Loving...

that you guys are trying out some of the recipes I've posted - and more importantly - sharing your own creations with me!

Loved this picture from E. in NC who made a peach crostata last weekend for her dinner party. She may have recently tied the knot, but she's putting her Single Gal skills to good use! It looks absolutely scrumptious and I'm just sorry I wasn't there to try some...

And a HUGE thank you to K. here in Atlanta  - the sassiest Single Gal I know - who whipped up some amazing chili and was kind enough to share it with me. Sadly, I ate it all before it even occurred to me to take a picture - but trust me, it was delicious! 

 

Sunday is Soup Day

Sundays were made for soup. They were also made for lounging around on the couch in your PJs, drinking coffee and reading the paper – but you can do all that while your soup bubbles away on the stove. Sunday is also a great day to entertain since you’ll have all day to cook and get ready leisurely. In my family, we always have dinner together on Sundays. It’s our time to catch up, talk about what’s going on and share a good meal. These days, not many of us still live in the same cities as our families, so why not treat your friends like family and invite them over for a Sunday Supper?

Keep it casual and easy – big bowls of soup, hunks of crusty bread, maybe a simple salad if you’re so inclined… just a comforting home-cooked meal to help everyone ease out of the weekend and get ready for the week ahead. This is one of my favorites:

Mulligatawny
Serves 8-10

Stock
1 whole chicken, 3-4 pounds, cut into 5-6 pieces
4 Granny Smith apples, coarsely chopped
4 large carrots, peeled and coarsely chopped
4 celery stalks, coarsely chopped
2 medium onions, coarsely chopped
1 head of garlic, cut in half crosswise to expose all the cloves
3-4 bay leaves
2” piece of ginger, coarsely chopped
2 TB black peppercorns
5-6 whole cardamom pods

Soup
4 TB butter
1 medium onion, peeled & finely chopped
1 large carrot, peeled & finely chopped
1 large celery stalk, finely chopped
1 cup rice
3/4 cup red lentils
1/4 cup flour
1 tea ground coriander
1 TB garlic, minced
3 TB curry paste, yellow or red
1 1/2 tea salt
1 tea ground black pepper
Chopped cilantro for serving

Make the Stock:
Pull out the biggest pot you have and dump all the stock ingredients in it. Add enough cold water to completely cover the chicken and vegetables and bring it to a boil. Reduce heat and gently simmer for one hour. The vegetables will be mushy and the chicken should fall off the bones easily.

Remove the chicken pieces from the pot, discard the skin and bones and shred the meat. Strain the stock and discard the vegetables and spices. If you want, you can let the stock cool and skim off whatever fat accumulates. But the fat adds richness, so I like to go ahead and finish the soup right away as is.

Make the Soup:
In the same large pot, melt butter over medium heat and add onions, carrots and celery. Cook ten minutes, stirring often until vegetables are soft. Add rice and lentils and cook two minutes, stirring constantly. Add flour, garlic, curry paste and about half a cup of the stock. Cook for two minutes, stirring to dissolve the curry paste and get everything evenly combined. Add the remaining stock (You should have 8-10 cups) slowly – about a cup at a time, stirring in between. Cook for about ten minutes or until rice and lentils are tender. Add shredded chicken, salt and pepper. When chicken is heated through, serve soup with chopped cilantro sprinkled on top.


NOTES:
Don’t feel like making your own stock? You can use store-bought stock or low sodium chicken broth – you’ll just need to tweak it a bit. While you’re sweating the soup vegetables, heat the broth in a separate pot and let it simmer with a piece of garlic and a few cardamom pods until you’re ready for it. When it’s time, simply scoop out the spices. You may want to add a peeled, chopped green apple in with the onions, carrots & celery – the sweetness is really great here, so you don’t want to loose it.

You can absolutely make this the day before – but it will thicken as it cools so you may need to add a few cups of water or stock when you reheat it gently. Not having people over? No problem. Just let the soup cool and divide it into single-serving plastic containers. Pop them in the freezer and you’ll have soup all season long!

DFO: Squashed Gnocchi

You know when you think up something late at night, maybe after a glass of cheap chardonnay or two, and you think it's completely brilliant and then the next morning you realize it's really, really stupid? Yeah... that's pretty much what happened when I was trying to decide what to call this dish.

But, stupid name notwithstanding, it's really fabulous and easy so give it a try-

Dinner For One: Squashed Gnocchi

This is serious comfort food - heavy, creamy & incredibly filling - you might want to have a salad for lunch. I just so happened to have some leftover roasted acorn squash on hand but I realize that's pretty rare. If it were me, I wouldn't cook squash just to make this - I'd use a canned version, but you do whatever suits you.

What you'll need:

1 package potato gnocchi

1 TB butter

2 cloves garlic, minced

.5 cup cooked squash, diced into small pieces

.5 cup half & half

Salt, pepper, red chili flakes & chopped fresh rosemary to taste

Parmesan cheese, grated for top (optional & totally indulgent)

How you make it:

Cook gnocchi in salted boiling water according to package instructions. Meanwhile, heat butter in a wide-bottomed pan and cook garlic over low heat until it begins to turn golden. Add squash and half & half. Use a fork to smush squash until it melds with the cream into a (more or less) smooth sauce. Add spices and keep warm until gnocchi are ready. 

