Dinner Ideas II: Kolaches, Creamy Tomato Soup, Apple Panzanella

So much cheese! Did I get carried away? Potentially.  These are kolaches- the savory variety.  I used this recipe for sweet kolaches, omitted the toppings, and instead stuffed the dough with a local jalapeno smoked sausage and so much cheddar.  I brushed them with melted butter and sprinkled them with sea salt.  So nice!

A simply roasted chicken, done using Thomas Keller’s method (dry the bird, sprinkle with kosher salt and pepper, roast at 450 for an hour) and one of my favorites- apple panzanella.  My friend Abbie created this recipe, and it really is fantastic. You can toast the bread cubes while the chicken is resting, and then your salad will have warm bread and cool crunchy apples. I made a couple changes to the recipe- I used a simple  french batard and tossed the cubes with olive oil and salt and pepper before toasting.  I used parmesan instead of manchego, because that’s what I had on hand, and omitted the arugula because Andy’s not into it.

Cobb Salad. Yes, there is lettuce under there somewhere.  I’m a little embarrassed to show you this picture on account of the obscene pile of bacon in the upper-left, but there you are. This is as simple as it looks- shredded chicken leftover from the night before (rewarmed in bacon drippings), hard-boiled eggs, last-of-the-season tomatoes, avocado, bacon, lettuce, and a simple lemon-y dijon vinaigrette (juice of a meyer lemon, dash of salt and pepper, dip a fork in dijon mustard and then use it to slowly whisk in a couple tablespoons of olive oil- taste and adjust).

My very favorite Creamy Tomato Soup and a grilled cheese sandwich- a meal to celebrate cooler temperatures. This soup is fantastic- try it if you don’t have a tomato soup recipe to call your own. [Side note: you would not believe how many shitty blogs I had to read to find one that listed this recipe as it’s written in the cookbook.  The one I linked to was the best of the bunch, and even so has me rethinking my intentional overuse of exclamation points :/ ]

Orecchiette with Fennel Sausage and Swiss Chard.  I mostly made this because it uses fennel pollen, an up-and-coming ingredient that I’d read about but never tasted.  I sought it out at a special spice shop! This recipe was more work than I wanted to expend for a simple pasta dinner (and I didn’t make the sausage, like the recipe calls for- I bought a fennel sausage from Richardson Farms at the farmers’ market).  It was good, but I don’t think good enough to warrant all the work.  But the fennel pollen- that was fun! Lovely lovely- like a flowery, anise-y breeze!

Up next week: Khichdi, Crispy Chicken and Apple Salad, and Cumin Roasted Cauliflower and Mahogany Glazed Chicken.

Food52 Potluck with Amanda Hesser!

Hi friends! Things are happening! The first Food52 Cookbook is out! I’ve got two recipes in this beaut- my Olive all’Ascolana and Griddled Polenta Cakes. So much fun!

And that’s not all! Amanda Hesser will be in Austin Monday, November 14th to celebrate the launch of the book with a potluck at Boggy Creek Farm! Tickets are $25, but a ticket gets you a Food52 Cookbook as well as admission (retail price $35), so it’s like you’re being paid to be there! Sort of!

Celebrities abound! In addition to the lovely Amanda Hesser, you can meet the talented Austinites behind these award-winning recipes:

My sister, Helen! These are her Devils on Hatchback, one of my very very favorite foods.  She has two recipes in the book also! Her delightful Figgy Pudding Butter Cookies, and deliciously inventive Feta Frozen Yogurt with Blood Orange and Mint Granita!

Our friend, Abbie! This girl can cook!! These are her amazing Barbacoa Beef Cheek Tacos.  One of the many, many delicious treats Abbie is known for.  Her jams and chutneys are swoon-worthy.

Abbie’s husband, Leo! His mashed potatoes are the bee’s knees. So is Leo!

Our sweet friend, Nancy! This is her outstanding Heirloom Tomato and Lemon Mascarpone Tart.  She also makes a fantastic chocolate cake!

Our friend, Elizabeth! This is her beautiful Warm Custard Spoon Bread, which will be showcased in the second Food52 Cookbook, due out this spring!

I hope to see you guys at the potluck! I’ll have a fat baby with me!

Tickets are available for purchase here:

https://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/207106

Ok, bye!

Pineapple Salad, Steak Banh Mi, and Other Dinner Ideas

Hi everybody! I’ve been having a lovely time staying home with Henry- he is nice and very very fat. We sit outside in the mornings, and have been able to start going for walks now that the temperature has dropped out of the 100 degree + range.  During Henry’s naps (he’s still sleeping on/next to me for every nap :/ ), I spend my time reading food blogs and looking for dinner ideas on my magic phone. It occurred to me that, with minimal effort on my part, I could snap a picture of the dinners I make during the week, post a link to the recipe, and tell you my overall impression of them.  And then you might get some dinner ideas from me! So this post will cover what we ate for dinner this past week, and hopefully I’ll keep this up in future weeks. Only time will tell!

The salad you see at the top of this post is Pineapple, Greens, and Tofu with Roasted Chile Coconut Dressing.  It was outstanding! And vegan! Andy was predisposed to hate this salad, and thought it was fantastic. It’s also surprisingly filling. Instead of straight old boring tofu, I made tofu cheese, which sounds horrifying but is really great- this technique gives the tofu great texture and a subtle miso flavor- s’nice! One other note- the dressing recipe yields more than one-and-a-half cups of dressing. We used less than a tenth of it, I’d say.  The next time I make this, I’ll scale that way down.

My sister and I had a girl’s night and watched Bridesmaids! Naturally, we also ate a lot of cheese.  We had a collection of cheeses from the $3 or less cheese-bits drawer at Whole Foods, plus tabbouleh, raspberries, honeycrisp apples, almonds, and some of our friend Abbie‘s delicious peach/mango chutney!

With the temperature dipping into the 80s this week, I took that to be as good a sign as any to start making cool-weather foods. This was one of my favorites from last winter- Smothered Cabbage Risotto.  It’s not glamorous, but it’s completely wonderful. Also, if you like science-y food articles, this one offers a really easy risotto cooking technique.

This is a Sausage and Kale Tart, the winner of “Your Best Dirt Cheap Dinner”, a recent food52 contest.  Though I wouldn’t describe it as dirt cheap (sausage + wine + ricotta), it was tasty! I replaced the crust with my favorite partial whole-wheat one, and used two bunches of chard instead of kale.

Steak Banh Mi! Not at all authentic, but a pretty easy and totally delicious weeknight version. This was Andy’s favorite dinner this week, and I loved it too.  Especially with a baguette from Baguette et Chocolat, which sells the best baguettes and batards (and pain au chocolat!) in Austin, which you can buy from their shop or from the farmers’ market at the Burger Center.

Last but not least, Wednesday was my darling sister‘s birthday and she requested a strawberry cake with cream cheese frosting.  I didn’t want to resort to using a cake mix, so I was ecstatic when a reliably awesome food blogger posted this recipe.  It turned out beautifully, and was moist and lovely and not too sweet.  The cream cheese frosting was also perfect, with a little bit of strawberry jam mixed in.  The recipe calls for 10 oz of cake flour, or 2.5 cups- I weighed out 10 oz of flour on my new kitchen scale, and then measured it just for fun, and it yielded only 2 cups, so that’s crazy.

Ok, that’s all! Stay tuned next week for smoked sausage kolaches, creamy tomato soup, and roasted chicken with apple panzanella, among others!