Ro’s Cheese and Pear Muffins

I’m in trouble – it’s only the start of the second week of January and I’m already bored with grilled chicken.

Soooo, since one of my New Year’s resolutions was to try at least one new recipe a week, I figured this was as good a time as any – after all, at last count I have over 1000 cookbooks – what in the world am I waiting for?

I started to peruse one of my cookbooks dedicated to chicken and found “Cheese and Pear Muffins” which sounded interesting but, alas, as often happens at Ro’s Garden, I didn’t have those ingredients per se but what I did have was close and could be altered. So this is what I did have:

2 leftover grilled chicken breasts, chopped-up

4 English muffins

A pear, sliced thin

Blue cheese (the book called for dolcelatte - a creamy blue cheese – I didn’t have a creamy blue cheese in the house, I only had some leftover Stilton blue cheese from Christmas which is much stronger in flavor – in fact, so strong that it would be the only thing anyone tasted in this dish. So yes, at the risk of offending cheese connoisseurs around the world, I bastardized my leftover Stilton and blended it with some cream cheese to mellow it down. Blending is a lot easier when the cheese is at room temp – btw.)

Garlic and Herb Butter – if you can’t find this in the butter section – head over to the bakery section – at least at the Market District stores in Pgh – and ask for some and they’ll sell you a container of the garlic and herb butter they use for making garlic bread.

The book called to garnish with watercress – yeah right – let me get right on that.

The book also said to split the English muffins and toast in the broiler – which I know I’ll burn to death so I just toasted them in the toaster and spread them with the garlic butter as they were done.

Then, I place them on a cookie sheet covered with foil.

Once done, I layered each up with sliced pear, gobs of my blue cheese spread, chicken, more gobs of blue cheese spread and now they went under the broiler for a few minutes to warm up and melt/soften the cheese.

Yum! These were definitely a do-again! – My pear wasn’t fully ripe so I’m making a note that next time, if the pear isn’t ripe enough, to take the time to poach it – the dish is so good that it would be worth the time, even on a weeknight.

Tortellini Soup ala Ro's Garden

Made the following soup for Mimi since she felt like she was coming down with a cold. She said it was like Italian wonton and very tasty. I saw a recipe for tortellini soup in a cookbook but I didn't have those ingredients per se, especially since it called for a *can* of spinach. But here are the ingredients I did have: