Barefoot in Butter

On Wednesday, I went over for a casual dinner at C&L's house. C had told me that if I made it early I could join the kids in making cupcakes. I got there just as A was 'helping' to sift the cocoa. It was then that I realized that these were not Duncan Hines. C had pulled out the Barefoot Contessa for kids cupcakes. Works for me. I like butter. A lot.

We had a little problem with the mixer, so we ended up using the food processor for the batter. It looked really cool.




And tasted mighty good on the end of an index finger.


Now, I'm not generally a fan of cupcakes - cake in general just isn't my favorite way to get my sugar-fix - but these really looked yummy.



And they tasted quite good as a pre-dinner 'snack' (just one, we had to save some for dessert).

Luckily, C had planned the whole dinner from Barefoot Contessa and so there were still plenty of other things to add butter to. Her menu was Chicken Piccatta, Roasted Onions and Sauteed Greens. I actually would have been better off making the Chicken Piccatta the night before (I'd had a bad day at the office and all the pounding would have been perfect, but I managed to do it even while not working out frustration). It's actually a pretty easy dish to make (I'd never made it before and was surprised how fast it was (pounding the chicken flat actually took the most time)). The onions were easy - C had made a marinade, I dumped them on a cookie sheet, roasted for 40 minutes and we were good to go. The green vegetables (asparagus, green beans, broccolli rabe) were just cooked in butter.

We ate this fabulous meal (easy and fabulous - just don't skimp on the butter) with a Freedman and a Sea Smoke Pinot (both 2004s?). The Freedman worked really well with the piccatta - the strong fruit with the lemon in the sauce. The Sea Smoke was just fabulous.

I need to buy the cookbook. And more butter. Soon.