Cooking Interrupted

[cookinginterrupted]

Unicorn birthday cake

Someone turned 10 at my house last week and I might have gone a bit overboard in making a 5 layer unicorn cake! I used a funfetti like cake recipe from the Preppy Kitchen, lots of baking supplies from Wilton Cakes, and a decorating tutorial from Rosanna Pansino. The 10 year old loved it and I think I turned out pretty well too! 

Cake recipe 

Decorating tutorial

Wilton easy layer cake pans

[cookinginterrupted]

Love this recipe for sambal shrimp lettuce wraps from the 2018 August issue of Bon Appetit. It cooks fast and it’s fun to serve guests so it’s basically the perfect summer recipe. https://www.bonappetit.com/recipe/bibb-lettuce-wraps-with-sambal-shrimp

[cookinginterrupted]

Brown butter blondies from Bon Appetit magazine - https://www.bonappetit.com/recipe/gooey-brown-butter-blondies-with-pecans

[cookinginterrupted]

Dinner, MacGyver style

It’s been busier than usual at my house with a lot of work travel and some big school projects. I’m still trying to cook dinners on a regular basis instead of falling back on take out or premade meals. So far I’ve been relatively successful by “MacGyvering” some of my dinners. Basically like the lead character from the television show “MacGyver” I improvise but instead of making some contraption to capture a criminal or escape a sticky situation, I use the ingredients on hand to get dinner on the table.

Let’s review my MacGyvered dinners:

First up were some enchiladas. I wanted to put together something on Sunday night that go right in the oven on Monday night. I had a left over grilled chicken breast that had previously marinated in a spicy sirracha sauce and some assorted vegetable (not so ripe tomatoes, slightly wilted green onions, and an old red bell pepper) that I wanted to use up. I figured I could dice up the chicken, roast the vegetables along with some frozen corn, mix it all together with some sour cream and cheese, and then wrap it up in tortillas. It was relatively simple to do the roasting and assembly of the enchilada while watching The Good WIfe on television and then just put them in the refrigerator until the next night. When I got home from work, I covered the enchiladas in some cheese and the smooth salsa I had in the house instead of going to the store for enchilada sauce and then baked them for about 25 minutes. The enchiladas were delicious and had the added benefit that they used up a bunch of thing in my refrigerator and saved me from going to the store.

The second MacGyverd dinner was for a recipe I’ve made in the past for Shrimp and Artichoke Linguine Alfredo.  I wanted to make this pasta as it is super easy to prepare since everything goes in the food processor and I could feed my kids some of the linguine with pasta sauce from a jar thus avoiding cooking something completely different for them. I had almost all of the ingredients for this dish but was missing the chicken broth, celery, and rosemary. I wound up replacing the celery with the white and light green parts of a leek, the chicken broth with a mix of water and vegetable broth, and the rosemary with another woody herb, thyme. Overall these swaps were not noticeable at all once the sauce was blended together and them simmered with the shrimp in it and again I was pretty pleased that I was able to make dinner without going to the store.

Hopefully this post inspires you to MacGyver your way through dinner and avoid going to the grocery store!

[cookinginterrupted]

It’s time to roast some vegetables

After a warm summer in California, it is finally cooling down enough here to turn on the oven to cook. I especially love to roast vegetables like butternut and acorn squash, carrots, parsnips, and beets. These roast vegetables can be served next to something like a roast chicken or pork or they can be combined with other ingredients to make a salad that shines as a meal all on its own. I recently tried two great salads the features roast vegetables.

The first salad I tried was a Squash, Apple and Warm Lentil Salad from the Food and Wine web site. The recipe calls for cooking dried lentils but I used the Trader Joes pre-steamed lentils instead. I just sautéed the shallots and garlic and then mixed in 2 cups of precooked lentils along with a ½ teaspoon of thyme leaves. I cooked the lentils just for a few minutes until they were warm. The roasted squash and apples were simple to make and cooked in the exact amount of time in the recipe. I wound up skipping the cloves in the spiced butter since I did not have it and added in a little powdered ginger instead. When I arranged the salad on the plate, I layered the component differently than the recipe with some lentils on the bottom, the squash, apples and lettuce in the middle and then the rest of the lentils sprinkled around. Overall the salad was delicious and a great vegetarian meal for dinner.

