Recipes 10-13

I have to credit the Loose-recipe Challenge for getting me out of a cooking rut. When I get home from work, I neither the time or the inclination to go to the grocery store, but the Challenge is getting me to shop ahead, meaning more variety throughout the week.

Trent's been working late a lot this week, eating dinner at work, so it was the perfect time to make Kale Pasta aka Linguine with Pancetta & Swiss Chard. This is one of the recipes that is in regular rotation - maybe a little too regular for the husband, who prefers saucy pasta. Neither of us is particularly fond of swiss chard, so I've only made this with kale, usually my favorite variety, Red Russian, though this time I used lacinto.  While I usually use bacon from Skagit River Ranch, this time I had some prosciutto and a fancy salami left over from a homemade pizza kick. This time I used half a container of fresh lemon pepper fettuccine from La Pasta. With just one person eating, there was plenty left over for lunch the next day.

I've started ordering for my CSA box based on the Recipe Challenge also. This Thursday, I received leeks and potatoes, so that I could fulfill my cravings for coziness on cold days through Potato Leek Soup. I use vegetable broth instead of chicken, homemade from veggie ends both for frugality and to assuage some of my environmental guilt. This time, I had an extra parmesan rind, so I tossed it in as well - my love of cheese and butter make it unlikely that I will ever be a vegan. I served the soup as the precursor to garlic cheese focaccia - timing was tricky that night and the soup takes about 35-40 minutes while the bread takes two hours. Fortunately, Trent was able to join me this time, though he was so tuckered out after the long week that he fell asleep before the focaccia was done, so he missed me leaning over the oven like the witch in Hansel and Gretel as the warmth filled the chilly kitchen. He did, however, hear me cackle as the dough was rising, that I wished that I could crawl into the 85 degree oven to take a nap.

On Saturday it was time to try a loose recipe that I'd printed out three years ago, but never cooked - Spicy Garlic Cashew Chicken, also from Simply Recipes, a blog that I discovered when I was doing 20 for 2.0 at work back in 2007. My boss at the time advised me to add it to my RSS feed. I took her advice and never looked back. This calls for either grilling or broiling the chicken thighs, so I was tempted to wait until the return of grilling season. It looked so yummy though that I could not resist and other than the incessant shriek of the smoke detector, which regularly goes off when I use the broiler, I was glad I did. We both agreed that it's a keeper. My new rule for the Challenge is that I need to make at least one new recipe per week, until they run out, as this past week many were repeats.

We braved the rain today to sail to Bainbridge Island, where now that summer is officially over, the lunch hours at Bainbridge Bakers have reverted to the 2 p.m. kitchen closing. Though the wind was in our favor and we fairly flew across the Sound without needing to tack once, we were discouraged to arrive at 2:15. Happily, this time around the server offered to serve us chowder if we didn't mind a paper cup instead of real dinnerware. He even scouted around the kitchen for extra sourdough bread for us to sop the soup with. My idea of heaven, especially when you add in the mocha and shared "doughnut muffin". I felt like one of the cool kids blogging on my laptop (first time with it away from home), after we finished our quota of two Bananagrams games.

We had another quick crossing on the way back, but the late lunch made me a little less ambitious for tonight's dinner: Lemony Mushroom Risotto. In Ruth Reichl's debut novel Delicious, there's a character who calls the magazine's restaurant hotline to complain about the way the recipes turn out, as there's a money back guarantee. But she never makes the recipe as written, making numerous substitutions. I've made this recipe enough that I never make it quite as written either. This time around, I used shitake mushrooms instead of the called-for combination of dried and fresh mushrooms (though my homemade veggie broth did have stems from white mushrooms) and I added in the broth a cup at a time, which allowed me to disappear from the kitchen long enough to change out of my sailing clothes, rather than babysitting it for 18 minutes of continuous stirring. We sipped a glass of Beaujolais as we dined while listening to the movie soundtrack for the Meg Ryan/Kevin Kline flick French Kiss.

Thirteen recipes down - I'm about a tenth of the way there. I'm enjoying reading the comments about which recipes you're planning to make.