This recipe can be found in Cooking for Jeffrey and on Food Network’s website here.
Friday was another Lenten Friday which meant I had to avoid meat in the recipe that I made. Seeing as this blog is primarily an Ina Garten-cooking blog, this was somewhat of a challenge. Many of Ina’s recipes are not vegetarian, with the exception of her some of her soup and pasta recipes. Even the vegetable side dishes she has are not really designed to be served as the main meal.
So, it took a little work to find one that would fit in with the restrictions. Thus, I turned to Google and typed: Ina Garten vegetarian recipes. This helped and after combing through some results, I settled on a pasta dish.
This recipe can be found in Barefoot in Paris, pg. 176.
Monday was my day off from work. And I had the opportunity to make dinner for us all once again. I made a recipe out of Cook Like a Pro. Check out Recipe #38! But, the original plan for Monday was to make a dessert! I think I’m becoming a dessert person. Ha!
So, sticking with the Paris and French theme I started last Friday, I decided to bang out a dessert recipe from Barefoot in Paris. Meringues Chantilly called to me as soon as I laid my eyes on it! So I knew that had to be it. But there was one problem. I’ve never attempted meringue before.
Well, this was definitely the recipe I would because, after all, one of the reasons for this blog is to learn new things, right? So the meringues were made. And to be honest, after I accomplished separating the egg whites successfully (went through a couple more than I wanted to, pesky yolks!), the stand mixer did most of the work.
Then came the piping! I read the recipe, drew my circles on the parchment, made of mess of the piping bag, my hand, and the counter and piped my circles. It wasn’t until after I stuck them in the oven that I realized they were supposed to be discs. Oh well! I’ll work with it and it still came out fine.
Since meringue can be kind of bland and dry on their own, I decided to whip up Ina’s sweetened whipped cream and the raspberry sauce that is a few pages later in Barefoot in Paris.
When it came time to serve, I spooned some raspberry sauce on the bottom of the plate, placed one meringue ring on top, added some whipped cream, more raspberry sauce, another meringue ring, a dab of whipped cream, and finally some more raspberry sauce. I garnished with some fresh raspberries and a strawberry.
This recipe can be found in Cook Like a Pro, pg. 91
I had off from work on Monday, so I was asked to make dinner. Of course, I obliged. Usually, when it’s my turn to make dinner, I get to decide the meal from scratch entirely. But not Monday. I already the main ingredients to work with: chicken thighs. So, naturally, I seized the opportunity to cross another Barefoot Contessa recipe off the list.
Using the Master Recipe Index, I quickly found a recipe that would work. It was even better because we had nearly everything to make it. I only had to purchase one ingredient. Score! The creamy mustard sauce recipe calls for two types of mustard. One of which is one my family doesn’t really use. The amount in the recipe was only a teaspoon, so I opted to leave out the whole grain mustard entirely. But, you wouldn’t know the difference anyway.
This recipe cooked up nice and quick and was packed with so much flavor thanks to the Grey Poupon dijon mustard. The sauce was creamy despite not having any dairy product. This meal serves a crowd and it will definitely be a crowd-pleaser!
Overall the cooking time was off from what the recipe said it would be. I’ve found this to be typical of Barefoot Contessa recipes. However, in this case, I think it was due to the fact that I had really GIANT chicken thighs to cook. I had to spread them over two pans! They were so large and there was so many!
But, I just adjusted the recipe to compensate for the large number of thighs and went with it! This dish has so many different flavors that it will leave you wanting to have seconds…maybe even thirds.
I made dessert, too! That was the original plan for Monday. Just make a dessert. I chose to do something I’d never done before and make meringue. Check back tomorrow to see how they turned out!
My father’s birthday was last Saturday. For me this date had a little more meaning this year than in previous years since it is the day I coincide with the end of the “before times” prior to COVID-19 changing our lives.
So, as a way for me to stay distracted, I offered to bake his birthday cake. He gladly accepted the offer. So, I turned to a book that I have fallen in love with ever since I purchased it last Fall. It is The Magnolia Bakery Handbook: A Complete Guide for the Home Baker. This is a MUST BUY for anyone who enjoys baking, even in a casual sense. The recipes are flawless and so easy to follow. You will honestly feel like you are a master baker every time you try one of these recipes!
This recipe can be found in Barefoot in Paris, page 82.
