I stumbled across the Olive Garden website and found that they have a bunch of their recipes posted!
I am not a huge Olive Garden fan–I mean, I probably could be, since Italian food is my top favorite–if it weren’t for Macaroni Grill! But since Olive Garden’s prices are really not much cheaper than Macaroni Grill (and since the entire Macaroni Grill experience is far superior), I just don’t go to Olive Garden very often.
But if you’re talking about my home-made Italian food vs. Olive Garden’s? I’ll go with Olive Garden! I’m trying to cook economically, and we’re trying not to eat out. But I want to try once a week to make something a little tastier, a little fancier–even a little more expensive!
Last night we tried the Penne Romana recipe. (I used Olive Garden’s picture here, because I didn’t think of taking one until there were just leftovers. We were too hungry and too excited about eating it to think about taking pictures.)
It was fabulous!
The sauce tasted every bit as good as an Olive Garden experience–and definitely better than any Italian dish I’ve made at home previously!
This would be great paired with some Italian Bread and a Caesar salad–although we enjoyed it immensely as a one-dish meal.
I should mention that the prep time of 15 minutes must assume that you already have 4 cups of pasta prepared, 2 cups of beans blanched and your onions already pre-chopped. Or maybe they just didn’t factor in caring for two toddlers while you’re cooking, because I was in–and out of–the kitchen over an hour before it was ready.
It is a meatless recipe, and my husband really really prefers meat in his meals, so I added 1-1/2 lbs of chicken cut in 1-1/2 inch pieces (dredged in 3/4 cu. flour, 1/2 tsp salt and 1/4 tsp pepper, and sauted in 3 tbsp olive oil seven minutes). It would have been great with or without the chicken.
Adding the chicken really increased the quantity as well. The recipes says it is four servings, but we will probably get 2-3 more meals out of this, and we were stuffed after we ate!
We loved it! We’ll make it again!
In fact, if you come over, it just might be one of the meals we serve company!
I will be trying more Olive Garden recipes in the next few weeks, and I’ll let you know how they turn out!