blue_dolphin

No, not several feet - probably barely 12 inches ! I wanted to make sure the yolk stayed intact while the white firmed up a bit so I could have a runny yolk in the end.

I made a half recipe of the lemon & ricotta cake from Diana Henry's Simple. The recipe is available online here. After doing the appropriate geometry calculations, I determined a 6-inch springform pan would be pretty close to half the surface area of an 8-inch pan. I got distracted and feared it was way over-baked due to the browning but after cutting a slice, it's still very soft and moist inside. If I do it again, I may drop the oven temp a bit. I used limes instead of lemons because my lime tree is loaded with fruit. Served with blackberries, candied lime peel and a wee glass of homemade limoncello (also made from limes) Very nice and not too sweet!

It's pretty tasty. The recipe calls for canned black beans to be cooked with onion, red bell pepper, garlic, chicken broth, orange juice, S&P and a final squeeze of lime juice. I had excellent Rancho Gordo Midnight black beans already cooked and ready to go but I think it's a great way to take canned beans up a notch.

For today's lunch, I tried the recipe for spiced avocado with black beans, sour cream and cheese from Diana Henry's Simple. I often make some sort of beans-on-toast for a quick and filling meal but I do not usually include all the accoutrement used here. It was very good, if somewhat messy to eat.

Huevos rotos from Diana Henry's Simple Sliced potatoes and onions are cooked with garlic, smoked paprika and crushed red pepper before the egg is dropped on top. Beyond the occasional potato salad in the summer, I am not much of a potato eater so I had to buy some especially for this. It's not bad but toast is still my preferred device for wrangling a runny yolk !

I had a couple of lonely spicy brats so I made a little 2-sausage sized pan of the Baked sausages with apples, raisins and hard cider from Diana Henry's Simple. I was curious to try this before the weather turns entirely to summer. I'm not a big potato hound so instead of the mash suggested as a side, I put a sausage into a crusty roll slathered with grainy mustard, gave the rest of the ingredients a rough chop, put them and the syrupy pan juices on top of the sausages and washed it down with a glass of cider. I really loved the flavors of the caramelized apples and onions, Calvados-soaked raisins, cider and sausage and will definitely make it again in the fall and winter months. And I'll add extra onions and apples as I think they'll make an excellent condiment to use with other meats or cheeses.

I hadn't cooked orzo in years when I was trying to use more whole grains and but I recently enjoyed the side dish of orzo with lemon and parsley that I made from Diana Henry's Simple. I served it with salmon but it would go well with shrimp, chicken. The recipe is online here. I'll be following this thread for favorites that I should try.

I tried the recipe for pappardelle with cavolo nero, chiles & hazelnuts from Diana Henry's Simple. I substituted tagliatelle. I often make a similar dish with greens, garlic and red pepper flakes so I was intrigued by the addition of orange zest and hazelnuts here. I'm neutral on the nuts but don't care for the orange zest here. Maybe it was the extra oily and flavorful cara cara orange zest that I used? I'm glad I tried it but I have other similar recipes that I like better.

Bottom line - not a lot of crunch factor These are the purple-skin/white flesh Murasaki sweet potatoes. The recipe didn't call for it but I peeled them because a few of them had some dodgy spots and it was easier to cut them out that way. For cooking, I followed the recipe which tossed them with a little olive oil, honey, lime juice, S&P. I cooked them in the CSO @ 350 °F and used steam-bake for the first 20 min and switched to convect-bake for another 20. The brown edges had some nice crunch when I took them out of the oven, but they softened up before I finished the plate. The dish was still enjoyable to eat with the warm potatoes, spicy sauce and cool, creamy yogurt but it's not a route to the perfect crispy sweet potato.

Mmmmmm - love that combination of asparagus, tomato and egg! My breakfast - sweet potatoes with yogurt and cilantro-chile sauce from Diana Henry's Simple Good combination of flavors to wake up the old taste buds

Well, that's name of the recipe rather than the sausage I used some spicy bratwurst that I bought at the local farmers market last week. The woman who makes them is from Germany and sells both fresh and smoked but I used the fresh ones here. Per the recipe, they get coated with a mixture of honey and whole-grain mustard and roasted in the oven. Tasty!

