Everyday Dorie: Herb-Butter Chicken
November 10, 2023 at 11:31 pm | Posted in cook the book fridays, everyday dorie, groups, other savory, savory things | 10 CommentsTags: chicken, everyday dorie, savory
Herb-Butter Chicken is just what is sounds like– chicken with an herby compound butter that’s smeared underneath the skin to flavor and baste the meat as it roasts in a Dutch oven. I used chopped parsley and tarragon in my butter blend, chives instead of scallions and added some mined garlic along with the lemon zest and s&p. I swapped the bread that Dorie uses as a base under the chicken with some halved baby potatoes, but I kept the sliced onions.
We are a household of just two, so my “big” Dutch oven is only 3.5 quarts. I brought home a small chicken (under 4 lbs) that fit nicely in it, and checked it a bit early. The herbs sort of stayed in pockets under the chicken skin (because I didn’t do a great job of really getting it spread around), but having all that butter melt into the meat made it really moist. And the drippings at the bottom of the pan were delish and flavored the creamy potatoes and silky onions so nicely. This is an easy way to roast a chicken– getting that butter under the skin is kind of an icky task, but after that you really don’t have to do much else to it– and you can customize the butter, flavoring it however you like.
For the recipe, see Everyday Dorie by Dorie Greenspan (it’s also here), and head over to Cook the Book Fridays to see how the group liked this one.
Everyday Dorie: Chocolate-Covered Chai-Tea Bars
October 27, 2023 at 12:01 am | Posted in cookies & bars, everyday dorie, groups, sweet things | 5 CommentsTags: everyday dorie
I’ve always liked Dorie’s sweet recipes the best, and here we are with our final Cook the Book Fridays sweet treat from Everyday Dorie! Does that mean it’s actually bittersweet? These Chocolate-Covered Chai-Tea Bars have a chai-flavored financier base and a simple melted milk chocolate topping. While I didn’t have any chai in teabags on hand, I do have a chai spice blend and a box of nice Earl Grey, so I made those work to flavor my bars. These are a slim treats, but a little goes a long way, as they are moist and dense with lots of butter and almond flour. I’m sure they’d be just perfect with a cup of chai, but they’re also pretty great with coffee.
For the recipe, see Everyday Dorie by Dorie Greenspan, and head over to Cook the Book Fridays to see all of our bakes this week.
Everyday Dorie: Sole Meunière with Onion-Walnut Relish and Giverny Tomatoes
October 13, 2023 at 9:03 pm | Posted in cook the book fridays, everyday dorie, groups, other savory, savory things | 3 CommentsTags: chicken, everyday dorie, savory
In the book, this is a Flounder Meunière with Onion-Walnut Relish, but it’s easier for me to find local sole, which Dorie says is traditional anyway, so I just used that. Fish is something I mostly save for eating out, since I usually mangle it, but this meunière preparation couldn’t be easier to cook. Just lightly dredge your fish fillets in four and quickly pan fry them in butter. Dorie goes a step further than the basic lemon and parsley finish by adding a flavorful relish of anchovies, onions, walnuts and toasted bread cubes. This made a pretty nice Sunday dinner, and it’s one I’ll make again.
There are a handful of recipes in the book I’ve skipped– mostly red meat ones that I just won’t eat, and also some that I do want to try but was too lazy to make when posting time came around. Now that we only have a few months of cooking left to go, I’ve been wondering how I can squeeze in some of these. I had two nice tomatoes from the greenmarket on the counter and while I’d passed on the slow-roasted Giverny Tomatoes last month, I figured they’d make a good side dish for the fish, with some modifications. Rather than flavoring them with lime, I used lemon to match the fish (and I left out the extract, just using lemon juice and zest). I also used much less sugar (maybe about 1/2 tsp total) than the recipe called for and added some dried thyme. Finally, I skipped blanching and peeling the tomatoes….they cooked for so long, their skins just slipped right off in the end. They were delicious, as was the olive oily tomato juice in the dish.
For the recipes, see Everyday Dorie by Dorie Greenspan, and head over to Cook the Book Fridays to see how the group liked the fish.
