What's for Dinner?

K is for Kohlrabi

It's CSA time again! Woo!

This week we received our first CSA box of the season. The box included arugula, kale, radishes, japanese turnips, baby turnip greens, strawberries, green garlic, and a few Vidalia onions (that weren't grown on our CSA farm, which is in Ranger, GA - Vidalia onions come from Vidalia). We were out of town this weekend for a wedding, but Chris did some cooking for the freezer, and we polished off the rest of the box tonight.

Chris made a risotto using the baby greens, the kale, the radishes, and the green garlic. He raided the deep-freeze for vegetable stock and chicken stock and used those, along with a very dry white wine, for the liquids. He froze the risotto and we ate half of it for dinner on Sunday night - it was really good, and the radishes retained their crispness.

Tonight, I used the arugula and the kohlrabi in a salad. We received a kohlrabi or two in last summer's boxes, but I have to confess that I had no idea what to do with it - or even what it was - and it languished in the crisper. Then, we bought Adam a copy of Eating the Alphabet, and wouldn't you know, K is for kohlrabi. Armed with the knowledge of what, exactly, I was dealing with, I consulted Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone. If ever you have a question about what to do with a vegetable, no matter how random, Deborah Madison will not let you down. You can cook kohlrabi, but she also said that it was good in a salad, so I peeled and julienned the kohlrabi, combined it with the arugula, and tossed it with a mustard vinaigrette that I made based on a recipe in VCFE. Madison's recipe calls for sherry vinegar, dijon mustard, garlic, shallots, salt & pepper, creme fraiche or sour cream, olive oil, parsley, capers, and chives, but we didn't have any shallots, chives, or either creme fraiche or sour cream, and I didn't feel like chopping parsley, but we did have plain yogurt, so I made the dressing with dijon mustard, garlic, salt & pepper, sherry vinegar, and plain yogurt. The yogurt added a nice creaminess and both the dressing and the arugula were kicky, peppery complements to the earthy kohlrabi, which was the bulk of the salad. I liked the kohlrabi more than I thought I would, and I think you could safely use it just like you'd use jicama.

The next box arrives tomorrow... Also, I need to make some strawberry jam.

Beet Risotto with Greens

Beet Risotto
Originally uploaded by tanulewicz

Beet Risotto

If you’ve ever stared into your CSA box wondering what you could possibly do with all those beets, you may want to try beet risotto.

Our past two CSA boxes have included beets, and they languished in the refrigerator because we really had no idea how to use them. I used some of the beet greens last week for Deborah Madison’s empanadas with greens and olives (a favorite at our house), but we still had plenty of beets. Chris looked for beet recipes in several of our cookbooks and found beet risotto in Madison’s Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone. We’ve been Deborah Madison fans for a few years, and since we joined the CSA, both Local Flavors and Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone have been tremendous resources.

In her notes for beet risotto, Madison notes that she was skeptical when she ordered beet risotto at a restaurant, but she was pleasantly surprised when she tried the dish. We figured we’d try it, and thought it would also be a good way to use the rest of the Swiss chard from last week’s box. The risotto also used onions from the CSA, and we pulled parsley and basil from our backyard herb garden.

The beet risotto was excellent. I’ve always thought that beets have such a strong taste, musty and almost dirt-like, and I was worried that this would be a really earthy dish, but the grated beets melt into the rice, and the lemon juice added at the end of the cooking process cuts the mustiness of the beets. The risotto was vivid magenta and while the lemon juice and parmesan brightened the flavor considerably, the beets gave the risotto a complexity that would be hard to mimic with any other vegetable.

We served the risotto with a green salad made from CSA lettuce and cucumbers with a vinaigrette that Chris made from balsamic vinegar and pumpkin seed oil, which he thought would be a good complement to the beets.

