Easy Fancy Dinner Recipes From Lidia’s Kitchen

Have you tried making fancy dinner recipes from a celebrity chef show? 

Food shows are fun to watch yet the meals are difficult to recreate at home. 

Chefs make it look so easy when they whip up a dish. For me, it is virtually impossible to attempt to cook a fancy dinner from a recipe on a show.

Learning to cook tasty meals at home is a skill worth learning. A wonderful meal makes you and your family happy. Besides, cooking at home is more affordable than dining out, and you can control your ingredients to make healthier meals. 

Have you tried it though?  Watching cooking shows with famous chefs or “beating Bobby Flay” contestants, I feel woefully inadequate. I’ve taken a few cooking classes over the years but am not by any way, shape or form, a chef. 

Watching master chefs make food is mesmerizing though and I can’t get enough. Sticking close to home during the pandemic, my husband and I binged a lot of streaming TV.  We enjoy watching cooking shows together.  Trying new techniques and recipes is a lot of fun when they are geared for the home cook!

Our favorite cooking shows on Netflix and Amazon Prime:

The Chef Show – (Be sure to watch the movie first!) 

Chef’s Table – our favorite episode is Christina Tosi, Pastry Chef and owner of MilkBar

Salt Fat Acid Heat – we love how chef/author Samin Nosrat teaches the basic elements of taste and cooking 

New Scandinavian Cooking – my husband is of Swedish heritage and loves this show. Besides learning recipes from his grandparent’s youth, we enjoy the visual tour and cultural highlights.

The Great British Baking show – this show will give you the urge to knead!  As a brand new baker, I love watching the bread challenges.

Lidia’s Kitchen – she teaches you to make tasty Italian food. Even though Lidia is a chef and restaurant owner, she seems so down to earth. You want to pull up a chair and join her at the table.

Hands down, Lidia’s Kitchen wins the Easy Fancy Dinner Recipe award.

Lidia’s kitchen meals, made in our own kitchen came out as restaurant quality.  You may not believe me, but I am totally serious.  Whatever magic formula she has for ingredients, really works!  If we can do it, anyone can.

Here’s what we did:  We decided to try one of her recipes,  Pollo all’Arancia e Olive.  After rewatching the episode, and writing down the recipe, I had a bright idea.  I’ll search online and see if I could find any show notes. 

Guess what I found?  Her recipes are on her website – Lidia’s Kitchen.  Score!  

For meatless Fridays, there are vegetarian dishes. We were off to a new culinary adventure as many of these recipes look very doable for the home cook. 

Lidia’s fancy dinner recipes we’ve tried so far: 

Chicken breasts with orange and gaeta olives –  Pollo all’Arancia e Olive

Verdict – Easy to make and “are you kidding me?  This tastes so good.”  There are so many layers of flavors. I couldn’t believe we actually made it ourselves.  We’ll make this one often. (By the way, we substituted Kalamata Olives.) 

Butterflied Cornish game hens marinated in olive oil, garlic, rosemary, bay leaves and pepperoncini.  

Verdict – I learned how to de-bone a game hen or chicken which counted toward my goal of trying something new every week adventure.  And “Wow!  Can we talk about that marinade?  This is so-o-o-o-o good.

I couldn’t find the recipe on her website. We just watched the episode again from Season 2 and recreated it. By they way, we omitted the pepperoncini seeds since we like our spice a bit milder.

Beefsteak Maremma Style – Bistecca Chianina alla Maremmana

Verdict -The flavors are delicious.  This recipe is so simple with a grilled steak and rosemary paste with olive oil brushed on at the end.  The fresh rosemary gives it a subtle earthy flavor that takes the steak from good to great. 

I’d recommend checking out Lidia’s Italian Cooking show on Amazon Prime, on PBS or her website. Try a few recipes and let me know how it goes.  Anyone, even a basic home cook, can up their game with Lidia’s Kitchen .

Have fun and get fancy at dinner tonight.