The I Heart Cooking Clubs
picks a chef and his/her cuisine to explore twice a year, they change chefs every six months, alternating between women/men chefs.
This week marked the change-over from chefs Yotam Ottolenghi to Donna Hay.
Once I heard that Donna Hay was the chef for this rotation of IHCC (from now through the end of March), I figured we would be enjoying even more of her recipes each month as I would want to participate in all the fun going on at IHCC. (I already belong to a group for the last couple of years that cooks from Donna Hay's recipes called Wednesdays with Donna Hay.)
The I Heart Cooking Clubs chooses a theme for each week and the participants may cook/bake any recipe they wish from any of Donna Hay's books or online, etc. which fits into that theme, posting at will sometime during the week before the following Monday when the new theme goes into play (themes for the entire month are listed on the right sidebar of the IHCC site here). Once you post, you simply leave your link at the site and readers are able to click on other participants to see recipes chosen by them. I like the freedom of this style of recipe selection/posting/linking very much.
The theme for this first week of Donna Hay recipes was G'Day, Donna Hay! (make any of her recipes to welcome her to IHCC). Last spring, a blogging friend, Jerry, sent me a nice little surprise in the mail for my birthday: Donna Hay's cookbook Simple Dinners. It is loaded with wonderful recipes and I am just loving this book, so probably I will try to do this book justice and select my recipes from it.
For a nice G'Day, Donna Hay! welcome, and as my welcome to this book, I selected the cover recipe, Pasta with Chorizo, Tomato, and Basil. You will find the recipe on page 40 of Donna Hay's Simple Dinners cookbook. You can also find the recipe online here.
The recipe comes together easily, which is a big plus always on a busy weeknight. We liked the light dressing of olive oil, lemon rind, and garlic tossed with the pasta, the burst of the warm tomatoes, and the spicy chorizo flavored with the fried basil. The cheese melted for a creamy goodness. Definitely a repeat, it was delicious.
Please visit the I Heart Cooking Clubs site to see what the others made, you just click on their photo entry and it links you to their post/recipe.