Beet Risotto with Greens, adapted from Deborah Madison’s Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone:

5 ½ to 6 ½ cups vegetable stock
3 T butter or olive oil, or a mixture of the two
½ cup finely diced onion
1 ½ cups Arborio rice
½ cup dry white wine or Vermouth
2 T chopped parsley
2 T chopped basil
2 to 3 medium beets, peeled and grated, about two cups (a food processor makes quick work of the grating)
2 to 3 cups greens – beet, chard, kale, or spinach – stems removed, finely chopped
Salt and pepper to taste
Grated zest and juice of one lemon
½ cup freshly grated parmesan, or more to taste, plus more for sprinkling on the finished dish

Heat the stock until simmering. Heat the butter/olive oil in a big, wide pot – I used a Le Creuset 8-quart Dutch oven – add the onion, and cook over medium heat for about thee minutes, stirring frequently. Add the rice, stir to coat it well, and cook it, stirring constantly, for one minute. You should see a white fleck in the middle of each grain of rice. Add the wine and simmer until it’s absorbed, then stir in half the parsley, the basil, and the chopped greens. Add two cups stock, cover, and cook at a rapid simmer until the stock is absorbed. Begin adding the remaining stock ½ cup at a time, stirring constantly until each addition is absorbed before adding the next. When the risotto is nearly done, season with salt and pepper to taste, then add the lemon juice and zest. It may taste really lemony, but it will mellow after a few minutes. Remove form the heat and stir in parmesan cheese – feel free to add more than ½ cup grated parmesan. Serve dusted with the cheese and the remaining parsley.

Mole Poblano Chicken Casserole with Black Beans and Queso Fresco

When asked to list my favorite foods, I always top the list with red beans and rice and macaroni and cheese. Both are pretty simple fare – they require basic ingredients and are easy on the wallet, but when they’re done right, red beans and rice and mac and cheese are really, really good.

One food I always overlook is mole poblano. Good god, I love mole sauce. The first time I had mole sauce, I was seventeen years old and had read a review of Café Noche, a traditional Mexican restaurant in Houston down near Westheimer and Montrose – way edgier than Spring – in the Houston Press. The article mentioned Café Noche’s outstanding mole sauce, a blend of a long list of spices, chiles, pumpkin seeds, and – of all things – chocolate. Maybe it was because I had just read Like Water For Chocolate, but all I knew was that I needed to get whatever that mole stuff was into my belly, stat.

As soon as I tasted mole, I was hooked, and ordered it every time I saw it on a menu. When I was about four months pregnant, I went to Chicago for business and was lucky that the partner I was traveling with was much of a food lover as I am, because as soon as the client said, “Chicago,” we said, “Rick Bayless!” You’d better believe I had a big plate of mole poblano, and, god help me if I didn’t stammer like a schoolgirl when the ever-so-gracious Rick Bayless made the rounds of the dining room. “I love your mole, Mr. Bayless! It’s so, so, uh, RICH!”

While Chris and I have read Rick Bayless’ mole poblano recipe from Mexico: One Plate at a Time several times and have even scoped out all the ingredients at the latin supermarket near my house, we’ve yet to attempt mole poblano. We’ve always talked about making mole from scratch, and about eight years ago, I made enchiladas using a jarred mole poblano when I needed a quick fix. Other than that, though, we’ve had a mole-less kitchen.

Which brings us to this casserole.

Last month, the New York Times reviewed Nancy Silverton’s new cookbook, A Twist of the Wrist, which the review described as a wholesome hybrid of Rachael Ray’s 30-minute meals and Sandra Lee’s “semi-homemade cooking,” except with out that skeevy feeling some (at least, me and Amanda Hesser) get from Sandra Lee. But while the recipes mentioned in the review looked delicious – orzo with porcini mushrooms, papardelle with anchovy sauce - Chris and I couldn’t figure out what the convenience factor was supposed to be. What, we saved time and effort by not preserving our own anchovies or making our own orzo? When I saw the cookbook at the library a few weeks ago, though, I figured I’d check it out and try a few recipes, because for hurried weeknight meals, I am always looking for an alternative to the 20-minutes or less section of Cooking Light.

