So it’s been a funny couple of days of cooking. My first winter share CSA box was arriving on Thursday, so I was trying to use up as much as possible from prior boxes. I’ve been trying more dishes for French Fridays with Dorie. I had the fixings for a lovely salad: roasted beets, roasted butternut squash & parsnip cubes in cider vinaigrette, and mixed lettuce – but we ate that Wednesday, so I wanted something else. I also had a stalk of Brussels sprouts, and lots of carrots, that needed to make room for new. I was thinking about making the sprouts according to this recipe from Smitten Kitchen – it sounds delish, and I have all the right stuff for it (woulda had to thaw out some chicken broth, but I would’ve been able to up the 3 slices of Willow Creek cottage bacon in the meat drawer, before they mold. Not panacetta, but it’s round bacon, and comes from a similar place on the pig). But I also found 3/4 of one of last year’s jars of chestnuts, so I opted to steam and toss the sprouts in butter with chestnuts & nutmeg, instead. So Thursday, my dinner was a bowl of the leftover Butternut Squash & Black Bean Chili, and the sprouts.
After dinner, I roasted the carrots to make an Italian antipasto salad, that I got from Michele Scicolone, but it’s a traditional Italian preparation of carrots. You’re supposed to fry the carrots, and then marinate them in mint, garlic, and red wine vinegar. I reasoned that roasting would work just as well, use less oil, and not mess up my stove. We didn’t eat them till Friday, but boy are they good. I made some applesauce, to use up some apples and a pear that were getting too old in the fridge. I wanted to put in a pinch of salt, to bring up the flavor, but I over did it, and ended up with oddly salty applesauce.
I ate some of the salty applesauce with oatmeal for breakfast on Friday, and then of course obsessed about what to do with it for the rest of the day. I even printed an applesauce pancake recipe. We ate Dorie’s pumpkin flan for dinner with salad that night, using up more of my prepared veggies and lettuce. I made one big flan, and the flavors – pumpkin, gorgonzola, and nuts (the recipe called for walnuts; I used pecans) – just didn’t work too well for us. I think I’d like it better with bread crumbs and Parmesan cheese, or maybe Gruyere, on top – one of those cheeses that’s sweet when it melts. And, the picture in the book, that shows cute little hunks of cheese sticking up from the pumpkin custard, must’ve been manipulated by the stylist – or else Dorie had much thicker cream & pumpkin than I did. My cheese sank.
Saturday morning I made the salty applesauce into scones – they didn’t come out so great either – too gooey. So I bought 6 pounds of apples at the farmers market, that’s just moved indoors, to make more sauce, and just dumped the last of the salty stuff down the disposal.