When it's time, add gnocchi and a splash of its cooking water to pan, stir everything very gently until gnocchi are coated & serve with a sprinkle of parmesan and extra herbs-

Note: I really like rosemary but it's a strong flavor and some folks aren't that fond of it. That's cool 'cause sage would be incredible in this, as would thyme. And butternut squash would be great. You know the rules - adapt the recipe to use what you have and what you like. Because really, what doesn't taste good with cream & butter? 

All Tarted Up

Oh my. I've gone and done it again haven't I? Crap. Where does the time go?? Hmmm, would you like to hear my mea culpa now, or shall I just run the same old tired excuses by you again? 

Well, the good news is I haven't been hanging out in restaurants since we last talked. But I haven't been at home either - I've been enjoying the best perk of entertaining your friends. Are you ready? Here it is... If you invite people over, they will oftentimes invite you back over to their house! So I've been enjoying the hospitality of family & friends and just generally having a lovely time.

But somehow when you write about food and entertaining, it doesn't seem right to sit back and let the party happen without helping out. Remember the crostata from a few weeks ago?  I made this Ginger Plum version twice this week and it was a huge hit.

I used the same basic method as before with a filling of sliced plums, a few teaspoons of ground ginger and the juice of half a lemon. It takes about 5 minutes to assemble and 40 minutes in the oven - so simple. Served warm from the oven with a dollop of whipped cream... yeah, you'll get invited back for sure.

Fools Rush In

Ok, maybe I got a little carried away. It is still technically August after all, so it’s a tad early for roasting & such. But I was at the farmer’s market this weekend and it was full of apples and root vegetables and gourds of all shapes and sizes and it was all so unexpected and unusual after months of juicy peaches and ripe berries and sweet tender greens. And somehow I ended up with an acorn squash.

Now I don’t know about you, but I think acorn squash just cries out for roasting. So I complied with its request and popped that bad boy in the oven with a dash of olive oil, a pinch of garam masala spice, and a generous sprinkle of salt & pepper. At 400 degrees it took about an hour for the wedges to brown and become tender.

And then?

Well, then it was only just ok… sweet and subtle and not particularly thrilling really. I think it could have thrilled me – maybe with a roasted chicken or pork loin alongside or whipped into a rich pasta filling… but quite frankly, the oven had already been on for an hour, it was 80 degrees outside and I was starting to break a sweat.

The truth is, it’s just not roasting weather quite yet. So I spun my squash around with a little crumbled cow’s milk feta and then, oh then… it was downright delightful. Somewhere between savory and sweet with a little salty tang - it hints of the past and promises a comforting future - perfect for our present, somewhere between Summer and Fall.

An interesting and unexpected pairing, serve it as a salad at room temp or a side for your last BBQ of the season. And remember, good things may come to those who wait - but sometimes it's ok to peek ahead!

Farewell Friend

Oh Summer, what happened?

It seems like just yesterday we were heralding your arrival, pulling out swimsuits and beach towels, and shaving our legs more regularly. But in two weeks it will be Labor Day and then Fall will show up, and we’ll be braising and roasting, and you’ll be gone.

How about before you go we have one last hurrah? We’ll invite over some pals, fire up the grill and sit out on the deck drinking margaritas until the sun goes down. Doesn’t that sound like fun?

What to serve for our summer send-off? How about a sweet, spicy shrimp & pineapple salsa? More substantial than a traditional salsa, it’s a perfect way to kick off your fresh fiesta.

A cross between ceviche and a salsa, this chunky relish is great with tortilla chips, or as a topping for grilled chicken or fish. Don’t like pineapple? Try it with mango, peaches or any type of melon – it’ll be great.

Shrimp & Pineapple Salsa
Serves 6 as a starter

What you need:
8-10 medium shrimp, peeled, de-veined & tails removed (I use frozen)
8oz pineapple tidbits in juice
1 jalapeno, stemmed, seeded & finely chopped
half of a red onion, finely chopped
juice of 1 lime
large handful of cilantro, stemmed & chopped
large pinch of salt (maybe 2, you’ll have to taste it)

Chips for serving 

How to make it:

Cook shrimp in boiling water until pink. Drain and let cool, then cut each shrimp into 4-5 small pieces. Combine with remaining ingredients (including juice from pineapple) and stir to combine.

This is better after it sits for awhile, so make it as far ahead as you can and leave, covered, in the fridge until you’re ready to serve.

Remember Me?

Um, hi. Are you mad?
I would totally understand if you are. I just run off and leave you for a week with no explanation? It was pretty rotten of me. And then I show up with a few lousy paragraphs and not even a pretty picture? And I don’t even have a good excuse. But I’ll try.

You see, it’s like this:

Work has been rough. Like “run around the office all day screaming at people while getting screamed at by other people and not having time to pee” rough. So I’ve been eating out a lot because at the end of the day I’m too wiped out to even plug in my rice cooker. And you know how much I love that thing.

So short of taking pictures of all the lovely wait staff that have coddled & cared for me this week, I just don’t have anything to share. I’m so ashamed. And, looking at my bank balance, I’m a little sick to my stomach. So I’ll be back on the wagon next week, promise. I’ll even invite some friends over – you available?

Oh, and one small side note…
I have a new roommate who moved in this week – and just in the nick of time too, ‘cause now I can use her rent to pay for all my restaurant meals – and I haven’t exactly figured out how to explain why I’m taking pictures of our food…

Hi Roomie ☺