This recipe is a twist on one I played with recently as a recipe test. The original, which was delicious, called for using garlic and oil cured black olives along with a mix of fresh herbs and the chicken. I didn't dare mess with the garlic (except to add even more), but was itching to put my newly created preserved lemons to use, and so came up with my own version of this easy, weeknight meal.
Pick Your Favorite Nut – Pound Cake
I'm a big fan of what in France they like to call "Weekend" cakes, simple sweet loaves that are perfect to wrap and take into the country for a weekend picnic. One of my favorite such loaves is a glazed lemon cake by Pierre Hermé that I made countless times while living in France. It was a huge hit with the kids, so I was always under the gun to make sure that there was at least one on the counter and one in our tiny freezer as a back-up.
Preserved Lemons
If you haven't yet tried preserved lemons in a dish, you must. A staple of Middle Eastern cooking, preserved lemons add an exotic and complex salty-citrus note wherever used. The first time I cooked with them was in a chicken dish of one of my favorite local chefs, Ana Sortun. Ana, who is a La Varenne Paris alum, is the chef and owner of Oleana, a truly magical restaurant just outside of Boston. In her dish, Ana slips some preserved lemon under the skin of her version of "chicken under a brick" for an awesome twist on this classic.
Peanut Butter and Fudge Brownies
Holy $#!%….has it really been a whole month since we've posted a chocolate recipe here?
I do hope you'll forgive me.
Actually, I suspect that after a bite of one of these heavenly cubes of goodness many of you won't just be forgiving me, but will be tempted to name your first born male child after me.
By the way, my name is Steve, not Oui.
Sweet Corn Polenta with Eggplant Sauce
This dish is nothing short of a revelation. Much like the first time I made my own pâte feuilletée at Le Cordon Bleu and became a forever spoiled puff pastry snob, having made this polenta from fresh corn, I am seriously questioning whether I can ever make one from dried cornmeal again.
Bold words, I know, but I defy any of you out there to make this and not have the same thought run through your head. Yeah, it's that good.
Key Lime Cheesecake
Peyton, who is once again on a pescatarian kick having given up eating all red meats while off at camp this summer, recently returned home after a six week absence, so a special meal was in order. As a huge fan of Asian food, sushi in particular, working up some appetizers and a main meal was pretty straight forward. We started with some fried crab spring rolls and "Wagamama" gyoza, then moved onto a fabulous rice salad with oranges and mangoes, and an awesome Thai dish called shrimp larb that we served up with a tasty cabbage and green bean salad.
Teriyaki Chicken Wings
Ever have a hankerin' for chicken wings?
Yeah, me too….all the time.
Normally I'm a buffalo wing kind of guy, having been schooled in the fine art of hot-wings while an undergrad student at Syracuse about 400 years ago. My time there coincided with the birth of the buffalo wing craze and there was a local joint called "Ventura's Wings and Things" that delivered killer wings that were always part of our weekend feasts.
Hazelnut Shortcake with Caramel Berries
Last year for my birthday, Boris bought me a gorgeous little cookbook by Lori Longbotham entitled Luscious Berry Desserts . I've flipped through it frequently, but until now had not pulled the trigger on a recipe. When sitting down to plan out Boris' welcome home dinner the other day (he'd been rocking a month long National Outdoor Leadership School "NOLS" course), I pulled his gift from the shelf and decided to make him the recipe that made the cover of the book, this delicious hazelnut berry cake. We liked it so much that we made it the following weekend for my father-in-law George's 80th birthday cake!
Silken Gazpacho
It's been an interesting summer around here dinner-wise, with just three of us at the table most nights we've gotten pretty fluid with our meal planning. For the first time, four of the kids have had rather long-term commitments that took them away for a chunk of the summer. Grid is in Manhattan working an internship for a cool tech start-up. Peyton is off to a six week camp in upstate New York, Arthas did the People to People student ambassador thing for three weeks, travelling to Greece and Italy, and Boris huffed his way through a month long NOLS course hiking and rafting in Idaho.
Cooking for the three of us remaining homebodies has meant that a late afternoon stop at the farm stand, or a serious pre-meal craving could easily inform what hit the table on any given night. Advanced meal planning has taken a back seat to spontaneity in a way that's just plain hard to manage when you're cooking for a family of seven.
Lime Cheesecake Ice Cream
Within minutes of polishing off the last of our stupendously good homemade coffee ice cream, my wife and I were back to pouring through Jeni Britton Bauer's Jeni's Splendid Ice Creams at Home cookbook for another inspired recipe of hers to try. I fell hard for the "Salted Caramel", while my wife was drawn to the "Goat Cheese and Roasted Red Cherries".
Guess which one we made?