The second salad I tried was Honey and Harissa Farro Salad from the Smitten Kitchen cookbook. This recipe features roasted carrots and parsnips with a sweet spicy dressing. The carrots and parsnips are supposed to be cut into long batons or matchsticks but you could also cut them in to smaller cubes or rounds depending on your knife skills. The most important thing is to adjust your roasting time and keep an eye on them so they don’t burn in the oven. The salad is easy to mix together but in addition to reserving some of the feta and mint for the top I also recommend that you keep some carrots and parsnips for the top (as you can see by my photo, I didn’t do that and it looks like my salad is all feta). The salad is delicious and while the recipe suggested that it can be kept for a few days in the refrigerator, the faro usually absorbs all of the dressing so you may need to hold back some or make extra to add in the following days. 

[cookinginterrupted]

Tomatoes for dinner, two ways

It’s peak tomato season right now and I’ve been looking for new ways to include them in my dinners. I recently tried out two new recipes, which in addition to incorporating tomatoes did not take too long to cook which is also helpful since it’s been hotter than usual where I live.

The first recipe I tried was Ginger Garlic Shrimp with Tomato Sauce from the Food and Wine web site. The marinade is really easy to make and the shrimp cook really quickly on the grill. The sauce takes a little longer but it is worth the effort and the while meal was done in about 30 minutes. I got most of the skin off the tomatoes before seeding and chopping them and also skipped the lemongrass in the sauce because I did not have any. Still the ginger, cilantro, and lime alone added a lot of tangy heat to the sweet tomatoes and the little bit of skin that was left was not noticeable after the simmering. I think the sauce would also be great on fish like halibut or maybe swordfish. Overall the adults at my house (including my mom who was visiting and doesn’t like anything spicy) liked this dinner.

The second recipe I tried was for Crispy Chicken Cutlets With Cherry Tomato Panzanella from the Bon Appetit web site.  I’m a big fan of panzanella which is a kind of bread tomato salad and I like the way this one incorporated both raw and cooked tomatoes. This recipe called for a bone in skin on chicken breast however I simply used a boneless chicken breast that I pounded flat and it came out very nicely. I followed the recipe and used a regular yellow onion pickled in white vinegar but next time I think I’d use a pickled shallot instead for a more mellow flavor. Again this was a great dinner that came together in about a half hour including cutting everything up and cooking. If you have any extra chicken and panzanella I recommend serving it over a bed of arugula for lunch the next day.

Hopefully you enjoy these two recipes and if you have other great summer tomato recipes share the links to them in the comments section below.

[cookinginterrupted]

Your weekend farmers market guide

It’s almost the weekend and my favorite weekend activity is going to the farmers market. There’s nothing I like better than getting all sorts of fresh fruit and vegetables at their summer peak and then cooking with them all week long. Here are a few of my recommendations of what to buy this week at the farmers market and what to make with it.

Peaches

Peach season is in full swing and at least for me, it is hard not to get carried away buying all the different kinds. Here are two recipes for yellow peaches.

Quinoa Salad With Peaches And Pickled Onions – One of my favorite summer salads with a simple recipe that can be scaled down if you’re feeding fewer people. You can also make it with couscous, bulgur, or barley depending on your personal preference

Bacon Lettuce Peach sandwiches aka BLPs – No recipe needed here just make you’re your peaches are ripe and juice. I’ve used little gem lettuce when making this but you could also use something like arugula for more flavor. 

Parsley, Cilantro, and all the other herbs

In general I’ve found that you can get a way bigger bunch of herbs at the farmers market for the same price as one of the little plastic containers of herbs at the grocery store. Here are two recipes where you can use up your herbs and get a big punch of flavor.

Grilled Tofu with Chimichurri –I used powdered cumin instead of cumin seeds and swapped in mint for the oregano for the chimichurri since I wanted to use it up. The chile pepper adds more heat to tofu.  

Charlie Bird’s Farro Salad – Another great summer salad where you can use up the mint and parsley left over from the chimichurri sauce. You could also add roast or grilled chicken into the salad to make it heartier.  

[cookinginterrupted]

Brownies two ways

As a person who loves to bake sweet things, one of my biggest challenges is finding people to give all of the cakes, cookies, and other sweet treats to so my family doesn’t eat them all. Thankfully I have co-workers who are more than willing to try out my baked goods whenever I bring them into work. Recent I tried two new recipes for brownies two different ways that my co-workers thoroughly enjoyed.

