NadyaDuke

For dinner the other night I made a riff on Ali Slagle’s recipe for Sweet Potatoes with Spinach and Feta (gift link). I had turnip and radish greens from my first farmers market trip of the year, and also some fresh (i.e. Mexican) chicken chorizo from a vendor there. So I swapped the greens for spinach, Cotija for Feta and served it topped with cooked chorizo as well as green onions and a dab of sour cream. The recipe is pretty brilliant as the jalapeño brine adds heat and acidity but doesn’t overwhelm and plays off the sweetness of the potatoes. So that brings me to breakfast today. I sautéed a bit of the leftovers and topped with an over easy egg. Tasty and more photogenic than dinner would have been if I’d take a picture, I suspect.

That green bean salad looks delicious and perfect for the day you had. I’m going to make it!

Last week my husband wanted to make cast iron pizza and he made enough dough for 5 of them. During the week we produced two cast iron pizzas and three small (quarter sheet size) focaccia. As he says, carbs are his love language! This morning I made avocado toast with some of the last focaccia, and two sunny side up eggs. The toast is topped with an herb salt blend we just discovered and also used on the focaccia. The eggs are topped with TJ’s red and green Hatch chiles because I made of my infrequent trips to Trader Joe’s yesterday and grabbed it along with all my other loot.

@Kim Shook I’ll look for savoy when the farmers market gets going! Tonight I made dirty rice with some link sausage from a local company. I like their barbecue sauce so bought this on spec and it’s good and while not andouille it worked. That was just a prequel to the fancy part, which was a sour cherry clafoutis my husband made with some frozen cherries. Second time we’ve made this and it’s a great payback for not a lot of work, if you start with pitted cherries. It’s hard to take a glamour shot of dirty rice!

About as fancy as I get on a weekday. Avocado toast on Daves’s killer bread (the small version), with some leftover fresh tomatillo salsa, and an over easy egg. A scattering of Penzey’s roasted Szechuan pepper and salt, which is one of my favorite lazy cheats. When I worked in an office I kept a jar on my desk.

I work from home but often just have 30 minutes for lunch due to So Many Zoom Meetings. Each week I try to plan one easy lunch I can make on repeat and alternate that with leftovers. Some weeks it’s just rock simple cheese quesadillas! This is about the third week this winter/cold spring I’ve picked this easy dumpling soup. I’ve found a few brand of mini dumplings I like and I like the size better for soup, easier to eat and you get “more.” Yesterday I had some leftover lacinato kale so subbed that for the spinach. I usually top with chili crisp but instead I mixed in a bit of Gochujang with the broth as I was heating it, which worked well. Nice to have found something fast, tasty, and versatile. Plus it warms me up and it’s been cold! There are green onions in there. They fell to the bottom.

Last week we hosted our monthly family dinner, which rotates between us and my SIL. I forgot to take pictures but we made the best carnitas we’ve ever made, from this Rick Bayless recipe, roughly doubled, because if you’re going to make carnitas, make leftovers, right? Besides, tortillas and guacamole, I made a fresh tomatillo salsa, and a pico de de gallo, some arroz verde from a forgettable recipe, and made refried beans following Ranch Gordo’s recipe and using RG Pinquitos. Saved bacon fat for the win on those. Tonight was date night, but the real story behind tonight’s dinner is I had it all prepped yesterday only to realize that neither of us really were hungry for dinner. I’d made sous vide pork chops, prepped smashed potatoes for the oven, and steamed some spinach for creamed spinach. It all went into the fridge last night and tonight’s dinner was easy to finish and a success. I made a quick pan sauce for the chops with dry vermouth, whole grain mustard, and chili fig jam, served it with a lovely 2013 Oregon Pinot Noir and thanked my luck. Also thanks to some discussion here that pointed out that adult spinach sometimes trumps baby spinach, as I made sure to use full grown spinach for the creamed spinach and am glad I did. It is a heartier and more bitter contrast with sauce.