Finally got around to trying the cover photo dish from Diana Henry's Simple - Honeyed sausages with blackberry & caraway slaw I added some roasted sweet potatoes on the side

The price for the Kindle version was again $2.99. At least it was for me, today. Edited to add that at this price, I'd recommend that anyone unsure about getting an Instant Pot download this one and skim through it. It gives a great overview of the models, functions and accessories and the recipes are a good representation of what sort of dishes the IP is useful for.

@Anna N, it was largely your positive comments about Diana Henry's books that convinced me to get Simple when the Food52 cookbook club picked it for this month's book and I haven't been disappointed. I haven't done this before but I rather like having a book to focus on for a few weeks. At the end of the month or whenever I get tired of this one, I'm hoping to devote that sort of quality time to a few other neglected cookbooks from my collection.

Bacon & egg risotto from Diana Henry's Simple I used pancetta instead of bacon and adapted the recipe for the Instant Pot.

Mumbai toastie from Diana Henry's Simple. Recipe available online at this link. The bread is spread with a fresh green chile/cilantro/mint/garlic chutney, topped with Cheddar cheese, tomato, red onion and a pinch each of cumin, coriander, ginger and cinnamon before cooking in a sandwich press (which I lack) or under a weight. I wasn't sure I'd like it but after gobbling this down, I found myself wishing there was more.

Next time I will try making the pasta. I was going to go that route but then I saw the dried stuff in my local Italian shop and thought that would make it easy. They usually stock good quality stuff but I'll be voicing my opinion about this product! Today's late lunch/early supper is a variation on another of Diana Henry's recipes from Simple: Toast with Crab and Cilantro-Chile Mayo. I subbed leftover salmon for the crab and jalapeño for the red chile. It was to be served with watercress but I have none so I used avocado (it's green, no?) This would be good with many kinds of fish or seafood add just as good stuffed into an avocado as on toast - clearly I went for both!

Some suggestions for using a similar preparation on this page

If limited to fast food options, the McD's fish sandwich is my preference and I believe we have a whole topic devoted to it. Getting back to lunch, today I made the black linguine with squid and spicy sausage from Diana Henry's Simple. Not a fan of this particular brand of pasta. It was very brittle coming out of the bag and continued to break during cooking. Also rather expensive. Never occurred to me to cook squid with spicy sausage but it was interesting.

Egg porn alert: Leftover orzo with an egg on it

Orzo with lemon and parsley from Diana Henry's Simple, topped with salmon I added a few handfuls of baby spinach and some red bell pepper to the orzo recipe.

Another big thanks for taking us along! Did all your purchases make it home safely? I've been very worried for the beautiful sugar fish and lollipops

Well, no Cubano for me today as I decided to try the Breton tuna and white bean gratin from Diana Henry's Simple. I like all the flavors in this dish but was a bit put off by one of the comments on EYB - "This grey slop looks like something that might have been served to Oliver Twist," and "The best that can be said for it is that it tastes marginally better than it looks." Oh dear. I was a little worried that it would be overly mushy so I didn't purée the beans into oblivion and decorated my plate to provide plenty of contrast Crispy crackers, crunchy toast rubbed with garlic, sweet/tart/colorful pickles (pickled beets and sweet potatoes from Deep Run Roots and purchased cornichons) and limes to squeeze over top. I quite liked it.

I have a book - Homemade Liqueurs (1979) by Dona and Mel Meilach - which I've found useful for ratios of fruit and timing. For banana, they suggest macerating/steeping for 1 week before straining. They say it can be consumed at that point but that "a 2-3 month maturing period will result in a richer flavor." They add a vanilla bean and sweeten the banana liqueur with sugar syrup but also say to play with making it sweet or dry. Their general recommendation is to store at RT and that non-citrus fruit-infusions tend to lose some of their punch by around 8 months.

Oh, I haven't tried it yet. Since you said your sandwich was "sadly from Publix," I was just speculating that a food truck in the So Cal burbs would be even more sad. I'll post tomorrow if the truck is there again.