When I read Silverton’s introduction, the whole “twist of the wrist” concept came full-circle. In the introduction’s first paragraph, Silverton writes that the book was inspired by an “awakening that started a few years ago, after I read a review by Amanda Hesser in the New York Times of a cookbook in which the author used packaged ingredients to create quick, easy meals. As Amanda pointed out in the review, the author’s premise was to get people in and out of the kitchen as quickly as possible so they could do something enjoyable – like talk to their husbands and play with their children. Anything but cook!” I thought, “Oh my god! I totally remember that review!” While – full disclosure – I have never made a Sandra Lee recipe, as her use of heavily-processed ingredients isn’t my cup of tea, I was appalled that Lee described her techniques as, “a new way of cooking” (Sorry, Sandra – that’s Sally Schneider’s arena), and I wasn’t surprised at all when Hesser made authentic versions of Lee’s concoctions for less money and in less time than Lee’s recipes. And if Nancy Silverton was still horrified by Sandra Lee nearly four years after Hesser’s review, I figured, I can get down with that, and went a-hunting in A Twist of the Wrist for a recipe to try.

All of the recipes in the book look promising. The salads look substantial enough to serve as a light supper, and there are several pasta dishes that I’m looking forward to trying, but I was really drawn to the “main dish” section, and in particular, her recipe for Mole Poblano Chicken Casserole, a recipe that featured corn tortillas, jack cheese, black beans, a rotisserie chicken, and jarred mole sauce.

I was familiar with jarred mole and I trusted Nancy Silverton, and the casserole looked like a simple enough Saturday night supper, so I gave it a whirl. Start to finish, the recipe took longer than the promised 55 minutes – more like an hour and 30 minutes start to finish, and that was with both Chris and I working simultaneously with the prep and the cooking - but it was still worth it for a weekend dinner. The casserole was rich but not overwhelmingly so, and the combination of the chicken, the corn tortillas, the cheeses, the black beans, and the mole sauce was, for me, spot-on outstanding.

I used a rotisserie chicken from Whole Foods (because I didn’t have any leftover roast chicken handy) and boxed chicken broth (because while I have three roast chicken carcasses in the deepfreeze waiting to be made into stock, the deep-freeze is sadly bereft of actual stock), and if you have a Latin supermarket in your neighborhood, go there for your cheese and crema, as I have found that in Atlanta, at least, queso fresco is substantially less expensive at a Latin market than it is at Publix or Whole Foods. Silverton’s recipe serves four, but I doubled it anticipating that I would want a fridge full of leftovers.

Adapted from: Nancy Silverton’s Mole Poblano Chicken Casserole with Black Beans and Queso Fresco (Jimmy Shaw, Loteria Grill, Los Angeles)
Serves 8 (but you probably won’t want to share it with that many people)

For the tortillas:
½ cup vegetable or corn oil, plus extra if needed
24 corn tortillas

For the mole:
2 teaspoon sesame seeds
1 8-ounce jar mole sauce (Doña Maria is a good brand to try)
6 cups chicken broth
3 or 4 squares of high-quality, dark chocolate
Salt to taste

For the rest of the casserole:
3-4 cups roasted chicken (about a whole chicken), meat shredded and skin and bones discarded
8 ounces Monterrey Jack cheese, shredded (about 2 cups)
½ white onion, finely chopped (slice the other half into rings to top the casserole)
2 cans black beans, rinsed and drained
4 ounces queso fresco, crumbled
½ cup Mexican crema or sour cream
Salt

Adjust the oven rack to the middle position and preheat the oven to 300˚F.

Heat the vegetable oil in a large skillet over high heat for 2 to 3 minutes, until the oil is almost smoking (you’ll start to smell the oil when it’s hot enough). Place one tortilla in the oil to fry for about 5 seconds, until the tortilla is golden brown, and place it on paper towels to drain. Repeat this step for the rest of the tortillas, adding more oil to the skillet if necessary. When all the tortillas have been fried, stack them and cut them in half. (Alternatively, if you are looking for a slightly healthier way to cook your tortillas, you could try spraying them with cooking spray on each side and baking them at 350˚F for a few minutes – not too long, or they’ll be too crispy – but until they’re just golden.)

To make the mole, toast the sesame seeds in a large skillet over medium heat for about three minutes, shaking the pan frequently to prevent them from burning, until they’re light golden and fragrant.

