BANANA CAKE WITH CHOCOLATE GANACHE (A'S BIRTHDAY CAKE)

From-scratch cakes aren’t hard to make, but I only seem to do it about once per year: for A’s birthday. I’m just not much of a cake fan, particularly when there are cookies and candy around. Every now and then, however, cake really hits the spot—and this one was so good, it made me want to bake cakes all the time.

I made the banana cake, lifted from this recipe at The Smitten Kitchen, for A’s last birthday and mentioned it in passing here, but wasn’t quite satisfied enough to write a full post. That’s because I mucked up the frosting—the original recipe was a caramel-walnut-banana cake, but the Smitten Kitchen verdict was that the banana cake was the best part, and besides, A wanted chocolate banana cake. So I picked a new-to-me recipe for fudge frosting off the Web and it totally failed, leaving me no choice but to whip up an emergency batch of standard chocolate frosting from the Better Homes and Gardens Cookbook. Nothing wrong with that, but when I tasted the cake it became clear that it was crying out for a more bitter counterpoint, like a dark chocolate ganache. I spent the ensuing year secretly (and, occasionally, not-so-secretly) hoping that A would pick banana cake for his birthday again so I’d have an excuse to take another shot at this cake. And he did.

I hadn’t made ganache before, but I’d heard it was easy, and it certainly lived up to that reputation. In the comments on the cake post, Deb recommended this ganache recipe as a nice pairing for the banana cake, so I used that as a starting point. I omitted the coffee, because we are not coffee people and I didn’t have any around or want to buy any, and I increased the cream just slightly. Then, although Deb said it hadn’t worked for her with this particular ganache, I used the lazy heat-cream-and-pour-over-chocolate method (well described in this Orangette post about a very similar cake) because the words “double boiler” in a recipe are always a huge turnoff for me. I slacked even more by heating my cream up in the microwave rather than on the stove. When it looked like my chocolate wasn’t melting into the cream enough, I even popped the whole bowl of cream and chocolate into the microwave for 10 seconds. Despite all these shortcuts, the ganache came together just fine—easy to spread over the cake, just the right amount to cover, firmed up admirably to a texture somewhere between fudge and frosting (so prettily glossy I had trouble photographing it!), and tasted amazing (use the best-quality chocolate you can, of course; I used the last of my fancy Callebaut chocolate chips from last year’s birthday gift card to Surfas).

In short: I will strenuously urge myself not to wait an entire year before making this cake again. Sure, it’s a great way to celebrate a special occasion, but it’s also simple enough for everyday eating. The cake itself is a cinch to make and well worth buying cake flour and a small bottle of rum for. It would probably be just dandy on its own, dusted with powdered sugar, garnished with strawberries, dolloped with whipped cream, or maybe with chocolate chips mixed into the batter—but why not make ganache when ganache is so ridiculously easy to make?


1¾ cups cake flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
¾ teaspoon baking soda
½ teaspoon salt
½ cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, room temperature
½ cup sugar
½ cup (packed) golden brown sugar (I used dark; no big deal)
2 large eggs
1 cup mashed very ripe bananas (2 to 3 large)
3 tablespoons sour cream
1 tablespoon dark rum
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
4 ounces semisweet chocolate chips or finely chopped chocolate
⅓ cup heavy cream

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

2. Sift flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt into a medium bowl.

3. Using an electric mixer, beat butter and both sugars in a large bowl until blended. Beat in eggs one at a time, then mashed bananas, sour cream, rum, and vanilla. Beat in dry ingredients in two additions just until combined. Spoon batter into a buttered 9-inch cake pan.

4. Bake cake until tester inserted into center comes out clean, about 40 minutes. Place pan on a cooling rack and let sit for 15 minutes. Invert cake out of pan onto rack and cool completely.

5. Place chocolate in a medium mixing bowl. Either on the stovetop or in the microwave, heat cream until it is steaming and about to boil. Pour cream over chocolate and whisk until most of the chocolate is melted; then cover and let stand for 5 minutes. Stir or whisk gently until the mixture is completely smooth. Drizzle or spread over cake and let cool.

Yield: One 9-inch cake
Time: About 2 hours (including cooling time)
Leftover potential: High. I keep leftover cake in the fridge and eat it cold, washed down with a glass of milk. A even had some for breakfast.

