Notes about Recipes in this book

• Pizza with garlic cream and nettles

  • Rutabaga on April 21, 2014

    This is a fantastic spring pizza to make when nettles and green garlic are in season. It comes together quickly; just make the dough a few days in advance and store it in the fridge until you need it. While I enjoy arugula (the suggested substitute for nettles), I can't imagine that it would turn out nearly as well as nettles in this case. I added some prosciutto, to good effect.

• Pepper-glazed goat cheese gratin

  • hillsboroks on December 20, 2021

    I have made this gratin many times when having friends over for wine and appetizers and it is always the one dish everyone gathers around. It is very simple to put together at the last minute and it is also easy to scale it up or down according to how many guests you will have.

• Asian noodles with roast pork

  • Rutabaga on January 04, 2015

    I followed the method here, but changed many ingredients. Chicken stock was replaced with pork stock, as I had some on hand. Since I used ground turkey instead of ground pork, the pork stock did a great job of keeping the turkey moist and tasting almost like pork in spite of itself. I also used Chinese sweet sausage rather than roast pork, omitted the oyster and fish sauces to accommodate an allergy, and left out the black bean sauce since I didn't have any. Instead, I used soy sauce, added extra sesame oil and finished off some mirin and cream sherry when cooking the ground turkey. Despite these differences, the overall essence of the dish was the same, and it was a big hit at dinner. The flavor was well balanced and really permeated the dish, and many felt that the Chinese sausage was a better choice than roast pork. It took longer to prepare than expected because I had doubled the recipe and it took almost half an hour to fully cook the stock down with the ground turkey.

• Strozzapreti with lamb ragù

  • Rutabaga on July 23, 2014

    Since we don't typically eat lamb, I used ground turkey, my go-to ground meat. Also, as I had no cheesecloth on hand, I ground the toasted spices with a mortar and pestle and simply added them to the sauce. Finally, as I didn't have harissa, I substituted a small amount of pipelchuma (recipe from Jerusalem). I can see how lamb would really meld well with this flavor combination; it was delicious with ground turkey, but the meat didn't really bring anything to the flavor of the dish, whereas I think think the richness of ground lamb would be great in combination with the fennel, mint, and peppelr flavors. This would be a terrific dish for a small crowd, something different from the typical spaghetti with marinara.

• Penne with asparagus, peas, mushrooms and cream

  • Rutabaga on April 19, 2014

    Perfect with the first asparagus of the season (and an annual reminder that it is always worth waiting for truly fresh asparagus, not falling for the poor substitute of grocery store asparagus), this dish was a hit with the whole family. I added some shreds of prosciutto to make it feel more complete as a main dish, which went wonderfully with the other ingredients. Using first rate ingredients lifts a simple dish like this above the ordinary.

• Peas and pea shoots with spring onions and mint

  • Rutabaga on May 21, 2014

    This is a delightfully easy spring recipe. I used watercress, and the combination of fresh watercress, mint, peas, and spring onions really tasted of the season. Although I forgot to add the butter at the end, I did not miss it.