The first recipe was for S'mores Bars with Marshmallow Meringue from the Food and Wine web site. This recipe is from the same people who wrote the Back in the Day cookbook that I wrote about in a previous post. This recipe brings the flavors of s’mores into an easy to take bar style cookie.

Making the bars is a simple 3 step process that can be cooked over two days. A few tips for making the bars:

You can use boxed graham cracker crumbs or crush up your own crackers for the crust but make sure you crush them thoroughly so you don’t have any large pieces in your crust.

Don’t skip lining the pan with foil or parchment paper with the paper overhanging the edges of the pan before pressing in the graham cracker mixture. You need the overhang to be able to lift the brownies out of the pan so you can cut them up in to perfect squares.

You need to let the crust and brownies cool completely before putting the meringue on top so you might want to do the first two steps at night and then whip up the marshmallow meringue the next morning.

Make sure you watch the meringue when it is under the broiler to ensure it just gets a nice bit of browning on the tips without burning.

Cut up the brownies with a long, sharp knife and wipe it off between cuts to get perfect looking squares. Using a long knife allows you to make a cut in one long straight line.  

The final brownies are really impressive and so delicious that your friends, co-workers or family will eat them all.

The second recipe I made was also for brownies but these ones were filled with salted caramel. This recipe was also from Food and Wine in an article about food trends in London.

These brownies are also pretty easy to make with a few things to keep in mind

Making the caramel can be a little tricky and requires constant watching to make sure the sugar doesn’t burn which would give the caramel a bitter taste. You also need to make sure you use a 3-4 quart pot to accommodate the expansion that happens when you add in the cream.

The resulting brownies from the recipe are very dense and mine stuck to the pan the first time I made them. I would recommend lining the pan with parchment paper instead of just buttering it.

Make sure your caramel is very cold before spreading it on the brownies. I would even go as far as putting it in the freezer for 5-10 minutes it is seems that it is not thick enough.

I would also recommend that once the brownies are filled with the caramel, they are stored in the refrigerator until you want to serve them.

Again cut these up with a long, sharp knife and wipe it off between cuts to get perfect looking squares.

If you make either of these brownies, let me know how they work out for you. And of course make sure you share them with your coworkers!

[cookinginterrupted]

Summer entertaining

As I’ve mentioned before on this blog, I love having people over for dinner in the summer. I have a table in my backyard that can seat up to 12 people (twice as many as my regular dining room table) and I find it really easy to put together a dinner with make-ahead salads and grilled entrees. A few weeks ago, I had another dinner party and tried out two new recipes, one for a salad and one for grilled shrimp.

The first recipe was for a Jicama, Radish, and Pickled Plum Salad from Bon Appetit. This salad follows the current trend of mixing together fruits with vegetables in a single dish. The salad consists of a plum sauce that is pretty simple, as it just requires simmering for 25 minutes before straining. I made the sauce the night before the party and used crushed red pepper flakes instead of gochugaru as well as leaving out the juniper berries as I did not have them. The rest of the salad prep consisted of a lot of slicing, dicing and chopping. I cut up the jicama, radishes, and cucumber the night before since I knew they would hold up and not turn brown in the refrigerator. I assembled the rest of the salad about an hour before my guests arrived so I could just pull it out when we were ready to eat. Overall the salad turned out great and all the adults and even two of the kids (not mine) ate it.

The second recipe I tried was for Grilled Miso Shrimp from Food and Wine. I chose this recipe as I had miso paste and a big bag of frozen shrimp that I wanted to use up and I knew the shrimp would cook quickly so I could spend more time talking to my guests and less time grilling. The marinade was super easy to mix together (except that you do need to pay attention and just put 2 tablespoon of lime juice not all 3 in the marinade). I let the shrimp marinate in the refrigerator for a couple of hours even though the recipe did not call for it to make sure they absorbed more of the flavor. As expected that shrimp were quick to cool. They looked very pretty all stacked on the plate and tasted great with slightly salty sweet flavor. They were all eaten often dipped into the spicy sambal mayonnaise by the adults and two adventurous kids.

