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.

Sunday Suppers at Lucques - Salads

We made two salads, Dungeness crab Salad with Avcado, Beets, Crème Fraiche, and Lime

and the Lobster Chopped Salad with Fava Beans, Cherry Tomatoes, Avocado, Corn, and Applewood-Smoked Bacon.

Sunday Suppers at Lucques

We absolutely loved this cookbook! Some of the recipes were a bit more cha

llenging than others and some of the ingredients were not available even though they should have beenin season,so we had to find substitutes. All 8 recipes that we made looked and tasted amazing!

We started of with two appetizers. The "Applewood Smoked Bacon, and Herb Salad Tart" and the "Swiss Chard, with Goat Cheese, Currants and Pine Nuts Tart".

Applewood Smoked Bacon, and Herb Salad Tart

The tart was tasty and rich in texture – from the creamy crème fraiche and ricotta cheese to the salty and crispy applewood-smoked bacon.

I enjoyed making this dish, as it included several components to build the tart but was not complicted. I followed 90% of the recipe instructions in making the dish. Not knowing what ‘young onions’ are and

having no success coming across them at the market, I used regular red and yellow onions. In addition, I skipped using the food processor to blend the wet ingredients, as I found it

sufficient to mix by hand. One issue I dealt with was the cheese and crème fraiche running over the edges of the tarts while baking, but I simply trimmed the edges when

the tarts finished cooking.

Finally, instead of using the oven, I opted to use a temperature-controlled grill, since the oven was busy cooking another dish, which only added to the overall rustic nature of the tart. I think this dish allows for creativity and variation, such as adding other vegetables for different flavors. I give this dish five stars.

Swiss Chard, with Goat Cheese, Currants and Pine Nuts Tart

The biggest challenge was finding the correct ingredients.

There were two sets of ingredients that required cooking for: T

he first being the actual tart and the second being the pine nut relish. Certain things required further prodding from store workers and investigating such as "semi-aged" goat cheese (to which I settled with a "Bucheron") and "arbol chiles" which are stewed along with rosemary and finely diced red onions in olive oil to produce the base of the relish. In the end, I never found "arbo l chiles" so I ended up using a dash of korean red pepper flakes that I had at home for taste. I also added finely sliced squash, more for aesthetics. The relish is what I was most impressed with - that stuff I can eat with anything (the sweet currants and toasted pine nuts along with the sweet balsamic reduction made this a great topping). This was also the first time I've really had Swiss Chard, which had a pleasantly heartier texture and taste than spinach. The Bucheron was not too pungent or strong /sharp in taste and had a nice balanced taste along with the other ingredients on the tart. I definitely loved this dish and would make it again. A great appetizer.