Notes about Recipes in this book

• Ricotta and pine nut meatballs with marinara sauce

  • averythingcooks on December 02, 2024

    A 1/2 recipe resulted in 2 great dinner bowls (+ leftovers) that we ate with garlic bread. The meatballs have lots of ingredients...we love the inclusion of the sauteed onion & garlic + the ricotta, parmesan & fresh herbs BUT I'm not sure we would actually miss the (very pricey!) pine nuts. The marinara is good with white wine as a nice change from red & I used a roasted tomato sauce from the freezer. I would repeat this idea for sure with bread, gnocchi or maybe pasta.

• Buffalo cauliflower bites and good ol' chicken wings with ranch dip

  • averythingcooks on December 01, 2025

    Last night it was just the jalapeno ranch for veggie sticks. I used a mix of diced fresh + pickled jalapenos & some jalapeno hot sauce to satisfy our heat craving. I went slower with the lime juice to taste & while I have it on hand, it's always my freezer blend of fresh parsley, dill & chives for ranch. As it is easy to heat up/increase the herbs to taste, I will likely come back to this one.

• Mexican street corn with homemade tortilla chips

  • averythingcooks on December 02, 2024

    I served this as a warm side rather than a dip with tortilla chips (as presented here). I sauteed chopped shallots and added a variety of diced sweet & hot peppers (including the jalapeno called for) to the pan before adding everything else. We use parmesan in place of the unavailable cotija & Thai basil for the soapy cilantro. It was delicious.

• Petra's roasted cauliflower with crispy pancetta and olive dressing

  • Nancy402 on April 13, 2025

    This was very tasty and not too taxing. Served with grilled lamb chops and steamed asparagus for a nice early Spring dinner.

  • janeths on March 14, 2026

    Very good. A touch salty but it made my least favourite vegetable, cauliflower, a nice side dish.

• Library Lounge French onion soup

  • averythingcooks on February 10, 2025

    Patience wins as the loooong onion cook time gives beautifully caramelized onions. We also liked the big hit of flavour from the generous amts of brandy, white wine & fresh thyme. We went in a different direction re: the topping (cheesy roasted shallot/garlic bread prepared separately then cut into smaller, manageable chunks to float on our hot soup). It was totally worth the time to slice the big pile of white onion, red onion & shallots for this soup. Next time, make more!

• Sarah's green soup with gnocchi dumplings

  • hbakke on December 08, 2024

    I used cubed potatoes in place of gnocchi. The soup was nice and healthy-tasting. Not bad, but I'm not in a rush to repeat.

• Burrata and farro salad with roasted cherry tomatoes

  • Nancy402 on April 20, 2025

    This is a hearty and flavourful dish, which we really enjoyed. Used prepared pesto, to simplify the prep. Substituting feta worked well. Nice accompaniment to grilled pork tenderloin.

  • averythingcooks on November 26, 2025

    There are lots of good flavours here that we both love but next time I would cook my farro earlier then spread it on a sheet to dry out a bit (rather than just cooking & draining) for better texture. I added the end of 2 sweet peppers to the roasting pan and used homemade pesto from my freezer. I can't get burrata but we love feta (given as an option) so that worked well.

• Sheri's honey lime Baja slaw

  • averythingcooks on June 18, 2025

    For the slaw, I used green cabbage in place of the red and a big mix of vegetables. The issue for us was that with the large amount of lime zest/juice the dressing was just too lime forward (even with the generous amt of honey). The fix was a good squirt of a rst'd shallot-kewpie mayo dressing and ultimately we enjoyed this beside our sandwiches but I won't repeat the dressing as written.

• Cabernet braised short ribs with Gorgonzola polenta and gremolata

  • averythingcooks on April 04, 2025

    Scaling the sauce to a generous 1/4, I used 1 lb of boneless short ribs so the time/steps dedicated to defatting weren't needed. Coating the meat with fresh herbs (along with S & P) resulted in delicious smells while browning & great flavour in the finished dish. I did add some aromatics to the pan before deglazing & my braise needed more time than suggested. We liked the base of cheesy polenta but for us the 5:1 ratio of liquid to dry was too high. I also topped our bowls with chunks of thyme roasted carrots before adding the lemony fresh herb gremolata. This was a lovely dinner for 2 scaled down from the original 6-7 lbs of bone in short ribs / serves 6 to 8.

• Everyone's favourite Italian sausage rigatoni

  • averythingcooks on December 02, 2024

    This makes a good sauce for pasta that came together fairly quickly. Because I used a roughly 50:50 mix of sausage + grd beef, I was more liberal with the seasoning (including a "deluxe" Italian seasoning & a splash of wine). With the butter at the start + the grease from the meat, I did drain a fair bit of fat from the pan before adding the tomatoes. We liked the generous amt of fresh basil + the ricotta stirred into the sauce and we agreed that this is worth repeating.

• Salmon with sweet curry rub and lemongrass coconut sauce

  • janeths on December 31, 2025

    Easy to make and delicious

• Sheet pan chicken with caramelized shallots, lemons and Medjool dates

  • janeths on February 10, 2026

    Simple and delicious

• Mya's chicken feta phyllo pie

  • Nancy402 on April 14, 2025

    This was delicious and looked most impressive. Not too tricky to pull off either. Would be a good dish for a Spring brunch.

• Spicy pork and fennel ragu

  • averythingcooks on March 13, 2025

    With 1 lb of 2" cubes pf pork shoulder to use, I scaled everything to 1/2 but used a little less fennel seed (2 tsp vs 1 tbsp) & used 3 different tomato "preps" from my freezer totalling 24 oz rather than 28. I was happy to find such a good use for my home grown/pickled pepperoncinis and we thought this sauce was delicious (& certainly worthy of the homemade pasta I prepared :) .

• Gail's hero cookies

  • Nancy402 on April 15, 2025

    Nice balance of flavours. Crispy rather than chewy. Next time I will upgrade the granola. They do spread a fair bit as they bake.