[cookinginterrupted]

Summer pastas

Like I mentioned in my last post, it has been really hot in Northern California so I’ve been trying to limit my cooking to outside on the grill. However since I love pasta, I’ve made a few exceptions to cook inside trying a new pasta recipe and repeating another pasta recipe with an ingredient I love.

The new recipe I tried was the Summer Pasta With Zucchini, Ricotta and Basil from the New York Times. I knew I had to try this recipe as I love ricotta (especially the fresh kind that the Whole Foods by my house carries) and it is totally zucchini season at the farmers market. This summer pasta dish is so good and cooks quickly enough that your house will not get hot. The ricotta and garlic basil paste combine into a creamy sauce coating the pasta with a bit of pop from the lemon zest. When you make this recipe you do need to be careful not to burn the finely diced onions in the first step. The recipe calls for medium high heat but I would recommend medium low or even low heat or aiming for a larger dice (maybe ½ inch pieces) so they get soft over the 5 or so minutes of cooking time. Overall this is a great dish to cook on a weeknight.

The second recipe I made was Pasta with Sun Gold Tomatoes from Bon Appetit. If you’re not familiar with them, sun gold tomatoes are small yellowish-orange tomatoes that have the sweetest flavor ever. These are perfectly round tomatoes that shouldn’t be confused with yellow pear tomatoes that are not as sweet. I love getting sun golds at the farmers market and frequently find myself just eating them on their own like grapes. For this recipe you cook them until they burst and combine them with red pepper flakes and garlic for more flavor. Then you use the cooked tomatoes to coat your pasta along with some grated cheese (I used Asagio instead of Pecorino or Parmesan), basil, and finally some bread crumbs (which really thicken up the sauce). The resulting pasta is so good that you want to keep slurping it down until you realize that you’ve eaten too much and your stomach hurts. Again this is a recipe that comes together very quickly so you can make it on a weeknight or for a weekend afternoon lunch.

[cookinginterrupted]

Cooking tips

The end of June was busy for me and the weather in Northern California was really hot. So instead of trying new recipes I spent the most of the time grilling chicken and hamburgers and making simple salads for dinner. I did find a couple of great resources that I want to share that helped me improve my cooking and can help you too.

First I found this great video series called Mad Genius Tips from Food and Wine. One of the videos had a great tip for how to make the make the perfect size hamburger. A lot of the time my hamburgers come out too round like a slightly flattened tennis ball and I was considering buying a burger press to get them nice and flat until I saw this video. The tip from the video is to use two tops from deli salad containers to get your burgers the exact right size and thickness to match the bun and to keep the meat from getting warmed by the heat in your hands. I’ve tried this technique three times now and works like a charm. I was so happy I did not need to buy a burger press that I bought a fancy new digital meat thermometer instead.

The second thing I found actually all the way back in May was this comparison that the Food52 web site had done about how to store your herbs for maximum freshness. I really like to use fresh herbs in my cooking and often buy them at the farmers market since you often get a larger bunch at a lower cost there instead of at the grocery story. Food52 highlighted a few different ways to store the herbs depending on how delicate they were including storing basil out on a countertop instead of in the refrigerator and covering herbs like parsley or cilantro while storing them in water in the refrigerator. I followed all the suggestions and was able to keep parsley for almost 4 weeks in the refrigerator and basil on my countertop for over 2 weeks.

The final thing I found was this series of blog posts on Bon Appetit about strategies for bringing your lunch to work. I like to bring my lunch to the office but can always use new ideas and inspiration to mix things up. Some of the best tips included making big batches of staples like beans or grains to use throughout the week on Sunday, having condiments in your desk drawer to spice up your home lunch, making gourmet sandwiches from left overs (like the one above with grilled eggplant and pomegranate mint marinated chicken), and getting away from your desk to eat your brought from home lunch (this is one thing that I still need to work on). I hope some of these tips will inspire you too since bringing your lunch can not only save you money but also help you use up your left overs and reduce your food waste.

[cookinginterrupted]

Cookbook Review: Back in the Day Bakery Cookbook

About two months ago I got an unexpected package in the mail with this cookbook in it. My college roommate and best friend had been to the bakery and liked it so much that she sent me the cookbook as a surprise. The cookbook is full of amazing baked good that your grandma would make but each recipe has an ingredient like buttermilk, sour cream, and even coffee to give the cakes and cookies more flavor. I've made a few recipes from the book and they've all been very popular.

