This week’s post is a twofer with no real recipe b/c I’m a bit behind schedule — a bit behind all of life, actually but that’s ok. I couldn’t just skip a post because there’s been so much good food the past two weeks and I need a record of it!
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last days of August, first days of September dinners
What we made last week, with notes:
Saturday 8/27/22: Kimchi and bacon grilled cheese with fries. What else do you need on a Saturday night? This was Pinch of Yum‘s recipe, except I added spinach to the bacon/kimchi mixture. We eat this sandwich on the reg — it’s pretty much perfect.
Sunday 8/28/22: Pasta e fagioli with garlic bread. Ok, this I ate all week long with many, many Ritz crackers and it was so satisfying. The recipe came from a book I’ve mentioned before, my all-time fave: “Italian American: Red Sauce Classics and New Essentials: A Cookbook” by Angie Rito and Scott Tacinelli. If you have a mouth and like to cook even a little bit, buy this book. Just LOOK at the tiny pasta and the greens and the broth and the Parm:
Monday 8/29/22: Chicken and squash mafe curry. I thoroughly regret not snapping a picture of this because it was a real highlight of the week. I used a lamb and sweet potato curry recipe from the latest Food & Wine magazine — the recipe is not on their website for me to link to here but it has both peanut butter and coconut milk (like, wow), and a super flavorful spice blend. I swapped in chicken thighs and butternut squash for the lamb and sweet potatoes and I gotta make this again and write it all down, it’s a definite keeper.
Tuesday 8/30/22: Tacos. TACO TUESDAY mmkay
Wednesday 8/31/22: Merguez meatballs with roasted squash and salad. This recipe kinda sorta came from a book called “For The Table” by Anna Stockwell except I used merguez sausages I got at the state farmer’s market instead of ground lamb and turned the whole thing into a flatbread/wrap situation with lots of pickled onions and cucumber and feta and a pistachio gremolata. I thanked myself for those bright ideas.
Thursday 9/1/22: Summer squash and onion lasagna and salad. I must must must come back to this one someday and write out the whole recipe. I basically combined the caramelized squash and onions from Vivian Howard’s book Deep Run Roots with the lasagna verde from Italian American, which includes an incredible, bright green pistachio pesto and a creamy bechamel. I mean, come on.
Friday 9/2/22: Collard green pizza and salad. I had half a big bag of collard greens left after Sunday’s pasta e fagioli and they sure did end up sauteed and on my pizza Friday night. New thing: I’m on a quest for the best pizza dough recipe. I’m over my go-to pizza dough at the moment, although I haven’t found one I like better yet. This one did not quite do it for me, but even bad pizza is good pizza:
And that’s the end of that week! On to this week, where I took far fewer pictures:
Early September dinners
What we made this week, with notes:
Saturday 9/3/22: Rigatoni with sausage, basil, and mustard cream sauce and salad. I get big end-of-summer-almost-fall vibes from this meal. It’s a crossover dinner! The recipe is from Food & Wine, and the whole thing only takes up the space of one paragraph. Read: it’s easy.
Sunday 9/4/22: Moroccan roast with chickpeas and couscous with lemony broccolini. 10 out of 10 would make again, just for the smell. It’s pot roast but with harissa, cumin, and cinnamon and my house smelled like heaven for at least 4 hours. This recipe was perfect and came from Colu Henry’s book, “Colu Cooks“. The picture doesn’t do it justice but it makes me happy to remember this meal.
Monday 9/5/22: Grilled wings; grilled moo cheese, pork tenderloin and broccoli rabe subs, roasted potatoes, and brownies. It was Labor Day! And we had friends over and had a ball. Is it a good idea to make hot, time-consuming sandwiches for a crowd? No, but these pork and broccoli rabe subs are really, really good. They’re from America’s Test Kitchen’s “New Essentials Cookbook“.
Tuesday 9/6/22: leftovers!
Wednesday 9/7/22: leftovers again! Joey wasn’t home so I didn’t cook.
Thursday 9/8/22: Lentil soup in bread bowls. If you ever need a self-esteem boost, make these bread bowls from Molly Yeh. If you follow the recipe exactly, you will end up with restaurant-quality bread bowls and feel like a total superstar. I sort of regret not making the lentil soup she serves in them but I had to try the recipe from “To the Last Bite” by Alexis deBoschnek. Alexis warns it will seem weird that the bacon in the soup is not crisped, it just simmers/cooks along with everything else in the stock, then you thinly slice it at the end and add it back to the soup and the pieces end up as velvety little flavor bombs. I agree it did taste wonderful and yes, it was weird.
And with that, we’re done! Looking forward to more great food and trying out some new stuff next week.