My first weekend in February found me home with my family (surprising my dad, and joining him for the Super Bowl in Massachusetts (go Pats!)).

That also meant I that I had lots of people to help with a more difficult, hands on recipes (and with the cleanup).

The differentiation between Small Victories and this book is how the book is structured. Small victories was more like a traditional cookbook: items were separated into meal types with footnotes of possible variations. Now & Again features seasonal menus with 4-5 dishes per menu, and a footer section that tells you how to use the leftovers to make more recipes. This should be an easy way to get the recipes done this month (since two recipes can be made with one dish).

CHICKEN ENCHILADAS

From NOW AND AGAIN by Julia Turshen

Ingredients: There were a lot of them, but at least most of them are traditional ingredients so every grocery store should have them.

First step is to make a sauce for the chicken. Crush garlic and mix with olive oil, cumin, and salt. Throw the chicken breasts in to coat them, and then put them onto a parchment covered baking sheet.

Strain the canned tomatoes and reserve the juices. Add them to the pan. Chop a jalapeño and add that as well. WASH YOUR HANDS POST JALAPEÑO CHOP. THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT DO NOT SKIP THIS STEP.

Then the easiest part of the recipe: Roast everything. This is where the house starts to smell great.

These next steps were heavily delegated, since we were all hungry and one person doing all of these tasks would have taken longer than we would have wanted to wait.

One person shreds the chicken.

One person makes the sauce.

Put the tomatoes, jalapeño, sauce from the pan, sour cream, cilantro, reserved tomato juice, and salt into a blender.

This. Sauce. Is. AMAZING. We wanted to stop and just eat the sauce with the chicken and be done (which you could do, by the way).

Pour 1/3 of the sauce into a baking pan, 1/3 into the shredded chicken, and reserve the last 1/3 for the end.

Another moment to delegate: one person warms the tortillas and one person wraps the chicken and puts them tortilla wraps into the sauces pan.

We were able to make tortilla wraps, but we did make some extra chicken that Julia didn’t require. You can safely make 10 tortilla wraps.

Last part before the final bake: Top with the remaining sauce and lots of cheese. This part is fun to do as a group.

Oven bake until golden brown and bubbling. Then wait as long as you can (it’ll be really hot) before digging in. It helps to spend a moment preparing a few toppings.

Yum. Yum. Yum.

Literally so amazing. We all loved every bite.

Not only is it good that night, but it also is great leftover. It’s good cold, and it’s good warm. This recipe takes a lot of bowls and equipment and a bunch of cleanup, but if you plan it right and have a lot of help around you, it’s easy.

Final thoughts: This recipe is coming back. As soon as possible.

Last recipe for the month! Made it through month one with all 10 recipes. I’m really proud of myself for creating this new habit, especially since starting is always the hardest part. January down, 11 more months to go.

Expanding into a category beyond “meals”, I chose a rather simple dish to end the month: Popcorn. Don’t worry, I didn’t buy microwave popcorn and put stuff on it: I made the popcorn from scratch!

CACIO E PEPE POPCORN

From SMALL VICTORIES by Julia Turshen

Ingredients: Pretty minimal, and even less if you use microwave popcorn. I used a Whirlypop to make the popcorn, which means I added the corn kernels and oil to my ingredient list. And because I’m fancy, I grated my own Parmesan.

First is the obvious step: pop the corn. For me, that was put the corn and oil in the Whirlypop and heat it while stirring until the kernels stop popping.

Meanwhile, melt butter. She didn’t specify how much, and I think I underdid it, so maybe I’ll use more for next time.

Once the popcorn is popped, put it in a bowl. Assemble your ingredients.

Top with melted butter, grated Parmesan, and pepper, and you’re ready to serve! Julia recommends this recipe for guests as a fancy-but-casual hors d’ouvres.

It was super yummy, but I would have added more of all of the toppings. It needed more of everything to really make it special, but since we were just munching on this while watching a movie, it was a perfect light alternative snack to the traditional movie popcorn.

Final thoughts: This book and New Years resolution is doing exactly what I hoped it would. It’s pushing me to make more homemade dishes and perfect my cooking skills, forcing me outside my comfort zone, and encouraging me to keep trying new things. I’m so pleased with the results so far, and I can’t wait to continue the year’s journey!