The first recipe I made was for a Hummingbird Cake. I'd never heard of this type of cake before but the recipe called for two ingredients I was trying to use up: pecans and ripe bananas. I skipped the mace in the recipe since I did not have it and felt that 1/2 a teaspoon would not make a material difference in the final cake. The recipe is very easy to make as it just requires a lot of mixing and results in a cake that is kind of like a moister, more flavorful banana cake thanks to the addition of the pineapple. I also made the cream cheese frosting from scratch which was very simple and much better that canned cream cheese frosting. I took the final cake to my office to share with my coworkers who loved it.

The second recipe I made was a Chocolate Heaven Cake with Chocolate Buttercream frosting. I also made this cake for a coworker who had helped me out a lot and who loves chocolate. Again the recipe is fairly simple to mix up. It has 2 cups of freshly brewed coffee in it to give it another dimension of flavor. Again I decided to make the chocolate frosting from scratch instead of cheating and using pre-made frosting and decorated the cake with a ring of sprinkles around the edge of it. The final cake had an amazing flavor and was finished off by the end of the day.

The final two recipes I made were the Pecan Chocolate Espresso Coffee Cake and the Cinnamon Sour Cream Coffee Cake. I took both of these into my children’s school for the teachers during the last few days of classes. The Pecan Chocolate Espresso Coffee Cake was the clear favorite and lasted less than 4 hours in the office. I think the combination of the pecans, chocolate, and espresso powder make the topping so good and the buttermilk makes the cake texture better than the Cinnamon Sour Cream Coffee Cake. The other nice thing about the Pecan Chocolate Espresso Coffee Cake is that it is baked in a standard 9-inch square pan instead of a tube pan. I’ll definitely be making the Pecan Chocolate Espresso Coffee Cake again.

[cookinginterrupted]

Mix and match fish tacos

As someone who grew up in San Diego, I’ve been eating fish tacos my whole life but I’ve never really tried to make them at home. I never knew what kind of fish to use and was always concerned I’d mess the fish up or was afraid I’d burn myself if I tried to fry it. However I recently managed to tackle the frying some cod fillets when I made these Crispy Cod Bahn Mi sandwiches. The fish was so easy to make and one of my kids actually ate the fried cod (which was a huge win!) that I decided I should make more fried fish and this time put it in a taco.

I Googled several different recipes for fish tacos and wound up making really delicious tacos out of a mash up of three different recipes.

For the fish, I stuck with the fried cod portion of the bahn mi recipe mostly because I knew my child would eat it and also because it only required flour, cornstarch, baking powder, and club soda which I all had on hand. The first time I made these fish tacos I used fresh cod from my local grocery store that was great but a little more expensive. The second time I made them with frozen cod from Trader Joes which cost much less and just required a little planning to defrost the fish in advance. As far as the frying here are few tips:

Get all of your frying station set up before you start to cook. In the photo at top I have everything ready to go except my plate to put the fish on after frying. 

Use about 1 ½-2 inches of oil in your pot for frying. If you put more in you risk more splattering.

Gently put the battered fish into the oil, do NOT drop it! If you are concerned about the hot oil, you could also lower it in with tongs.

While the fish is frying, flip it over a few times with a slotted spoon to make sure it is evenly browning.

Don’t over crowd the pot with fish pieces when you are frying them. I use a 4 quart pot and usually cook 2-3 pieces at a time depending on their size.

Make sure you have a plate with paper towels on it ready to put your fried fish on to absorb the excess oil and some salt for sprinkling over the fried fish. You just want a very light sprinkle on the fish, like less than a ¼ teaspoon per piece.

You can save your frying oil and use it again. Let it cool completely and then pour it into a container it a tight fitting lid to save. I put it in a glass mason jar. 

For the sauce, I made the cream sauce from the Baja Style Fish Tacos recipe by Marcela Valladolid. I used sour cream instead of the Mexican crema and also added in some lime juice to make up for a shortage of lemon juice. The cream was really good and I kept drizzling just a little bit more on my tacos as I ate them. I also thought the beer batter in this recipe sounded good and might try it in the future.

