What I cooked this week, Episode 8

Look, we actually ate some green foods this week!

Episode 8, July 26-August 1

Guacamole

For our main course this night we had leftover chili, but I whipped up a bowl of guacamole to, you know, mix things up. You can get complicated and add things like fresh tomato, onion, cumin, chili powder... but usually I just like to keep things simple: avocado, garlic, lime, cilantro, salt.

Bacon risotto and balsamic roasted Brussels sprouts

Andrew and I love Brussels sprouts, so I was really excited to try this recipe from White on Rice Couple. It was everything I could have wanted it to be, namely, easy and tasty. We paired them with my standard bacon risotto, for which I got to use my most recent batch of chicken stock. Before heating it up and adding some water, the stock had a jelly-like consistency--what might have caused that?

On Saturday, we had a party! And I made lots of food:

Chicken satay with red curry peanut sauce

One of Andrew's favorites and a standby of mine for when we're going to have company. I just broil the loose chicken pieces on a baking sheet because I don't have access to a grill (well, there is one in our laundry room, but I don't know if it's for general use. Also? It's cold out). Anyway, I can't recommend Nancie McDermott's Quick and Easy Thai Cooking enough.

Green bean and grape tomato salad

Were you worried about the lack of Smitten Kitchen recipes? Well, never fear. I loved the look of this one immediately, and it didn't disappoint. I deviated only in a couple places: grape tomatoes instead of cherry tomatoes, because that's what I could find, and champagne vinegar instead of red wine vinegar, because I didn't feel like buying red wine vinegar when I already have three or four different kinds of vinegar in the house.

Gougères with Gruyère

I had been dying to make gougères again, ever since the first time I did so. Man, I don't think it gets much simpler, considering how impressive they are. They inspired the follow exchange:

Party guest: What are those things?

Me: Cheese puffs.

Party guest: Well, I'm going to eat all of them.

No more excuses--why aren't you making some right now?

Four-plum salad with lime and cilantro

Technically it's two-plum-plumcot-aprium salad (apparently the latter two are actually different fruits). Whatever you want to call it, it was inspired by a recent Mark Bittman recipe for plum-scallop ceviche with tarragon. I really wanted to make this ceviche, but didn't want spend the money to buy scallops for 15 people. So, I just cut up a bunch of plums and plum hybrids, drizzled them with some lime juice, and tossed them with some fresh cilantro. It was awesome.

Gluten-free chocolate financiers

When it came to dessert, all I knew was that I wanted to make something chocolate. I just done a search for "chocolate" on Smitten Kitchen when my friend Jeters happened to mention that her husband, who would be in attendance, was currently avoid grains. Well, lucky him, two recipes caught my eye: best chocolate pudding, and gluten-free chocolate financiers. Now,I love pudding, but I don't have 15 little serving vessels to serve it in, so that didn't sound like a great option. I didn't know what financiers were, but they sounded complicated. I couldn't have been more wrong. This is a one-bowl recipe for little miniature brownie-like cakes (or cake-like brownies) that uses almond flour instead of regular flour (it's the almond flour that distinguishes them from other baked goods, as far as I can tell). I used regular unsweetened cocoa instead of Dutch process, but they turned out splendidly.

Spaghetti with cheese and black pepper

After all that fancy (but easy-to-make!) party food, I wanted to keep things simple on Sunday. Spaghetti with a ton of pecorino Romano and black pepper, plus some butter, olive oil, and pasta water, and a salad on the side fit the bill perfectly. I made another champagne vinegar dressing, but this time added a clove of minced garlic. Yum. Oh, and yeah, it's a Smitten Kitchen recipe.

By the way, I do want to post more recipes and instructions. If you ever see something in one of my posts that you'd like me to do a recipe post on, just leave me a comment!

What I cooked this week, Episode 7

It would appear I spoke too soon regarding getting back on the wagon. This week was all about the comfort food--gotta beat this cold San Francisco summer somehow!

Episode 7, July 19-July 25

Grilled cheese with bacon and avocado

Not a lot to explain here: cheddar and Gruyère, with crunchy bacon and creamy avocado, on white bread.

Grilled cheese and creamy gazpacho

What better to have the night after having grilled cheese, than grilled cheese again? This time I mixed it up with some pecorino Romano, and a cup of leftover gazpacho on the side--a pleasant twist to the grilled-cheese-and-tomato-soup cliche.