Everyday Dorie: Brown Sugar-Spice Cake
September 22, 2023 at 9:42 pm | Posted in cakes & tortes, everyday dorie, groups, simple cakes, sweet things | 8 CommentsTags: everyday dorie
I found it kinda funny that the title of this recipe, Brown Sugar-Spice Cake, makes no mention of the plums that are its key component. For the past few years, I just flipped by it, thinking it was a “plain” spice cake, until I really took a look at the ingredients list before nominating it for the month. Fortunately, Italian prune plums, which I don’t really like eating out of hand, but are great for baking, are at the greenmarket now.
The batter has a bit of cornmeal, and of course brown sugar and spice. A friend recently brought me a little tin of something called “maple dessert spice” that I asked her to get me from an amazing spice shop in Montreal…the blend has stuff like vanilla, mace and tonka and is like the best thing I’ve ever smelled. I replaced the spices in the recipe with some of that mix, and it was fabulous with the plums. I made a third of the recipe in my six-inch pan, and was only able to squeeze in two plums cut in fourths. I love the way the batter waved and buckled up and around the plums, which basically turned into jammy bloops in the baked cake. So cute! A honey glaze finishes this off and gives it some extra sweetness and moisture.
For the recipe, see Everyday Dorie by Dorie Greenspan, and head over to Cook the Book Fridays to see all of our cakes this week.
Everyday Dorie: Tomato and Berry Gazpacho
August 11, 2023 at 3:34 pm | Posted in cook the book fridays, everyday dorie, groups, savory things, soups | 4 CommentsTags: everyday dorie, savory, soup
I made this Tomato and Berry Gazpacho two summers ago now, so it’s not so fresh in my mind. With deep red summer tomatoes and sweet strawberries spiced with ginger, mint and harissa, it is fresh in flavor, and I do remember that. While I could probably chug an entire blender jar of traditional gazpacho pretty easily, I found this one was best in small servings, as Dorie suggested.
For the recipe, see Everyday Dorie by Dorie Greenspan, and head over to Cook the Book Fridays to see how the group liked this one.
Everyday Dorie: Sour Cherry (not Mixed Berry) Pie
July 28, 2023 at 3:52 pm | Posted in everyday dorie, general pastry, groups, pies & tarts, sweet things | 5 CommentsTags: everyday dorie
This one was supposed to be a Mixed Berry Pie, but truth is, I make like one pie a summer, and this summer it was gonna be sour cherry. I followed Dorie’s recipe for the crust and her technique of turning a portion of the filling into a jam to hold everything together. And then, of course, I used my new fave pie technique from Baking with Dorie–brushing glaze on the top crust once baked, because I wanted the vibe of those Hostess pies I was never allowed to have as a kid. I know that any pie that bubbles juices up like that is going to be good, and this one certainly was.
For the recipe, see Everyday Dorie by Dorie Greenspan, and head over to Cook the Book Fridays to see all of our pies this week.
Everyday Dorie: Roast Chicken with Pan-Sauce Vinaigrette
July 14, 2023 at 4:13 pm | Posted in cook the book fridays, everyday dorie, groups, other savory, savory things | 1 CommentTags: chicken, everyday dorie, savory
Roast Chicken with Pan-Sauce Vinaigrette is another “chicken in a pot” dish where the chicken gets roasted in a covered Dutch oven, along with some aromatics and liquid (here, white wine). Cooking it this way makes a moist, but pale-skinned bird. No matter– you can brown the skin under the broiler a bit more at the end of cooking, like I did. The mellow garlic that was roasted along with the chicken and the flavorful pan juices are incorporated into a mustardy vinaigrette that makes an absolutely delicious sauce to serve with the chicken (although full disclosure: I used more drippings and less water than Dorie said and made my vin to taste, because I refuse to measure for things like that).
We are a family of just two, so my “big” Dutch oven is only 3.5 quarts. I brought home a small chicken to fit nicely in it, and I adjusted down the recipe’s roast time a bit to not cook the heck out of it. I could not bear to throw out the schmaltzy carrot slices that were roasted in the pot with the chicken, so I plated them, and some roasted broccolini, with the meat and vinaigrette. I don’t roast a whole chicken that often, but when I do, I’m always happy to have leftovers for a couple of days and bones for a small batch of homemade stock.