In a large pot, combine the entire jar of mole sauce with the chicken broth and bring to a light boil over high heat. Reduce the heat to a simmer. Stir in half the sesame seeds and the chocolate and return to a light boil, stirring constantly. Simmer the sauce for 15 minutes, stirring it often to keep it from scorching, and add salt to taste. (If you have a spouse, child, or other competent person handy, you can get them to stir the mole while you fry the tortillas, or vice-versa, thus saving about 20 minutes.)

Spoon just enough mole to cover the bottom of a 9 x 13 casserole pan. Cover the mole with a layer of overlapping tortilla halves, using 12 of the halves, with the flat sides facing the edge of the pan. Cover the tortillas with a thin layer of mole (about 2/3 cup). Scatter a third of the shredded chicken over the mole, top with a third of the jack cheese, a third of the chopped onion, and a third of the black beans. Cover with mole sauce, and then more tortillas, repeating the layers two more times, ending with a layer of tortillas slathered with mole (if you are like me, it will be very, very hard not to eat all the mole as if it were soup). Scatter the queso fresco over the casserole. Drizzle with the crema, sprinkle with the remaining sesame seeds and the onion rings, and sprinkle kosher salt over the whole thing.

Cover the pan with foil (spray the side of the foil that will contact the casserole with cooking spray to prevent the cheese from sticking) and bake for 20 minutes. Uncover the pan and bake for another 10 minutes, until the cheese is melted and the casserole is heated through.

Enjoy!

(Also, thinking about eating the mole sauce as if it were soup reminded me of how I could also eat béchamel sauce as if it were soup, which lead me to think about how entirely awesome it would be to make something that combined both béchamel and mole sauce. Oh, Madre de Dios…)

Twice-Cooked Pork Tenderloin

Inspired by both Hannah and the pork tenderloin in the deep-freeze, I cooked Mark Bittman’s Twice-Cooked Pork Tenderloin on Sunday night.

It was so good, I don’t think I’ll make pork tenderloin any other way ever again.

Although the recipe doesn’t call for brining the pork tenderloin, I figured there was nothing to lose from brining and a whole lot of flavor to gain. I used a brining formula from a grilled tenderloin recipe in The Best Recipe – 1 ½ tablespoons salt and ¾ cup brown sugar, dissolved in 4 cups water. We were having company over, so I prepped two tenderloins and let them brine in the fridge for about two hours.

I prepared the rest of the recipe per the instructions, using Dijon mustard and doubling everything except for the water that you add to the sauce in step 4. I think that adding less water helped the sauce substantially – it had a perfect consistency and was so flavorful that after the four of us polished off both tenderloins and our guests left, I scraped the remaining sauce out of the sauté pan with a spoon and ate it straight-up.

I served the pork with buttermilk mashed potatoes and creamed chard from The Improvisational Cook. We also had salad greens, tossed with mandarin wedges and dressed with Roasted Pecan Viniagrette from The Gumbo Shop Cookbook.

I can’t recommend this recipe enough – like I said, four of us polished off two tenderloins:

Twice-Cooked Pork Tenderloin
Adapted from Mark Bittman

2 boneless pork tenderloins, about 1 pound each
1 ½ tablespoons salt
¾ cup brown sugar
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
8 tablespoons butter, extra virgin olive oil, or a combination
1/2 cup cream
2 tablespoon Dijon mustard
2 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley leaves

1. Dissolve 1 ½ tablespoon salt and the brown sugar in 4 cups water. Trim the tenderloins of the silver skin and immerse them in the brine. Refrigerate for about two hours.

2. Discard the brine, rinse the tenderloins, and pat them dry. Sprinkle meat with salt and pepper. Put a large skillet over medium-high heat; a minute later, add 4 tablespoons butter and/or oil. When butter foam subsides or oil dimples, add meat (curve them into skillet if necessary). Brown it well on all sides, for a total of 4 to 6 minutes. Turn off heat, remove meat from pan, and let it sit on a board. When skillet has cooled a bit, proceed.

