, this pasta was amazing, and I even served it with some toasted white bread topped with some of the pesto from the recipe book as well! Who knew pesto on top of bread was so delicious? New favorite way to take regular garlic bread to a whole new level! I also used linguine because I like that kind of pasta a lot lately.

Next up: Mussels and Steak with Oregano! Stay tuned for more review!

Hoping you are well and safe!

— Cooking Maggie