Cooking from "Dining In," "Nothing Fancy," and "Sweet Enough" by Alison Roman

[blue_dolphin]

This thread is devoted to cooking recipes from the book, Dining In by Alison Roman. 

Both @Anna N and I have made the Crispy Kimchi Omelet, here and here. We both thought that kimchi + sharp cheddar + an omelet that's browned on the outside and runny in the middle seemed like all kinds of wrong but it turned out to be quite good.  That recipe is also available on Food52: Crispy Kimchi and Cheddar Omelette

 

Last night, I fixed a little snack of the Buttered Radish Toasts that the book serves with a steak.  The topping of parsley, anchovy and capers gives the simple radish + butter combo enough oomph to stand up to a steak - or on it's own.  

I'm planning on cooking more from Dining In so I'm honoring Anna's suggestion to give the book a thread of its own. 

Please do join in if you've got the book.  

 

In addition to that omelet, here are a few other recipes available online:

Slow-Roasted Citrus Salmon With Herb Salad (from the dreaded NYT)

The viral, Salted butter and chocolate chunk shortbread that's actually all over the internet. 

Paprika-Rubbed Sheet-Pan Chicken with Lemon

[blue_dolphin]

Yesterday, I made the Olive Oil-Roasted Tomatoes from Dining In p 37. 

These guys roast for ~ 3 1/2 hrs so the flavors are super concentrated.

 

I used the tomatoes in the Roasted Tomato and Anchovy Bucatini p 153

This is an umami-bomb of a tomato sauce, especially since I used sun-dried tomato purée in place of the tomato paste called for. 

I'd prefer this with some zucchini, peppers or other vegetables added to the pasta but I managed to eat it as is anyway!

[weinoo]

I recently made a recipe of hers from the NY Times cooking section.  Chicken with garbanzo beans. It was awful.

[blue_dolphin]

13 minutes ago, weinoo said:

I recently made a recipe of hers from the NY Times cooking section.  Chicken with garbanzo beans. It was awful.

Thanks for the warning.  I don't think that one is in the book so I should be safe.

[heidih]

@weinoo  pwehaps if it had been chicken with chickpeas it would have been better

[scubadoo97]

15 hours ago, weinoo said:

I recently made a recipe of hers from the NY Times cooking section.  Chicken with garbanzo beans. It was awful.

Curious, what was awful about it?   I glanced at the recipe and looked pretty basic 

[Anna N]

47 minutes ago, scubadoo97 said:

Curious, what was awful about it?  

 The garbanzo beans!  

[scubadoo97]

Were they over done, hard/mushy?

[blue_dolphin]

Just now, scubadoo97 said:

Were they over done, hard/mushy?

 

@Anna N would say they're awful just for being on the plate 

[blue_dolphin]

Today's breakfast was the Olive Oil-Fried Lentils with Cherry Tomatoes and a Chile-Fried Egg from Dining In p 139.  The prep seemed fussy for a bowl of lentils with a fried egg on top but paid off big time with the most flavorful lentils I've ever made.

The lentils pick up tons of flavor from the garlic and shallot that are slowly cooked before adding the cherry tomatoes and cooked further until the tomatoes release their juices before adding the lentils and cooking further still until the lentils start to crisp. Meanwhile, the red onion slices are picking up their own great flavors from their marinade of lime juice and fish sauce. 
The crispy egg and chopped, roasted peanuts (which I forgot to add until after I took the photo) bring both texture and flavor and that final drizzle of chile oil and squeeze of lime juice tie it all together.
The header notes mention having cooked lentils on hand but that's not a step that saves time here as they cook up in the time it takes to chop everything and get the garlic-shallot-tomato mixture ready.   In estimating how much is a pint of cherry tomatoes, I suspect I used too many but it's tomato season so it's all good.

 

The recipe can be found online at this link to the Winston-Salem Journal (which made me answer a couple of questions but was otherwise innocuous)

[Okanagancook]

For your info, there are 116 notes on the recipes over at Eat Your Books.

[blue_dolphin]

6 minutes ago, Okanagancook said:

For your info, there are 116 notes on the recipes over at Eat Your Books.

 

Including a few by me!

[Okanagancook]

Yes, I know and thank you for all your notes that you faithfully post.  I always check my recipes for EYB notes before making them.  

[blue_dolphin]

3 minutes ago, Okanagancook said:

Yes, I know and thank you for all your notes that you faithfully post.  I always check my recipes for EYB notes before making them.  