3. Cut meat into inch-thick slices. Once again turn heat to medium-high, add remaining butter and/or oil and, when it's hot, add pork slices to pan. Brown on each side, about 2 or 3 minutes each. Turn heat to low and remove meat to a warm platter.

4. Add 1/2 cup water to pan, turn heat to high, and cook, stirring and scraping, for a minute. Lower heat slightly, add cream and cook until slightly thickened. Stir in mustard and parsley, then taste and adjust seasoning. Serve meat with sauce spooned on top.

Slow food, kicking it old-school style

The weather in Atlanta yesterday was terrible (as it still is in much of the country). While I know things here could be worse - we missed the ice, sleet, and snow - it was cold, wet, and generally dreary. It was perfect Crock-Pot weather.

I have two slow-cookers. The first one is a basic model that my parents gave me my first Christmas out of college, and the second one is a fancy number we received as a wedding gift. Both have been used mainly for corned beef on New Year's Day and St. Patrick's Day, braised cabbage (to accompany all that corned beef), pot roasts, split-pea soup, and red beans and rice. I made considered making split-pea soup today, but I made Alton Brown's curried split-pea soup a few weeks ago and that is about all the pea soup I can handle in a month. I flipped through the copy of Fix-It and Forget-It that I picked up at Costco last week and I found my inspiration: Sloppy Joes.

(That last sentence right there cements my position firmly outside even the most lax foodie circles.)

I browned three pounds of ground chuck (if you're going to make Sloppy Joes, you may as well make Sloppy Joes), drained the fat off the meat, added a chopped onion and a peeled, chopped green pepper, two 8-ounce cans of tomato sauce, some Worcestershire sauce, 3/4 cup ketchup, and salt, pepper, and garlic salt to taste. I set the slow cooker for eight hours on low, and that was that.

I don't think I make Sloppy Joes more than about once a year, so this was Adam's first time eating one. Unsurprisingly (for my child, at least), the meal was a hit - "Sloppy slop joes! I like them!"

...

To kill some time and get out of the house yesterday afternoon, Adam and I hit our town's library, which has a solid cooking section. I checked out James Peterson's Splendid Soups and this book, which I expected would make me groan, but after skimming it last night, I think might actually have some great party recipes.

(I was also delighted to see that Graham Kerr is well-represented at my library. As well he should be.)

In defense of cauliflower

If you cringe at the mere mention of cauliflower, viewing it as the most boring of the cruciferous vegetables, I urge you to try this recipe.

Since I am usually cooking for two grownups and a toddler, I have only made the recipe using one head of cauliflower, and I sort of wing it with the olive oil and the seasonings.  It is as excellent with salt and pepper as it is with Tony Cachere's, and the recipe lends itself to countless other improvisations (to borrow a term from Sally Schneider).  You could add grated Parmesan, toasted pine nuts, curry powder, and if you're serving the cauliflower with roast chicken or fish (like I did last night), a little minced parsley would add a some much-needed color to the plate.

It came from the deep-freeze...

Two recipes I've mentioned here found their way back to our bellies during the past week or so. 

The first was Chocolate Chili.  I cooked a mess of it up (it's chili, therefore it is appropriate to refer to large quantities of it as "a mess") for Adam's first birthday party, and Chris did the honors this year.  Adam's birthday party menu included the necessary chili accoutrements, like sour cream, grated cheddar cheese, and corn chips, as well as potato chips with French onion dip, chips, salsa, and quacamole.  We were aiming to please toddlers, here, so top-shelf hors d' oeuvres weren't really a priority.  Nor was nutrition, as other than the salsa, there wasn't a vegetable in sight.

The second was Gumbo Z'herbes.  When I was clearing space in the deep-freeze for the leftover chili and for the gallons of seafood gumbo my mom made when she was in town, I found the last zipper bag of Gumbo Z'herbes, along with a couple of duck legs that Chris bought a couple of weeks ago, but never got around to cooking.  Chris sauteed the duck legs in their own fat, and then chopped the duck meat and added it to the gumbo - and viola, Duck Gumbo Z'herbes!  It was the perfect meal for a freezing Sunday night, and by that point we were completely exhausted because...