Double-whammy recipe day! It’s getting close to the end of the month, so I felt the pressure to get through the last 3 recipes before it ends. Plus, I was able to fill out a meal with two recipes instead of improvising a side dish.

This entry can be thought of as part 1 of a two-part dinner.

Part 1:

GREEN EGGS WITH (OR WITHOUT) HAM

From SMALL VICTORIES by Julia Turshen

Ingredients: Using up all of the things in my fridge. She emphasizes that eggs that are a week old are perfect for this dish, which is great for a good “gonna whip something up” mentality.

Since we were going for a clean-out-the-fridge approach, I swapped the “white wine vinegar” for old white wine (and since it’s just to add acid to the dish, I figured it was ok to cut corners here).

Mince the parsley, mix with a bit of garlic, white wine, and a bunch of olive oil. She says to let this marinate throughout the rest of the process, so that’s what I did.

Moving onto the eggs, it’s a standard approach for a hard boil. Boil the water, cover and lower the heat, cook for 10 minutes.

Throw the cooked eggs in an ice bath to cool and then start the peeling process.

I gotta say, this peeling was easier than it normally is! Might have been the ice bath (vs simply cooling the eggs in cold water), or it could have been Julia’s trick of using week old eggs. I guess I’ll have to try it again to find out!

Cut the eggs open, and top with the green sauce. Then eat!

N: I liked them, but my preference for hard boiled eggs remains deviled eggs.

Overall thoughts: While I don’t know if I would be patient enough to make hard boiled eggs for breakfast when I could use this green sauce over almost anything, this recipe is a great use of older eggs (and makes for a beautiful dish for guests).

I have been looking forward to this recipe since I started working on this book. It caught my eye as I thumbed through the pages with a stunning image of deliciousness and a wonderful title, and I’ve been hooked on the idea of the dish ever since. I’m proud to say it lived up to my high expectations.

I knew given the scope of the recipe that this dish would need to be made on a weekend, and Sundays are great for cooking big meals that can be used as leftovers for the start of the week. Plus, it makes the whole house smell amazing.

A NICE LASAGNA

From SMALL VICTORIES by Julia Turshen

Ingredients: I skipped making the pasta myself this time, since it requires a food processor (and patience), so I made sure to purchase oven-ready lasagna so it would cook by itself.

First off is hand-crushing the whole peeled tomatoes. I remember finding this an annoying task last time I attempted Julia’s go-to tomato sauce, but this time around I found it pretty satisfying to squish each slimy tomato into bite-sized pieces. It was exactly as she described: Messy but fun.

Then, throw thinly sliced garlic cloves and olive oil on the stove to sizzle, then add the tomatoes and salt. After that, it’s super simple: Let it reduce. I folded my laundry in the other room through most of this part (domestic AF).

Once the sauce is reduced, add creme fraiche. This addition to the sauce removes the need to incorporate ricotta into the lasagna recipe according to Julia, and I gotta say, this sauce is something I would be happy to eat on its own. It reminds me of a vodka sauce (without any of the vodka flavor).

After, I needed to (im)patiently wait for the sauce to cool before assembly. Sauce needed to be room temperature, per the recipe. That said, I didn’t wait until the sauce was actually room temperature, I just made sure it was cool-er.

Assembly time! Pasta, sauce, two cheeses, basil, repeat. Easy peasy. It’s a similar assembly to the typical lasagna layers in other recipes, but missing the hardest layer of the layering process: spreading the ricotta. Because of that, this part went super quickly.

Into the oven it goes! Once it’s cooked through and bubbling, take it out of the oven and let it sit “like you would do for a steak” to let the bubbling sauce get soaked into the pasta. Then (FINALLY) cut slices and eat.

I wonder if the dry-ness I experienced in the final product would be fixed by letting the sauce cool down and become more creamy to start. With the creme fraiche being warm, I wonder if it was detrimental to the lasagna’s moisture. Plus, we might have done one layer too many, which made it a little more pasta than filling.

N: Thumbs up for me.

Final thoughts: Would def make this again. Can’t wait to eat the leftovers tomorrow.

Why brunch when you can brinner?

I went back to basics (in a sense) and made a dish I’m very familiar with: Pancakes. My thought was that even though the steps of the recipe would be familiar, the recipe itself is new, and since I can make buttermilk pancakes in my sleep (aka before I’ve had a drop of coffee), I figured this recipe might easily be within my wheelhouse of “whipping up” on a weeknight.