Me, too!  I really appreciate the comments from others so I try to be good about entering them myself, as long as I've stuck fairly close to the recipes.

[blue_dolphin]

Cantaloupe with Arugula and Black Olives from Dining In p 99. 

 

This sweet-savory salad is both interesting to look at and to eat.  Couldn't be easier - throw some arugula and melon on a platter, squeeze a lemon and snip some chives over the top and drizzle with finely chopped oil-cured olives (I would have preferred them cut into thin slivers) and olive oil. S & P and you're done. I used a beautiful, fragrant Ambrosia melon from a local farm that was the star of the show. If the melon isn't super ripe and delicious, this will fall flat, as the header notes suggest.

[kayb]

You people have made me buy another damn book.

 

[Okanagancook]

Ha, ha...I have it in my cart over on Amazon.ca

Just looking for something else to qualify for free shipping🙃

[Anna N]

On 9/8/2018 at 1:31 PM, blue_dolphin said:

The viral, Salted butter and chocolate chunk shortbread that's actually all over the internet. 

Thanks! So, since I didn’t have the necessary ingredients to make the cookies that I had in mind for this week, I have the dough for these now chilling in the fridge. I swore I would never make another cookie that requires rolling and then cutting after many attempts at Dorie Greenspan‘s world peace cookies with little success. We’ll see how this works out.

[blue_dolphin]

I made the Caramelized Honey with Figs and (without the) Ice Cream from Dining In p 278.  They are quite nice.  The flavor of the fresh figs comes through quite clearly as compared to recipes where they are poached in wine with spices. 

 

The recipe says the honey should be cooked until it's a dark amber, the color of good maple syrup.  

Here's my test plate, with a drop of maple syrup in the middle.

I confess that I didn't actually have the maple syrup to compare while cooking as I couldn't get the cap off the bottle without waiting for hot water so I took a guess.  Could have gone a little longer maybe but I didn't want to scorch it. Has a subtle caramel flavor. 

 

I had a few figs on polenta with goat cheese and walnuts for my breakfast. 

 

I'm going to make some caramelized honey and fig popsicles with some of them.  Watch the popsicle thread for developments in that area!

 

[blue_dolphin]

Spicy, Garlicky White Beans from Dining In p 155.

This is basically a just a quick way to turn canned beans into something tasty. What's not going to be tasty after cooking in chicken fat with a bunch of garlic and chile pepper and crushed fennel? 

I do believe most canned white beans would disintegrate with this treatment but I used Rancho Gordo Marcella beans and used care in stirring them. 

After carefully preserving their shape,  I smashed them on to some toast, topped them with peperonata and called it breakfast:

[weinoo]

On 9/9/2018 at 10:23 AM, scubadoo97 said:

Curious, what was awful about it?   I glanced at the recipe and looked pretty basic 

 

The lemon in the dish turned the whole dish bitter.

 

On 9/9/2018 at 11:10 AM, Anna N said:

 The garbanzo beans!  

 

LOL!

[gfweb]

Is this a beans cookbook?

[blue_dolphin]

1 hour ago, gfweb said:

Is this a beans cookbook?

 

According to Eat Your Books, 11 of 148 recipes in Dining In call for legumes, including 2 of the 6 recipes I've posted.  

Seven of them use beans.  One of the 7 bean recipes calls for both beans and black eyed peas and and an additional 3 recipes call for lentils.  One recipe calls for split peas. 

 

To further your perception, I expect I'll make another lentil dish today 

 

Edited September 13, 2018 by blue_dolphin (log)

[blue_dolphin]

Spiced Black Lentil Salad with Oil-Packed Tuna, Radishes and Purple Potatoes from Dining In p 134.

Looks pretty but kind of a meh salad for me.  This starts out with the recipe for Spiced Lentils with Spring Onions p 133.  The lentils are nicely seasoned and would be a fine side dish on their own.  Though this is not suggested in the recipe, I tossed the potatoes and beans with some of the spiced garlic oil used for the lentils but should have done so while they were still warm.  

 

[weinoo]

You know, here's the thing with cookbooks by millennial bloggers.  Isn't every recipe available somewhere else? I don't necessary see any real creativity going on with these recipes, they all just look like rehased stuff with maybe an ingredient or two changed. But maybe that's just me.

 

Anyway, in case anyone is interested,  here are Alison's beauty secrets!