PASTA WITH BACON, LEEKS, AND MUSHROOMS

I have a lot of good pasta recipes. Enough, in fact, to make a different pasta recipe every week for a year. So I don’t acquire new ones lightly—they have to be pretty different from any in my archives if they’re going to make the cut. This one lured me because it has leeks. You may have noticed that I’m on a leek kick lately, and that keyword in a recipe title is enough to make me take a second look. Then, of course, there was the bacon, which would make it an instant winner with A. And I do like mushrooms, and wouldn’t necessarily have thought to put them with bacon and leeks. Most importantly, I had a few tablespoons of crème fraiche in the fridge just begging for a purpose.

Even though I like all the ingredients, I had an irrational fear that this pasta would be bland. (As if anything containing bacon has ever been bland. Ever ever. If it has, I don’t want to know about it.) I think, subconsciously, I was influenced by the pasta shell shape, not one of my favorites. I know all pasta shapes technically taste the same, but at some point in my cooking history I must have made a disappointingly bland dish involving pasta shells, and now I am prejudiced against them. Or at least, I was, until I tasted this pasta. It is simply delicious. It might be my new favorite pasta. I would like to make it again, right now. Something about the interplay between the smokiness of the bacon, the sweetness of the leeks, the earthiness of the mushrooms, and the saltiness of the cheese is just right. The crème fraiche provides a subtle, but not overwhelming, creaminess. And I actually, actively liked the texture of the pasta shells, and the perfect way they scooped up the little bits of bacon and leek. I really, really recommend this one.

I first saw this recipe at A Good Appetite, where it was scaled to serve two. It had been adapted from the original recipe by Gordon Ramsay (for whom I have an unjustifiable affection based on his TV shows, even though I don’t usually like shouty people and have never until now tasted any of his food), which was scaled to serve four and measured in grams in the European manner. So I had to do a bit of math and improvisation to create a version that would use a whole pound of pasta; as I’ve mentioned before, I have no use for recipes that use less, since I adore pasta leftovers—that is, the cooked, tasty kind waiting in the fridge to be eaten, not the uncooked half-empty box of noodles cluttering up my cabinet. I fudged the proportions a bit here and there, but was really happy with the result. This is an easy and pretty forgiving recipe. The only major change I made was not using olive oil—the original recipe calls for the bacon/pancetta to be cooked in 3 or 4 tablespoons of oil, which seems ridiculous to me, considering that most bacon (real bacon, anyway) is capable of rendering plenty of fat on its own. I just browned my bacon in an empty pan as usual, and it produced more than enough tasty, bacony grease to sauté my leeks and mushrooms in. Then, just to make sure the sauce wasn’t too dry, I added in some reserved pasta water at the end. The completed dish was the perfect consistency; I didn’t miss the extra oil whatsoever. Certainly 4 tablespoons would have made things too oily, so if you want to try the oil, I’d still recommend just 1 tablespoon or so. If you’re using fake bacon or turkey bacon or some other inferior product, maybe use 2 tablespoons oil.

1 pound medium pasta shells
Olive oil (optional)
4 ounces (about 4 thick slices) bacon, roughly chopped
3 large leeks, white and light green sections, sliced thin
8 ounces mushrooms, trimmed and sliced
Salt and pepper to taste
3 tablespoons creme fraiche
1 large handful fresh flat-leaf parsley, chopped
Freshly grated Parmesan to taste

1. Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil for cooking the pasta.

2. Meanwhile, add the bacon to a large skillet and cook over medium-high heat until beginning to crisp. (If you like, you can heat a few tablespoons of olive oil in the skillet before adding the bacon, but I don’t think it’s necessary unless you’re using a low-fat version of bacon.)

3. Add the leeks and mushrooms to the skillet and season with salt and pepper. Cook for 6–8 minutes, stirring occasionally.

4. When the pasta water boils, add the shells and cook until al dente. Before draining the pasta, reserve 1 cup of the pasta water. Drain the pasta and add to the skillet. Stir in the creme fraiche and some of the reserved pasta water (a few tablespoons at a time until your sauce reaches its desired consistency). Stir in parsley and serve sprinkled with Parmesan.

Serves: 6
Time: 30 minutes
Leftover potential: High. I ate it for lunch three days in a row last week. In fact, I wish I had some right now.

ARUGULA SALAD WITH STRAWBERRIES AND PECANS

I’m not a huge proponent of salad recipes, although I have a few of them. It’s probably the last holdover from my years as a picky eater. When I was picky, salads were a minefield—lots of weird ingredients all mixed up together, usually cold (ugh), usually with too much slimy, oily, sour dressing. Now that I’m a grownup, I love vegetables, am more tolerant of different flavor combinations, and frequently find salads a light and refreshing component of a meal…though I’ll admit I don’t really embrace them as an entrée. And food that’s too chilled still gives me the willies. And I think salads are almost always overdressed—if I could apply the dressing with an eyedropper, I would. But besides, that, salads and I get along just fine!