Last Friday, I made a recipe out of one of my favorite BC cookbooks, Barefoot in Paris. I’m not really sure what it is about this cookbook that interests me so much. Perhaps it’s the fancy food. Maybe it’s the fact that it allows me to live vicariously through Ina in Paris. Whatever the reason may be, the book is full of French-inspired cuisine that tastes great.
The original recipe for this soup calls for making pistou, which is basically the French version of pesto sauce. But it is March in New England, so fresh basil is hard to come by and what the grocery stores do have this time of year is expensive and doesn’t look too great. So, I decided to not make the pistou for this recipe.
Overall, this soup is basically a French-style minestrone. Though, personally I prefer the heartiness of a minestrone over this one. There are more layers of flavors in minestrone and this vegetable soup kind of felt a little flat. We had ample leftover and I found myself adding in crushed red pepper flakes each time I reheated it, just to add to the flavors.
This soup uses a vegetable that I’ve never seen in a soup before: string beans. It was a nice way to use this vegetable and spiced up the vegetable soup-monotony that I usually have (carrots, onions, potatoes, etc). Leaving the skins on the potatoes and using white potatoes give the soup a natural thickening agent, especially as it cools.
To keep with the healthier-eating plan that my family and I have been doing, I used vegetable spaghetti instead of regular spaghetti. As expected, once the soup cooled and remained in the fridge a few days, the pasta did act like a sponge and soak up a lot of the excess water. However, it seems that the pasta didn’t “bloom” as much as other pastas used in vegetable-based soups before.
Overall, Provencal Vegetable Soup is nothing to really write home about. While it is easy and can be adapted to use any vegetables you have available to you, the flavors weren’t really there for me. As is common with many Barefoot Contessa recipes, the heavy use of pepper overpowers the dish.
Yesterday was Pi Day! It was March 14 and the mathematical number, Pi, begins with 3.14. Though I did decide to bake yesterday, I did not bake a pie. Instead, I made GIANT chocolate chip cookies!
The recipe I used came from Sally’s Baking Addiction and the recipe I used can be found here. I highly recommend checking out her baking blog. There are recipes for virtually anything you would ever want to bake. Plus, the stellar food photograph really makes her recipes shine. I often want to jump right into my computer’s screen to gobble everything up!
If you are looking for a giant cookie recipe, these will not disappoint. The recipe is easy and, unlike some of Sally’s cookie recipes, does not require any chilling time. One downside is the recipe only yields 6 cookies. Though, each one is equivalent to about 4 regular-sized cookies. But, by making a second batch, you can get twelve extra, extra large cookies in no time!
I’ll be honest, when making these cookies, I thought the massive amount of cookie dough used for each one would cause it to be dense. But that wasn’t the case at all. This recipe was definitely a success for me! The best part? No scooping the dough required. (One less tool to wash!) I just turned out the prepared cookie dough on a piece of parchment paper, formed it into a large hockey puck shape, and divided it into 6 sections. Each section became one cookie. It worked great!!
After baking, while the cookies cooled, I decide to “dress them up” a little bit and pressed in some additional chocolate chips into the tops. This gave the cookie a “bakery look” and really did make them look better.
Look at me! March is almost half over and I realized I never posted the February Cooking Roundup! Well, better late than never, right?!
February was not as prolific for me as January was, but I was still able to make a few recipes. I am slowly but surely chipping away at that 1,056 recipe total! In February, I made a total of five Ina Garten recipes and two originals!
After taking the first week of February off from cooking, I made a wonderful vegetable soup that was my own original recipe! You can see how it turned out here. If you make this recipe, let me know how it turned out for you!
Next, I made another original recipe. This is also a recipe that I’m still working on perfecting. But for now, my Easy Sweet and Sour Chicken recipe is on the blog for all who care to enjoy.
The first Barefoot Contessa recipe of February came around halfway through the month. It still amazes me that I was able to get five recipes down in only two weeks’ time. This was Recipe Number 31: Perfect Roast Chicken. I still can’t get over the fact that it took me this long to make Ina’s signature dish!
Next, I tackled my first fish dish of Ina’s. The salmon was so tasty and will definitely become a staple recipe in my house! To go along with the salmon, I needed a side dish. After all, salmon on a plate is a little bland and unappealing. I wanted something vibrant and yummy to help enrich the plating of the salmon. Thus, I made Recipe Number 33: French String Beans. While the string beans are the pain attraction in this side dish, the peppers and onion help to bring the flavors together.
I rounded off the month with some comfort food! Banana Rum Trifle, which I’m still dreaming about. And finally, another Barefoot Contessa classic: Macaroni and Cheese.