Not only did we host 20 toddlers and their parents for Adam's birthday party on Saturday, we hosted about 20 of our neighbors at our neighborhood's monthly wine tasting on Friday night.  Friday night's menu was slightly more high-falutin' than Saturday's, and included smoked pork tenderloin, several cheese and charcuterie platters, tasty little pastries from a local bakery, and a double recipe of hot crab dip.

Oh, hot crab dip.  It is so good.  I've made it for several dinner parties this fall.  It's based on a crab dip recipe from one of Paula Deen's cookbooks, except that I add garlic salt, parmesan cheese, and a lot more seasoned salt than the recipe calls for.  The original recipe also directs you to blend the crabmeat into the dip with an electric mixer, but the thought of beating lump crabmeat into anything gives me the vapors, so I fold the crabmeat into the blended cheese mixture.  Hot crab dip isn't fancy or particularly sophisticated, but it is a smashing comfort appetizer and is great with anything from sliced French bread to water crackers. 

Here's the recipe:

Hot Crab Dip

• One 8-ounce package cream cheese, softened
• 1 tablespoon milk
• 1/3 cup mayonnaise
• ½ cup grated parmesan cheese
• 1 ½ teaspoons horseradish
• 8 ounces lump crabmeat, picked free of shell
• 2 tablespoons chopped onion or several green onions (if you use green onions, be sure to use all of the white part of the onion in addition to the green part)
• At least ¼ teaspoon garlic salt, or to taste
• At least 1 teaspoon seasoned salt, like Cavender’s Greek Seasoning
• Additional parmesan cheese to sprinkle on top

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  With an electric mixer, mix everything but the crab together in a bowl.  Next, fold the crab in to the cream cheese mixture.  Spread the mixture in a shallow ovenproof casserole dish and sprinkle with additional parmesan cheese.  Bake for about 20 minutes or until bubbly.  Serve with crackers.  This freezes quite nicely.

All the cool kids are doing it

I made no-knead bread this weekend.  It was easy, it was crusty, it was delicious.  I used plain all-purpose flour and dusted the dough with more flour, forgoing the more exotic options of cornmeal or wheat bran.  The only problem I encountered was during Step 3 when I dusted the plain cotton towels with flour.  I thought I used ample four, but I clearly didn't, as the dough stuck to the bottom towel.  No biggie - I just scraped the dough off with a dough blade as I dumped it in to a piping hot Le Crueset Dutch oven.

There's really not much more to say about the simplicity, the ease, and the success of this recipe.  My sister-in-law's family owns a bakery in Sonoma County, and I'm curious to hear their professional take on the recipe, and I'm eager to hear if anyone has made the recipe using sourdough starter.  But while I consider myself to be a fairly competent home cook, I have never thought of myself as any kind of a baker (other than the cookie kind).  This recipe, though, may swiftly move me into the category of ultra-amateur home baker.

(I'm kidding about the cornmeal.  Cornmeal is by no mean exotic.  I have plenty of it in my pantry, in fact.  I just didn't feel like busting it out.  Wheat bran, though?  That's hippie food.  Damn hippies.)

(Kidding about the wheat bran, too.  I have some in my fridge.  Hippie.)

We have been eating well these past several months

...I just haven't been writing about it.  Along with cooking, I nurture several other matronly hobbies, including needlepoint and the Junior League, and the needlepoint in particular kept my spare time pretty knotted up (see what I did there?) to the point that I spent all my free time finishing up a couple of Christmas projects rather than writing.  (I've also resumed updates at my main blog.) 

