Making cookies

The Fresh & Green Table by Susie Middleton

Roasted Ratatouille Tart with Goat Cheese & Mint

This recipe was pretty simple to put together, but took some time because the vegetables needed to be roasted for almost an hour and then the tart needed to be baked for nearly that long as well.  The vegetable mix and was really delicious and I loved the flavor combination.  It's also really nice to make a rustic tart because it's ok if it's a little "rustic" looking.  Next time I would probably skip the cream/egg wash on the crust unless I had the heavy cream on hand because it seems silly to buy a whole thing of an ingredient I don't usually use for such a tiny bit.  

9-layer salad, arugula salad or quinoa

Carmelized onion and mushroom pizza

The flavor was great but I can't take much credit for it because if you put caramelized onions and cheese on pretty much anything it's going to taste great.  It was certainly a hit.  It was great as an appetizer but given the simple and light toppings, it might be light for an entree.

The finished plate

Jerusalem A Cookbook

We loved this cook book. Everything looked tasty and it was hard to decide what to make. We picked 6 different dishes and I can say ALL of them turned out more than delicious and each added a splash of color to the table.

Sabih (Pita with Tomato salad)

This was the dish to impress. It looks amazing and was so yummy.

Musabaha (warm chickpeas with warm hummus)

Kofta b'siniyah (Lamb meatballs) 

Meatballs are always a crowd pleaser but these were especially good. They were tender and the hummus-like sauce made it a dish that needed no other sides. 

Red pepper & baked egg galettes

Chermoula Eggplant with bulgar & yoghurt

I really liked this recipe but I would use a lot less of the spices or at least add it in more carefully, so it doesn't overpower the rest of the dish. I like how presentable it looked but it needed something to go with it, like a fresh tomato salad. 

Dessert - Mutabbaq

ad hoc at home by Thomas Keller

We were very excited about trying this cookbook. Thomas Keller is an American chef and cookbook author. He owns the famous Napa Valley restaurant The French Laundry. Ad hoc at home is supposed to be his family-style comfort food cookbook. We can't say we were wow'd by it. Even though everything turned out well and was tasty, we felt that the recipes were either not that easy, took a lot of time, or were not very economical.

Braised Artichokes

This was a great appetizer. I loved that it was light but still full of flavor. It was a bit hard to eat because of the carrots and fennel that were served on top. There was no picture of this dish in the cookbook and it wasn't completely clear how the artichoke had to be cut, so this may not look exactly the way Keller had intended it to look but it was still a good dish.

Peperonata Rustica

This was a a simple but tasty dish. The recipe was pretty easy and straight forward. The peppers were first baked in the oven and then cooked in broth with Soffritto. It was definitely more flavorful than I expected it to be but the cookbook didn't say what to serve it on or with, so we brought it out with bread and it turned out to be a great addition to the rest of the meal. If you have any left over, try it for breakfast with a sunny side up served on top.

Beef Stroganoff

You can't go wrong with beef, mushroom sauce and pasta. This turned out amazing and was actually one of my favorite dishes of the evening. The beef was really tender and the sauce was creamy but not too heavy. This was one of the dishes that took forever, though. The beef had to be made a day ahead and cooked for hours in a special wine reduction sauce. Per the cookbook, we were suppose to make home-made pasta. We didn't and it still took 2 days to make this dish. It was really good but not sure if it was worth the time. I'm sure there are other Stroganoff recipes that are just as good and take half the time to make.

Chicken Pot Pie

This was my other favorite dish. The pie looked perfect when it came out of the oven. The pie crust turned out great on the first try and was nicely browned and flaky. The chicken, vegetables and cream sauce were perfectly cooked, it had great texture and was very flavorful. We added a bit of salt to it afterwards but if you're not eating it right away, you may not need it. The flavors actually settled in more the longer you waited. If you follow the recipe to a tee, this would also take forever to make because we were supposed to cook each vegetable separately in a mix of herbs and then mix it all together in the end. This was already a great tasting dish and we don't think it would have been that much better if we had done it differently.

Upside down Pineapple cake

Last but not least, we made a pineapple cake for dessert. Overall it had good flavor but the bottom of the cake was a bit dry to me. I liked it though because it wasn't super sweet and actually would probably be very good with some tea or coffee.

Sunday Suppers at Lucques - Dessert

I have to look up the exact names of the dessert (maybe some of my fellow C3 sisters can add them in the comment section). The first dessert was a tart and instead of berries, the recipe called for apricots, which were unavailable at the time. The substitution ended up working out great. The second dessert was a chocolate cake. It was a perfectly moist cake, not too sweet and not too rich, which was the perfect ending to a perfect meal!

Sunday Suppers at Lucques - Entrée

Braised Beef Stew with Red Wine, Tomato, Olives and Buttered Noodles

The meat turned out amazing. It was incredibly tender and really rich in flavor. I used fresh noodles, which I think made a big difference. It has inspired me to use fresh noodles more often in dishes. The recipe called for papperdelle noodles, which I couldn’t find anywhere so I substituted linguine noodles and it worked great. I followed the recipe almost to a tee and would recommend doing the same on the first try. The only thing I might mix up a little bit the next time I cook this is the olives. The recipe called for Nicoise olives and I didn’t feel it contributed much to the dish. I think I will try a different olive next time and see if that makes a difference. Overall, however, this was definitely a five star dish.

Sunday Suppers at Lucques - Entrée

Ricotta Gnocci with Chanterelles, Sweet Corn, and Sage Brown Butter

I loved the richness and originality of this dish with the corn and mushrooms. I couldn't find chanterelle mushrooms, so I opted for a wild mushroom blend including white mushrooms, oyster mushrooms and scrumptious morels and it turned out great. This gnocchi is not made with potatoes, so the dough recipe is fairly easy, however transforming the dough into the actual gnocchi was fairly laborious. If I wanted to make this a 30 minute dish, I would skip making it from scratch and buy some fresh gnocchi instead. The breadcrumbs added a little texture, but overall unnecessary, as the fresh corn creates enough texture.

Seabass: This was a really easy recipe. I was a little skeptical about the hazelnut and butter sauce. I thought it could taste very dry and may even overpower the fresh taste of the fish. I was still not sure even after I finished it, so I wascareful not to serve too much of it. Turns out people like it and thought I could have poured on some more. The fish was the easiest thing to make from the recipe. I had to let it marinate overnight and just sautéed it in olive oil the next day. Done. I can highly recommend this dish.