For the recipe, see Everyday Dorie by Dorie Greenspan, and head over to Cook the Book Fridays to see how the group liked this one.
Everyday Dorie: Hot or Cold Beet-Fennel Soup
April 28, 2023 at 6:48 pm | Posted in cook the book fridays, everyday dorie, groups, savory things, soups | 2 CommentsTags: everyday dorie, savory, soup
Wow, I had to really hunt around for this photo of Hot or Cold Beet-Fennel Soup. I made it a while back, and I thought that meant late fall of this past year. Turns out I made it in February 2021. Time continues to be a fast-moving blur.
This is a puréed soup that begins with cooking down fennel and some other aromatics, moves along to simmering beets in stock, and ends with everything soft and whizzed up in the blender. You can serve this soup hot or chilled and garnished with whatever floats your boat (or floats on top of soup). I went chilled, with shaved fennel, crème fraîche, caviar and pink peppercorn. This was nice for lunch, and apparently it is still fresh in my mind, as I thought I made it just a few months ago, but I’ve made some heartier and more flavorful variations of beet borscht even more recently that I’ve liked better.
For the recipe, see Everyday Dorie by Dorie Greenspan, and head over to Cook the Book Fridays to see how the group liked this one.
Everyday Dorie: White Beans and Smoked Fish (a pantry-and-fridge salad)
March 24, 2023 at 2:48 pm | Posted in cook the book fridays, everyday dorie, groups, other savory, salads, savory things, veggies | 5 CommentsTags: everyday dorie, salad, savory
A “pantry-and-fridge” salad is the kind I make for myself most days. Actually, my pantry is non-existent (I live in NYC, and there’s just one food cabinet in my kitchen), so my salads don’t always contain as many yummy things as the White Beans and Smoked Fish version that Dorie makes. Normally I’m just fridge-foraging for leftover veg and cheese scraps and hoping there’s half of an avocado in there somewhere. I had to make a stop at the fancy-pants little neighborhood grocery to get supplies for this one.
Back home and armed with a can of white beans, a tin of smoked rainbow trout (in the coolest packaging), a jar of preserved lemon and some arugula and crunchy veggies, I tossed this together with a mustardy white balsamic vinaigrette and some chopped up homemade pickled red onions (which I am never without). Maybe I should make more space for this stuff at home, because I inhaled this salad post-gym. I will call it my “cabinet-and-fridge” salad.
For the recipe, see Everyday Dorie by Dorie Greenspan, and head over to Cook the Book Fridays to see what we all thought.
Everyday Dorie: Salmon Brandade
March 13, 2023 at 9:42 pm | Posted in cook the book fridays, everyday dorie, groups, savory things | 3 CommentsTags: everyday dorie, savory, soup
I’m pretty embarrassed by how late I sometimes write up my posts, but one good thing about being late to the game is getting to read the recipe reviews from other group members before I head into the kitchen. I picked up some tips for the Salmon Brandade I should have posted on Friday, but didn’t make until last night. I am very familiar with brandade as an olive oil-whipped salt cod and potato spread (yum!), but Dorie’s version here is like a mashed potato-topped salmon shepherd’s pie, using both smoked salmon and chunks of salmon fillet.
From Shirley, I got the idea to add some veggies to the filling…really just the last handful of peas I had in a baggie in the freezer. Diane mentioned that her husband doesn’t like smoked salmon, so she only used half of what is called for in the recipe and all was fine. My husband doesn’t like it either, and I didn’t want to hear any complaints, so although I love it, I followed suit. I did save $10 not having to buy a second packet, so I owe Diane a coffee if she’s ever in town. She also noted that the bread crumb topping didn’t get very crispy in the oven, and the dish could have used some more textural contrast. I tossed my panko crumbs in a bit of olive oil and baked them separately until they were nice and toasty brown, then sprinkled them on top of the cooked brandade. So, thank you Shirley and Diane! This came out a nice, cozy dinner for a chilly night.
For the recipe, see Everyday Dorie by Dorie Greenspan, and head over to Cook the Book Fridays to see how the group liked this one.
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