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.

First recipe with N and I working together! We were both excited about this comfort food recipe, and it did not disappoint.

This dish pushed me slightly outside of my comfort zone in the cooking world: I have never cooked sausage. As the smells of sizzling meat filled our kitchen, I remarked how unfamiliar and exciting it felt to be trying something new. The goal of this resolution is to push me to explore new recipes and improve my techniques, and this meal felt like my first true venture from the familiar. The resolution is already paying off.

While I can see this dish coming back into our repertoire, without optimizing some of the steps that took us a while to get through, it might have to be a weekend-only option. If it were a weeknight, I would get too hungry before all of the steps were completed.

ORECCHIETTE WITH SPICY SAUSAGE AND PARMESAN

From SMALL VICTORIES by Julia Turshen

Ingredients were all delicious, but I didn’t have much of them handy in my kitchen. Overall, pretty easy to gather and I happily put them in my shopping cart.

Start by getting the sausage out of the casing. N took the lead here, and he found it easiest to cut the sausage in half and separate the insides from the casing that way. The crumbled sausage interiors go into a pan with olive oil and get cooked through.

N: I’m sure there’s a better way to get rid of the casing and accomplish the same thing. Maybe getting a larger Jimmy Dean sausage would have been better.

While he was working with the sausages, I started cutting the onions (and crying). They need to be sliced thin, but I decided to cut them even smaller (more crying).

A benefit of having both of us working on this recipe: While he was minding the cooking, I was able to grate the lemon zest and clean up behind us, which made the final clean up much easier. It’s always a good idea to clean up as you go.

Once the sausage is cooked, it is set aside until assembly. Next up is the onions. This takes the longest time here, but the more correctly the onions are cooked, the more delicious the final product is. I recommend sticking with the 30 minute recommendation. Cook and cook and cook these onions, and they become sweet and soft and perfect.

While this is all happening, you should start boiling the pasta. We waited too long to get the pasta water started, so we were twiddling our thumbs once the onions were done and were still waiting on the pasta to finish cooking.

Once the pasta is almost cooked, grab some pasta water and dump the rest out. Put the drained pasta back in the pot and combine with the cooked ingredients and a ton of spinach. We didn’t use all of the spinach that was called for here, but it still used an entire package and made for a very green dish.

After the spinach melts into the pasta, add cream, lemon zest, Parmesan cheese, and a bit of the leftover pasta water. Stir the pasta goodness to marry all of the flavors and serve.

It. Was. So. Good. Comfort food to the max. We both thought the only thing we would swap would be the spinach. Both of us thought that peas would be a great replacement for the greenery, which would also add a fun texture.

Overall review: We loved it. So excited to eat the leftovers!

N: Yeah! Not too bad!

As you may remember from the last post, I had planned ahead for this recipe. I bought all of the ingredients in advance, I decided which day I would make the dish, and I got home not starving. I was ready to call this easy recipe a mega-win.

Julia’s description was basically a story about my childhood: her parents were obsessed with Soy Vey, and this recipe features her version of that versatile marinade. I figured this would just be me making my own Soy Vey, pouring it over salmon, and baking it. Spoilers: Not only was the “easy” recipe actually pretty difficult, but the end result was not my favorite. To give this recipe some credit, the caption explains that this is a way to convert non-fish-fans to reconsider their stance, and being a fish-superfan, I expect my fish to be… fishier.

Here’s how it went down.

ROASTED SALMON WITH MAPLE AND SOY

From SMALL VICTORIES by Julia Turshen

Ingredients that I had to buy: salmon, ginger, sesame seeds. Rating: Very easy last minute ingredient list to pull together. That said, you have to figure out your own sides to make it a meal.

First step is to prep the ingredients as instructed. I bought a ginger root, which meant that my first real task was to mince the ginger. That took a while, but I’m proud to say no fingers were harmed in the making of the mince.

Next step is to assemble the marinade. I had already put the ginger into the assigned “small bowl”, so I added the olive oil, maple syrup, and soy sauce and stirred. I could have eaten just that part, and I basically did. For a side, I made basmati rice (based on what I had in the pantry already), and I made a stripped down version of the marinade for the rice: Freshly grated ginger, soy sauce, and a hint of maple syrup. It’s actually really good! I might also try this marinade on a grilled fish (instead of a roasted one) and see if the ginger flavor cuts through the grill marks.

This was where the recipe and I started to differ in opinions.

Cut the salmon into one-inch cubes. I mean, smaller pieces cut the cook time, sure, but as someone who likes my fish on the rarer side, it makes it way less likely to get the type of cook I like when it’s sliced that small.

In addition to cutting the fish, she says to have the cubes with the skin removed. For those who don’t know, removing skin from raw salmon without losing too much of the fish in the process is not easy. Having already spent too much time making a mess with the ginger-mincing, I decided to do a “taste test”: Does removing the skin really affect the end product?

