Last night for supper I made Dorie Greenspan’s pommes dauphinois – potatoes cooked in cream with Gruyere cheese on top. My next attempt for the Friday’s With Dorie virtual cooking club. I liked them. I was worried about the cream to potato ratio – it was supposed to be 2 to 2 1/4 lbs. spuds to 1 3/4 cup cream, and of course I don’t have a kitchen scale, so I had to guess at the weight of the potatoes. I used less than I thought I should; about 7 potatoes that ranged from smallish to fist-sized. I didn’t want to haul out the mandolin, so I used the food processor. I only have a 4mm slicing blade, so I think I could have done just as well with a knife, but the machine sure was fast. We made the potatoes our main course, which suited their richness. I’m still working on using up Pie Palooza greens so we had a big salad, and an Asian-flavored slaw, that I wasn’t so happy with. The dressing had sushi ginger and oil, regular & sesame (I was out of regular vegetable oil, so I used almond, and a few tablespoons sesame oil for seasoning)and rice vinegar, and it had chopped peanuts in it. I think I would’ve liked it better with peanut butter in the dressing, too.

The recipe that I had tried before is Mama Lo’s Broccoli Casserole, collected by Jane and Michael Stern – but I got it from How to Eat Supper. It’s kind of a broccoli strata, with eggs, chopped broccoli, melted butter, cheese and a bit of sugar – I always use less then the 3 TBLS called for – poured over torn up bread and baked. This was actually the first time I used fluffy white bread in this casserole; I have to say, it’s the best.

The recipe that I wanted to try, the high art entry, is a green bean slaw from 101 Cookbooks Heidi Swanson. It’s a recipe she created while living in Rome for three weeks, poking around in markets, taking pictures, using public transportation. As Heidi herself says, it’s a mishmash of ingredients, but they work – they do! The salad is a great combination of tastes and texture – but my sink was piled high with dishes by the time preparation was through. I didn’t have any “Moscato from Trani, Italy”, so I soaked my raisons in a mixture of sweet and dry Vermouth. If I make it again, I think I will leave out the croutons. Today I had about half of the leftover slaw for lunch with a boiled egg on top, and there’s still enough for lunch tomorrow with extra croutons, nuts and cheese.

The nicest part, to me anyhow, was that it was just reassuring somehow, that this big mess of vegetables could be made into a dinner that not only I found satisfying – I’m the person that’s known to eat lima beans with butter and grated nutmeg as comfort food, after all -  but everyone else did, too.

Beets

Jazzed up potatoes – Mexican fried potatoes – from Mollie Katzen, with onions, garlic, cumin & red pepper flakes, tomatoes, cilantro, black olives, and fried torn up corn tortillas, topped with a squish of lime juice & melted cheese; shirred eggs, baked with a splash of cream and chives and parmesan; custard-filled corn bread, and a really tasty gluten free version with cinnamon and green chile. I also made a big spinach salad with a red dressing, and water chestnuts, mushrooms, and sunflower seeds – with and without bacon. For dessert, fruit crumbles: rhubarb-strawberry, gluten free, with almonds & pine nuts for extra crunch, and cranberry-raspberry with regular flour streusel. Since it’s brunch, and early in the day, I put out Greek yogurt with honey for topping instead of whipped cream or ice cream.

I got home a little before 3:00, and completely forgot that I was planning on mowing the lawn. I took a bike ride to return a library book, and I’ve settled in on the couch with all the Sunday papers and cable TV shows, vampires and Treme and Tudors.

I had the last of the spinach salad for dinner, with some of the leftover egg sliced up on top and a piece of the skillet corn bread, toasted. All the custard-filled got eaten at the brunch.

I feel a little guilty about not mowing but it’s not too bad. I just might have to eat the last of the cranberry-raspberry crumble, specially because I can have it with ice cream since it’s evening now.

I brought the leftover with-noodle salad for lunch today – there’s sill some left without the noodles the fridge. As often happens when I bring something savory, I got hungry well before lunch time, and ate all the salad and noodles at about 10:00 – they had gone from chewy and stretchy to chewy and hard, but not unpleasantly so.

We started wandering around Harvard Square and ended up at a place called Harvest, that our local guide described as really good food but kind of pricey. (she was kind of a regular at the place; the host & waiter knew her from coming in to sit at the bar and have a snack)

I had the Grilled Line Caught Swordfish with Braised Artichoke Barigoule, Chickpeas, Smoked Bacon & Pickled Shallots, $29

Grilled Swordfish at Harvest

Sometimes I disappoint myself by ordering things that I wouldn’t get at home – as shown, it was a nice big piece of fish, bland but with nice grill char; the sprouts & pickled shallots on top were a nice accompaniment; the brothy beans, bacon & mushy artichokes underneath were way too salty. So altogether the dish didn’t really add up.

Jane, our local, had the beet salad, with red wine vinaigrette subbed in for the hazelnut, due to her nut allergy (nut-brown color in the picture notwithstanding – it is the red wine)

Roasted Local Beet Salad - Watercress, Frisée, Comte Cheese, Haricot Verts, Hazelnut Vinaigrette & Black Pepper Cracker

Mark had the special, and he said his beans, rather than being too salty, tasted like his mom’s Navy bean soup (real, US Senate, Navy bean soup)

Caramelized scallops on cannellini beans with ham

Probably the best dish of all was the wedge salad that we split.

Classic Wedge Salad: Baby Iceberg, Maple Smoked Bacon, Great Hill Blue Cheese & Local Farm Eggs