Praises be, I kept track of most of my menus for the past couple of months.  Here are the recipes and meals that stood out:

• Chocolate Chili, from Stop and Smell the Rosemary, one of my all-time favorite Junior League cookbooks.  I made this right around the start of football season when the Redskins, bless their hearts, were on Monday Night Football.  A friend of mine gave me a bar of fancy-schmancy chocolate laced with ancho chili, so I used a few ounces of that rather then the bittersweet chocolate chips I usually melt into the chili.  I have yet to find a chili recipe that I like more than this one.  I've tweaked it over the years - I always saute the onions while I brown the meat - but it remains a cold-weather mainstay.  And (it is a Junior League recipe, after all), it freezes beautifully.
• Farfalle with Turkey Sausage, from Everyday Italian.  It was surprisingly good for something made with so little fat.  Plus, Adam loved the leftovers.
• Mini meat loaves, from The Dorky Yankees, Part II: The Dorkening.  My lord, I love meatloaf.  To be honest, I am suspect of people who don't love meatloaf.  And this recipe made some mighty good meatloaf, which I served with buttermilk mashed potatoes. 
• Lentil soup with pounded walnuts and cream, from the NYT magazine, adapted from Deborah Madison's Vegetable Soups.  Wow - just, wow.  I need to make this soup again, because it was sublime.  Chris tackled the task of pounding the walnuts and garlic with the mortar and pestle, and his efforts were well worth it.  I know I'm talking about lentil soup, perhaps the most peasant of peasant soups, but seriously - this recipe is that good.  I also think I need to go ahead and buy a copy of Vegetable Soups, as I am a big fan of both Deborah Madison and this recipe.
• Ratatouille, from the Gourmet Cookbook.  Here's the thing about ratatouille: I love it when someone else makes it, because even the simplest recipe requires Herculean prep work, and while ratatouille is indeed tasty, this recipe just wasn't worth the effort.
• Eggplant Parmesan, from the Dorky Yankees.  Yum, yum, yum - and it freezes beautifully, so it only makes sense to divide the recipe and freeze half of it for later.

We've also eaten ten of the twelve meals I assembled - assembled is definitely the word I'm looking for - a few weeks ago when a friend of mine organized a party at  our local Dinner A'Fare - but that's for another post.  Also for future posts - the Favor Road taco truck and other Cobb County gems, and Trader Joes!  In Atlanta!

Let's get this started, shall we?

Here's the plan for the coming week:

Sunday (tonight): We've invited the neighbors over for dinner, so I'm thinking steak for the grownups, hot dogs for kids, party potatoes a la my mother, and creamed spinach a la Mastering the Art of French Cooking.  I toyed with serving a grilled eggplant salad similar to the recipes that appeared in both the NYT (outstanding, by the way - I made it on the evening it ran) and the AJC this week, but I figured I'd stick to potatoes because A) they're delicious and I like eating potatoes every once in a while, and B) they're kid-friendly, and we're serving three kids and four adults, so kid-friendly is important.  And I never miss an opportunity to make creamed spinach.  I'll pick up some good French bread and pop a strawberry crisp in the oven for dessert, and there you go - Sunday night dinner party.  I'll save the eggplant for later this week.

Monday: A couple of weeks ago I made gumbo z'herbes from the Gumbo Shop cookbook.  It was mighty tasty, and since the recipe makes two gallons of the stuff, I have several meal's worth in the deep freeze.  I'll serve it with rice, of course, and what's left of tonight's French bread.  Alas, it has a bit too much kick for the Adder.  I'm all about expanding his palate with a variety of tastes and textures, but the cayenne in this batch is a bit much for a 19-month-old.

Tuesday: I'm thinking ratatouille.  All three of us enjoy it, and it will give me a couple of tasty lunches, so bonus!

Wednesday:  Chris is going to Birmingham for the day and won't be back until late, so I'm planning to make the gratineed gnocchi with spinach and ricotta from May's Gourmet.  (Does anyone else think that lately, Gourmet's layouts are awfully reminiscent of the "Foods of the World" series?  The color schemes and the photography, especially.  I'm not knocking it - I love my "Foods of the World" set - I just think it's interesting.)

Thursday: Grilled eggplant salad, this time from the AJC, and some kind of chicken satay.  I'll probably serve this with either basmati or jasmine rice, depending on if I head in a Thai or an Indian direction with the satay.  I'm leaning towards a mild tandoori marinade right now, only because I'm going to make a batch of yogurt tonight, and a tandoori marinade seems like a good way to use up some yogurt.

And that's it for this week.  Friday we're going to a dinner for Chris's work, and Saturday is his company picnic.