The photo below shows little indication of physical differences between the Skins and the Non-Skins. For those keeping score, right hand side of the pan is the Skins.

Last step before cooking was put the marinade all over the fish, easy peasy. Then into the oven for 10 minutes, super fast. You will be happy to know that a lazy approach to this recipe is totally possible and tastes the same! No over-cooking, no ultra-stickiness, no discernible differences at all. Skin for the win!

I know Julia’s reasoning behind having the fish be skin-free was to serve it to picky eaters who don’t think they like fish. I can say that as a person who likes fish, eating around the skin doesn’t freak me out and is not worth the effort to remove before cooking.

Top with sesame seeds, take a photo, and it’s ready to eat!

Overall review: As noted above, I’m a fish person and I prefer my salmon on the less-cooked side. By strictly following this recipe, I ended up cooking the fish past the point I like eating it. When making this recipe again, I might skip the cutting of the fish altogether and just use this marinade like my parents use Soy Vey: Cover the whole piece fish and toss it in the oven to cook until it’s just done.

Final thoughts: Use the marinade on a larger piece of fish and cook it to my preferred temperature, and it might make the dinner rotation, skin or no skin.

This was a big recipe to tackle as my first one, but having sampled this before, I knew the finished product was going to be a good one, which helped keep me motivated. But let me help set the scene for how my first cooking resolution went down.

Picture me starving at 7:15pm heading home with no groceries in my apartment. I went to the local (not cheap) grocery store, armed with the photos on my phone of this recipe and the next one. I wandered through the aisles gathering everything on this list, double-checking the sizes with the recipe. I bought all of the ingredients except one for the next recipe (not a critical ingredient), and headed back to my apartment.

Fast forward to 7:45, I turn on the oven and start digging through the recipe and realize a few things: 1) I did not have tinfoil which will make cleanup more annoying, and 2) I bought HALF the amount of turkey (the main ingredient), which means I was going to have to do math in my head throughout the brand new recipe.

Looking back on this whole first day, it made me realize I need to double check the supplies needs for each recipe as well as the ingredients list, and that assuming I will have time to pick up ingredients on a weeknight without being cranky about it is not the best approach. If I’m going to stick with this, I’ll need to do more preparation in advance so I am able to stay focused on getting the food IN MY BELLY.

Ok, onto the good stuff!

TURKEY AND RICOTTA MEATBALLS

From SMALL VICTORIES by Julia Turshen

Ingredients include the obvious, plus basil, parsley, parmesan cheese, whole peeled tomatoes, and garlic. I also picked up Angel Hair for eating. Basic rating: Easy to find, things I already like.

First item in the recipe was my least favorite alone and already hungry: Hand crushing the whole peeled tomatoes. It ended up getting all over my shirt no matter what I did, which meant I ended up changing outfits. Julia’s recommendation was to give this task to someone to help out with, and honestly I think it would have been more fun to have tomato juice squirting everywhere with someone else to laugh with. Me by myself getting tomato juice on my PJ shirt was not that fun.

Next thing was to add this to a pot with sliced garlic and olive oil and voila! A sauce is made! This sits for almost the rest of the recipe with minimal attention needed.

Something I also didn’t do well: Finely chop the herbs. I cheated and tried to use the same knife to slice the garlic and chop the herbs, and I really needed to commit to a bigger, sharper knife for the herb preparation. The finer the chop on the herbs, the easier the meatball making, and the less leafy the final product would have been.

Once the herbs were chopped, I added minced garlic, ricotta, parmesan cheese, and salt, and I got ready to mix.

Mixing was fun, I gotta admit. And getting them into golf-ball-sized portions was not a difficult task. In the full portion of the recipe, the number of meatballs might fill the whole pan, but in my case (half the recipe) I had plenty of room to let them spread out.

At this point, my sauce was done, so I turned it off while the meatballs cooked. That way, I wouldn’t over reduce the sauce before the meatballs were finished. Given the timing of each of these recipe pieces, I think this would be a great meal for a group. There are multiple possible stopping points, and it makes a large quantity of meatballs.

Because I was cooking this to eat immediately, I put on the pasta water to boil while the meatballs were in the oven.

Everything after that was about assembly! Put the meatballs in the sauce, finish cooking the pasta, and then put everything on the plate. In the end, this recipe was pretty easy and will probably be a good one to break out when company comes.

I did most of this cooking in the apartment by myself, and by the time I was assembling, my boyfriend (N) came home and was able to eat dinner with me. While he did not experience much of the process here, his review is similar to mine in the end.

N: Overall, pretty solid. I give it a 3.7 out of 3.8.

I had this for lunch today, and I am happy to report that leftovers heat up really well and make for excellent work-friendly lunch food.

Basic overview: YUM.