For the slaw, I made the amazing one from this fish tacos recipe by Anne Burrell. The combination of the spiciness from the jalapeno and scallions were off set perfectly by the honey and vinegar in the dressing. Again this slaw was something I wanted to keep adding to the tacos as I took each bite. The slaw  is a little liquidy so you might want to try to drain some of the excess dressing out before serving it. This fish section of this recipe also looked really good if you want to bake your fish instead of frying it. 

It addition to those three items I also had both flour and white corn taco sized tortillas and diced avocado for the tacos. Pair the tacos with some chips and a beer and you’ll have an amazing dinner!

[cookinginterrupted]

More Summer Salads

In addition to the side salads in my last post, I’ve also made a few new salads that can be eaten as the main entrée of lunch or dinner.

The first salad I made was the Grilled Steak Salad with Beets and Scallions from Bon Appetit. The majority of the recipe for the steak, scallions, and beets is quick and easy to make. The steak and green onions grill very quickly and can even be grilled at the same time if your grill is big enough. I also skipped holding the steak in a warm oven and just sliced it after letting it rest at room temperature for 5 minutes. The recipe also calls for making an aioli from scratch but I’ve always had bad luck doing that so I skipped it and used regular mayonnaise with garlic and Dijon mustard mixed in like it suggested as an alternative. I used arugula as the based of the salad and the final dish was great. I would definitely make this again on a warm summer night.

The second salad I made was Ludo Lefebvre’s Roasted-Carrot Salad. If you are not familiar with him, Ludo Lefebvre is a French chef based in LA who is also one of the hosts of the television show “The Taste” on ABC. It was a harder salad to make but it resulted in a much more complex layering of flavors.

The salad is not like a traditional salad as it does not have a lettuce or greens base. Instead it has several parts to it including a crème fraiche base, roasted carrots, and salad of herbs, onions, and oranges. You do have to roast the carrots in an oven so this might not be the best thing to make on a hot summer day. A few notes about making the salad:

I have made it using both blood orange juice and regular orange juice without much change in the vinaigrette flavor.

As the introduction to the recipe says, you don’t really need all the herbs for the garnish. I skipped the chervil and did not miss it as I already had the parsley, tarragon, and chives giving it a lot of herbal flavor.

If you have time, let the carrots soak up the vinaigrette for 15 minutes before putting the salad together to get fully infused with the citrus flavors.

Don’t skip the crème fraiche! It may be hard to find but the fatty creaminess of it is a nice contrast to he carrots and herbs. 

The final salad was beautiful and really good.  I think this salad makes a great entrée for a vegetarian or for anyone who wants to skip the meat and still have an incredibly flavorful meal. You could serve this with a baguette and maybe some cheeses and have a full meal.

[cookinginterrupted]

Summer salads to share

One of the reasons I love to cook is to share food with other people. Summer is especially great for this as we have things like end of school year parties, father’s day, potluck picnics and I get to try out new recipes. Here are two salad recipes I’ve made recently.

The first recipe I made was for Snap Peas and Green Beans with Arugula-Mint Pesto for a dinner with some out of town relatives. I had seen the recipe in the June 2015 issue of Bon Appetit and picked it as I had bought a large bag of arugula at the farmers market and needed to use it up. I also thought that salad would go well with the boneless leg of lamb I was grilling for dinner and could be mostly made ahead. The peas and beans were easy to blanch (boil for 1-2 minutes and then cooled in ice water) early in the day and then chill in the refrigerator. The pesto was also very easy to make in a full size food processor. You do need to add the water to get it to a consistency where you can actually pour it on the peas and beans. The recipe does make a lot of pesto and I think next time I would cut all the ingredients in half instead of having a lot left over. Also if you make the pesto ahead and then store it in the refrigerator it will become very thick and difficult to pour so try making it closer to when you are going to serve the salad. The salad went great with the lamb and was a nice addition to whole dinner.

The second recipe I made was Haricot Vert and Corn Salad with Roasted Artichoke Hearts and Fresh Tarragon Lemon Vinaigrette for a potluck birthday party.  The recipe came from the Once Upon A Tart cookbook, which unfortunately is out of print, but if you can find used versions on Amazon. I’ve made this recipe before and it has been very popular. Haricot verts are skinny French green beans but you can replace then with regular green string beans like I did when making the recipe. The salad consists of roasted corn (fresh or canned), roasted artichokes (water packed ones), and quickly blanched green beans. The thing that makes the salad great is the fresh tarragon lemon vinaigrette. As the recipe recommends, the easiest way to make the vinaigrette is in a food processor to get the tarragon leaves finely chopped. I used my Cuisinart mini prep and did not even bother chopping up the tarragon before putting it in instead let the mini prep do all the work. I also added all the oil at the same time as the other ingredients and just ran the mini prep for 2-3 minutes to get everything combined. The salad was very popular and I did not have any leftovers. If you are lucky enough to have left overs I also like to add in shredded chicken to it to make it a meal all by itself.