Plus, who wouldn’t want to eat pancakes for dinner.

SOUR CREAM PANCAKES WITH ROASTED BLUEBERRIES

From SMALL VICTORIES by Julia Turshen

Ingredients: If you already have most baking staples in your house like I do (flour, baking soda, etc) all you need is blueberries.

The recipe calls for sour cream in the title, but one of the variations in the footnotes is the easy swap for yogurt (which was a great use of the extra yogurt from this weekend’s breakfast).

First step is to put blueberries and brown sugar in a pan to roast.

Next is the familiar steps required for pancake preparation: wet ingredients in one bowl, dry ingredients in another.

Leave the batter lumpy; that’s what helps it rise the most. Pour the batter in half-cup-ish-sized dollops onto a buttery griddle and wait patiently.

Don’t forget to check the blueberry sauce! Give it a stir and put back in the oven to roast some more.

Flip the pancakes. This is the best part: they should puff up and make the pancakes super fluffy. Plus you get a satisfying sizzle when they hit the griddle.

Both pancakes and sauce were close to done at the same time, which made it really easy to assemble! Pancakes on plate, butter on pancakes, sauce on top.

Since the pancakes are butter-free ingredient-wise (against my natural instinct of butter-in-everything-all-the-time), I was hoping for a little buttery-crispiness from the griddle and a soft, fluffy center. While I got the fluffiness I was hoping for, I was missing the crispy edges on my plate. The consistency of the pancakes ended up being a little cake-ier than I would have preferred (slightly more “Cake” than “Pan”), but that could be a feature for those who prefer their pancakes on the cakey side.

The blueberry sauce was SUPER good and super easy. The roasting of the berries added an extra layer of intensity that made this sauce really jammy and unctuous without using the traditional additives that come with a stovetop sauce recipe.

For those who know my pancake-eating style (hot off the griddle and drowned in maple syrup), you’ll be shocked to hear I didn’t eat these pancakes with maple syrup (blasphemy, I know)! They were balanced and delicious as directed.

N: I think the pancakes were pretty solid. We used yogurt this time, but I wonder if using sour cream would make it different.

Final thoughts: I would try this recipe again to finish off extra yogurt or sour cream, but I might stick to my famous buttermilk pancakes for now and top with the blueberry sauce.

As a non-morning-person, it is always a struggle for me to choose to make an elaborate breakfast over ordering delivery. This easy recipe might have changed my mind on what is possible to whip up in a pinch.

I will say I was skeptical about this recipe. Savory yogurt with eggs, lemon and herbs is not the type of dish I usually go for, but I was intrigued enough by the idea of a healthy-ish eggy breakfast that I thought it was worth a shot.

Coffee in hand, here’s how this breakfast comes together.

OLIVE OIL-FRIED EGGS WITH YOGURT AND LEMON

From SMALL VICTORIES by Julia Turshen

Ingredients: I was pleased this included mostly ingredients I used in the other recipes. All I needed was eggs and yogurt. You’ll note the lemon in the photo looks a bit odd: it was zested for yesterday’s dinner.

First, create the sauce. Yogurt, lemon juice, salt and pepper. It is going to taste lemony, and for someone who doesn’t love that flavor, I was worried it would make the dish too sour for me. Spoilers: it balances out with the eggs and greens and makes it feel light and fresh.

Put the savory yogurt sauce onto a plate, ready to receive the eggs, and set aside.

Now it’s time to cook the eggs. Because the recipe calls for a cover, we were limited to a smaller pan, which meant that achieving Julia’s goal of adding enough oil for frying but also a small amount of water that hits the pan and not the eggs proved impossible. That said, the goal of the water was to cook the whites through, and covering the eggs cooked them through anyway.

Once they’re cooked (very quick), transfer them to the pre-sauced plates, cover with chopped herbs, and eat! The leftover parsley and basil from the meatballs were perfect for this recipe.

The skeptic in me was proven wrong: this bright, delicate, decadent breakfast is not too sour, salty, or rich. Not sure how she got the yolks as yellow as the photo, but in any case the final product was delicious.

N: I think Greek yogurt would have been a better texture for the sauce, but otherwise this was good.

Final thoughts: This is a classy breakfast to break out for guests, and maybe it’ll come back into a weekend rotation, especially if there are extra greens and yogurt in the fridge.