Chili with kidney beans and carrots

A favorite of ours from Smitten Kitchen, this chili is as easy to make as it is hearty. I added carrots for a little sweetness and crunch. Best thing about this recipe? It makes a ton, so I've lunch for the next week (at least!).

I'm planning a post on how to make this dish for midweek--look for it!

Baguette french toast

Half a stale baguette leftover from a weekday lunch became Sunday's brunch, along with some crispy bacon--a delicious way to waste not. As tasty as this was, though, I am about ready to give up on traditional breakfast items, which have not yet failed to set off our smoke detector (which is too high to reach).

Butter chicken with eggplant

A trip to the farmers' market is always a good source of inspiration (in addition to being a source of good produce!). An eggplant beefed up this recipe from Tasty Kitchen, in additional to the young brown hen from the egg vendor. I enjoyed this curry dish more than the one I usually make--with heavy cream and cilantro "to taste," how could it go wrong?

Next week: some green vegetables!

What I cooked this week, Episode 6

Another week with some slight slacking off--my mother came to visit for several fun-filled days. Yet despite spending more time out of the apartment than usual and dining out more than usual, I managed to miss cooking only one weeknight meal. I'm also padding this post with a coupe lunches, because I had the photos, so why not.

Episode 6, July 12-July 18

Pasta "carbonara" with peas and pancetta

If you want to know why I put "carbona" in quotation marks, I suggest you read @Houston_Foodie's excellent series of posts about the definitive spaghetti alla carbonara (actually, I recommend it in general). My version was a hastily-thrown together substitute for the risotto I had planned but no longer had the time to execute, and despite its inauthenticity, was quite delicious. These may have been the last farmers' market peas of the season, as I didn't see any this past Sunday.

Hummus

I've been following Smitten Kitchen's hummus recipe for awhile now, and I will go ahead and say that you owe it to yourself to go the extra mile and cook the chickpeas yourself. It's just not the same with canned. I had already cooked these--when I cooked the chickpeas for last week's tagine, I made twice as many as I needed so that I could later make hummus (I saved a cup of the cooking water, too). I diverge from the recipe by adding a little olive oil to the puree at the end, for flavor. I serve it with extra olive oil on top, plus a sprinkling of paprika and cayenne. This made a lunch or two, plus a few sessions of snacking during Mom's visit.

Brie on baguette

Unless your definition of "cooking" includes any meal that involves a chef's knife and a hot oven, this was really cooking. But it was a nice way to spend Bastille Day: toasty baguette, melty Brie, and juicy farmers' market tomatoes on the side. (Thanks to @hi_im_monkey for the suggestion!)

Scrambled eggs with shallots

Maybe I'll include a photo of scrambled eggs on toast every week!

Creamy gazpacho with goat's milk yogurt and pecorino Romano cheese crisps

This was a perfect Sunday morning brunch, thrown together in a few short minutes after returning from the farmers' market laden with fresh produce. I don't have much experience with gazpacho, but I really appreciated how it lets the fresh flavors of the raw veggies stand out. This NYTimes version is enriched with yogurt, and I liked it a lot. The cheese crisps are fun and pretty easy; I'll have to remember them as a garnish more often.

Pan-fried salmon, garlic-roasted eggplant, and blue lake beans with onions and garlic

Roasted eggplant is one of my new favorite things. Maybe it's all the olive oil I used, but these came out creamy and buttery. Mmmmm. I'm still trying to decide whether the delicious crispy salmon is worth the preparation; I really despise getting splattered with hot oil. (Also? Never buy seafood from a FM vendor without checking on the price first--ouch.)

I should be back on a roll this week, as life settles back down.

What I cooked this week, Episode 5

This was the first week since I committed to this cooking schedule that I didn't make dinner on two week nights. I blame the fact that we got into town late and exhausted on Monday night after driving back from Lake Tahoe. Anyway, I made up for it by cooking dinner both Saturday and Sunday.