Gebhardt is one of the original, if not the original, Tex Mex brands, and did their part to bring chili to the rest of America. Somewhere in my collection of contage cooking pamphlets I have one of theirs, explaining what chili and enchiladas and so forth. A kind of like this. Or did you mean you hadn’t heard of Tampico in which case, never mind ;).

I'm enjoying the hints of how the different country's competitions are different. My favorite was when the French chef said that he wasn't used to cooking something in 30 minutes as the shortest time they were ever given was an hour and a half! Seemed very French :).

@rotutsYou should have seen me staring at my iPad, trying to draw a fleur de lys!

I had a 2005 magnum of really lovely Pinot Noir burning a hole in my wine cellar. So I invited some friends over for dinner. The wine is from an Oregon winery owned by a French family, so a menu of recipes from American Dorie Greenspan’s Around My French Table seemed fitting. I made the chard-stuffed pork loin, but brined the pork, which she doesn’t call for. The pommes dauphinoise were a huge hit and the broccoli did the job. The wine, my last bottle from my favorite Oregon vintage, was delicious. It’s an extra special bottle as it was signed by the winemaker and her three brothers who were all at the winery for a special dinner many years ago. I didn’t think to take a picture until I’d had a few bites, clearly!

Last Saturday I’d planned to make dinner with the last of the pheasant from my husband’s hunting trip last winter. Then I made a charcuterie board so good we decided that was dinner! No problem delaying the dinner until Monday except that in a fit of efficiency, I’d already prepped and cut the potatoes to cook. I didn’t want them to go brown in the fridge so decided to try vacuum sealing them. Worked like a charm. Picture is of the potatoes after two days in the fridge. Dinner was Breast of Pheasant with Sour-Cream (sic) sauce from NY Times. We’ve found that braising is usually the best treatment for pheasant, but this was co-authored by Pierre Franey and we had exactly the two skinless, boneless breasts called for so I went for it. It turned out well, I’d make it again.

Just two of us so keeping it simple. Chips, dip and veggies and then wings at half time. Making half lemon pepper honey from this recipe and half buffalo. Baked because it’s too cold to grill and I don’t deep fry, it’s a skill I’ve never picked up. I like football but I mostly watch for the ads!

The inevitable adjustments. Two friends can’t make it, so no cheesecake and no green beans. I’m making the Brussels sprouts mustard slaw from NY Times Essentials. I’d given it a test run a few weeks ago before my friend volunteered green beans and we like it. Winemaker friend is bringing a red wine cranberry sauce so I’m not making one. And I know we’ll be fine for desserts: here they are minus the last minute garnish for that cranberry tart. And a pic of my butter calculator from last night’s prep!

We're hosting and will have 9 people total, the same crowd as last year, a mix of family and friends. My husband continues to not want turkey, so we're making the honor guard pork roast with apricot dressing from Molly Stevens's All About Roasting, except I'm swapping the pistachios for hazelnuts because Oregon. I'll make gravy from the drippings if luck is on my side (modern pork doesn't always have a lot!), and I'm making the Pioneer Woman's mashed potatoes because they hold beautifully, probably because of the cream cheese. I have no problem making mashed potatoes at the last minute but I'm not up for making that AND gravy at the last minute so always want to do one well ahead of time. My husband is making three pies (chocolate, pumpkin/pecan and cranberry curd) and dinner rolls, my SIL is bringing a light appetizer, one friend is bringing her traditional green beans with shallots and bacon, and another her famous cheesecake. And our friends who have a winery are bringing wine. Oh! And I'm making Mama Stamberg's cranberry relish, which has horseradish in it. I made it last year to go with our beef roast and I think it's a fun way to bring in some traditional Thanksgiving flavor in a way that works well with meat. My husband wanted to try the cranberry curd tart from America's Test Kitchen and was worried it might be too much cranberry in one meal but I told him at the holidays I think it's fine! The other two pies are tried and two favorites. I hadn't heard of an honor guard pork roast before I started cruising for this year's main course. We've done crown roasts many years, and Stevens prefers this presentation because she says it cooks more evenly. You take two frenched rib roasts and stand them up to interlace the bones, like swords crossing in an honor guard. Should be fun.