[cookinginterrupted]

Another recipe to bake before it gets too hot

Reasons why you should make this recipe for roasted chicken with potatoes, arugula, and garlic yogurt now:

The weather is too cold to stand out side grilling (see the Bay Area where we are having an unseasonably cold May or Denver where it was raining last night during the Giants/Rockies baseball game.

It gives you an entire meal on one pan.

It is by Melissa Clark, a food writer at the New York Times who always comes up with delicious recipes that are full of flavor and flexible to adapt to the ingredients you have on hand.

The recipe is nicely balanced between the heat of the chicken marinade, pepperiness of the arugula and the creaminess of the potatoes and yogurt. The recipe doesn’t specify chicken with out without skin but if you decide to use ones with skin like I did, I recommend rubbing the meat under the skin for maximum flavor. I also prefer to make this recipe with just chicken thighs as they have more meat on them.

When I made the recipe, the chicken, potatoes, and leeks all cooked within the total cooking time of 45 minutes however my potatoes did not get very crispy. I think that was due to the fact that the skin on the chicken also rendered some their fat on the pan while they were cooking and kept the potatoes moist. Still the potatoes were so good and all of them were eaten during dinner. I skipped sprinkling dill over the cooked dish since I didn’t have any and made the yogurt sauce just by stirring in a teaspoon of crushed garlic instead of grating a fresh clove. Overall this is a recipe that makes a great dinner that makes it just a little easier to deal with the cold May weather.

[cookinginterrupted]

Things to bake before it gets too hot

I am a fan of meals that you can just put in the oven and bake without having to pay much attention. While they are best to make in the winter when it is cold out, I bake things all year round as long as it isn’t too hot in my house. Since we’re approaching sumer, I have a few oven based recipes that I’ve tried out recently that I think you should try out too.

Caramelized Garlic, Spinach, And Cheddar Tart

This tart was on the cover of the February issue of Bon Appetit and I thought it looked amazing when I got my copy of the magazine in the mail. I decided to make this tart to take to my brother and sister in law for lunch when I went to visit them after they had a new baby. The recipe had a lot of steps but it was easy to break it down into multiple tasks to be completed over a few days. I started by making the dough for the crust in the middle of the week. The dough was very easy to make and stayed fresh in the refrigerator for a few days. Then I made the caramelized garlic and prebaked the crust on Saturday. I decided to skip the braided crust as the pie dish I was using did not have a smooth edge and I did not think the braided edge would work on it. The other benefit to only using enough of the dough for the crust without the braid is that I could also make hand pies (next recipe down). On Sunday morning, I assembled the whole tart and baked it. When I filled the tart, I had some of the spinach was sticking out above the liquid mixture (eggs/cream) and I was concerned how it would turn out. However as the tart baked, the spinach began to shrink and settled into the baked custard. The baked tart was incredibly creamy, rich, and a little fluffy due to the heavy cream and crème fraiche. It is not like a traditional quiche that has more of a dense structure. My brother and sister in law really loved the tart and ate all of it very quickly. I think this is a great tart to make to take to someone’s house or for making ahead for a brunch like on Mother’s or Father’s Day.

Spiced Lamb Hand Pies

With the left over dough I had from the tart, I decided to make these hand pies for dinner. I halved all the quantities for the ingredients and cut the quantities for them in half so I wound up making 4 hand pies instead of 8. Since I already had the premade dough, all I had to do was make the sautéed lamb filling, which went really quickly. While the filling was cooling, I rolled out the dough and cut it up. I wasn’t the best at cutting up the dough, filling it, and then folding it over so some of my pies came out like triangle instead of rectangles. Still the cooked hand pies tasted delicious. I think these hand pies could be good for a party or for kids (my kids however did not eat them). I’ll be making a variation of these hand pies again maybe with beef or pork next time.