Episode 5, July 5-July 11

Spinach-ricotta ravioli with meat sauce

I'd made fresh pasta twice before (ravioli and noodles), and I really wanted to try ravioli again. The trouble is, I don't have a pasta press, which means I have to roll out the dough by hand, which is a lot of work. I'm glad I tried it again, and the results were pretty tasty (even if I overcooked the ravioli just a bit), but I am not sure it's entirely worth the effort. Who wants to buy me a pasta press for my birthday? Side note: I tried to make Andrew's famous meat sauce for the topping, but it didn't turn out quite right, leading me to conclude that I should leave the meat sauce making to him.

Rosemary-garlic roast pork with stewed cherries

I had a bag of cherries that had been sitting in my fridge for long enough to get mushy, but not so long to as to have gotten moldy. Not wanting them to go to waste, I asked my friend Jeters what do with them, and she suggested making a sauce for pork or duck. Done! I had never made a pork roast before, and this recipe from How to Cook Everything turned out superbly, moist and flavorful. After pitting a pound of cherries using a knife and my fingernails (no fancy cherry pitter here!), I cooked them with red wine, a little thyme, lemon, and salt. Delish.

Scrambled eggs with fresh herbs

After last weekend's scrambled eggs success, I knew I had to have a repeat performance. Instead of scrambling them with cooked onions, this time I added a mix of fresh herbs (thyme, basil, and marjoram). Again, light and fluffy and not overcooked! I ate mine on toast with a side of avocado.

Chickpea tagine

Another Mark Bittman recipe, this was a great one-pot dinner, giving me yet another way to use the hens I buy at the farmers' market. I brought an unopened package of chickpeas with me from Houston when we moved, and decided to start using them up. Plus tomatoes, onions, garlic, ginger, cumin, coriander, cinnamon, dates, and bulgar--yum.

And I cooked twice as many chickpeas as I need so that I can make hummus later this week!

Also pleasing: both the pork roast and the tagine allowed me to use the chicken stock I made a couple weeks ago.

What I cooked this week, Episode 4

Apologies for the late post this week; we were busy getting our relaxation on this weekend at Lake Tahoe, and then spent spent Monday driving back to San Francisco in holiday weekend traffic, 100+ degree weather, with no air conditioning in the car. ANYWAY, without further ado...

Episode 4, June 28-July 4

Curry with chicken and English peas

I bought another young brown hen at the market, and more fresh peas--gotta take advantage of the fact that Andrew likes them! This dish is based on a Mark Bittman recipe for using up Thanksgiving leftovers that I have thoroughly enjoyed.

Chicken salad with walnuts and cranberries

I used the rest of the chicken to make a portion of chicken salad for myself for lunch one day from this Smitten Kitchen recipe. It was okay; I think something got off when I reduced the yield. However, I've been enjoying the leftover cranberries and walnuts.

Pizza with eggplant, prosciutto, ricotta, and basil

Half a batch of pizza dough leftover from last week (I froze it), leftover farmers' market Japanese eggplant from last week's ratatouille. I roasted the slices of eggplant first, and I could have eaten them all. I now find myself encouraged to cook with eggplant more often (especially since Andrew seems to like it).

Butterscotch sauce

Another win from Ratio, I originally decided to make butterscotch because a) the recipe sounded simple and b) I had leftover cream to use up and also happened to have the called-for apple cider vinegar. In short: I think I've found what I'm making for Christmas presents this year. This sauce is simple to make, delicious, and it keeps. Only way to make it better--adding homemade chocolate sauce?

Bacon-wrapped cream cheese-filled jalapeño poppers

These, inspired by the Pioneer Woman, were my contribution to our Fourth of July smorgasbord (along with Hemingway Daiquiris). They served as a surprisingly fiery amuse bouche to the franken-ribs*, grilled corn on the cobb, and baked potatoes that we ate to celebrate our nation's independence. Some of the poppers were mild, and others had us drowning our faces in milk--good times, good times.

Not pictured: the most excellent scrambled eggs I made everyone for breakfast the morning prior. Seriously, I haven't been happy with scrambled eggs in ages, but it seems that my reading has paid off, and we ended up with delicious, fluffy, not-overcooked eggs. I didn't think to take a photo, sadly. (The secret is to stir them continuously and stop while they're still wet!)

Now, I'm going to go enjoy some some vanilla ice cream with butterscotch sauce. Mmmmm.

*They came vacuum-sealed, pre-sauced, and "microwave-ready." I don't think words "microwave-ready" should be applied to ribs, but maybe that's just me. (I did not buy them, in case that wasn't clear.)