Usually, if I serve a green salad with a meal, it’s just spring mix and homemade vinaigrette (I like 1 part lemon juice to 1 part olive oil, plus salt and pepper), usually with croutons thrown in at A’s request. If I feel like adding other ingredients, like carrots or mushrooms or broccoli or cucumber, I just…add them. No recipe needed, right?

Except I wouldn’t really have thought to put strawberries and arugula and pecans together with a balsamic vinaigrette. So I’m glad I saw this recipe (originally adapted from Everyday Food) at Ezra Pound Cake, and I’m really glad I tried it. The balsamic-soaked strawberries were a great sweet-tart combination in themselves, and they only got better when paired with the peppery arugula and the earthy nuts. Not to mention the fact that the deep red and green look just beautiful together on the plate. I’ll be making this regularly throughout strawberry season—which, in California, is practically all year round.

No edits needed for this recipe. I halved it, and I used candied pecans from Trader Joe’s because that’s what I had on hand.

½ pint strawberries (about 2 cups), hulled and quartered (mine were quite large, so I sliced them)
2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar, divided
2 tablespoons olive oil
¼ teaspoon salt
¼ teaspoon pepper
2 bunches arugula, trimmed and thoroughly washed and dried
½ cup toasted pecan halves

1. In a large bowl, toss strawberries with 1 tablespoon of balsamic vinegar; let sit 5 to 10 minutes.

2. In a small bowl, whisk together another tablespoon of balsamic vinegar with olive oil, salt, and pepper.

3. To the strawberries, add the arugula, the vinaigrette, and the pecans. Toss to combine, and serve immediately.

Serves: 4
Time: 15 minutes
Leftover potential: Low; the dressing will make the arugula soggy

ASPARAGUS, RICOTTA, AND SALAMI PIZZA

Yum. And also, YUM. While I do like asparagus and ricotta together (I have a good recipe for penne with asparagus and ricotta that for some reason I’ve never posted), it would not have occurred to me to add salami to the mix, or even to add salami to a pizza at all—even though I love salami, and it’s hardly different from that most ubiquitous of all pizza toppings, pepperoni. (While I was making this pizza, A told me that when he traveled to Germany in high school, he was dismayed to discover that ordering a pepperoni pizza got you a pizza covered in pepperoncini, and when he finally spotted a pizza that looked like it had American-style pepperoni, it was in fact salami. So there you go.) Anyway, I’m so glad I gave this recipe from Eggs on Sunday a try, because it’s more than just a way to use up the leftover ricotta in the container while taking advantage of asparagus season. I was a bit worried it would be bland, but instead it was just delicately, elegantly, awesome. Salami—salty, peppery, and prettily pink—is the perfect complement, both visually and...er...flavorfully?, to the milky cheese and sweet, grassy asparagus.

I just eyeballed all the quantities and I think I used more asparagus (and maybe more salami and mozzarella; maybe my pizza was larger, or maybe I just like it topping-heavy?) and less ricotta than the original recipe, but I was really happy with the results. Because my ricotta supply was meager, I ended up spreading it thinly and evenly over the dough instead of dolloping it, and because it seemed easier I grated my mozzarella instead of tearing it, both of which made for a nice, moist, creamy layer underlying the asparagus and salami.


Pizza dough for 1 pizza (about 1 pound)
1 bunch asparagus, cut into 2-inch pieces, steamed briefly and then rinsed in cold water
¼ cup salami, sliced into thin ribbons
½ to ¾ cup ricotta cheese
A good handful of fresh mozzarella cheese, grated or torn into pieces (I used maybe ¼ pound?)

1. Preheat the oven to 450 degrees. Stretch out your pizza dough and lay it out on a pizza peel or baking sheet that’s been generously dusted with cornmeal.

2. Scatter bits of the ricotta all over the crust (or spread it evenly, if you are a neatnik). Sprinkle with the pieces of fresh mozzarella cheese, then with the pieces of steamed asparagus and ribbons of salami.

3. Bake the pizza for about 8 minutes, until the crust is golden brown and the cheese has melted.

Serves: 4
Time: 30 minutes
Leftover potential: Good

DILL FINGERLING POTATOES

As soon as I saw this Ina Garten recipe mentioned as an aside in an Amateur Gourmet post, I knew it would be the perfect thing to accompany my planned Easter feast of creamy lemon chicken and roasted asparagus; potatoes are a must for mopping up any leftover lemon sauce on the plate, and dill is such a springy flavor. As a bonus, these potatoes are prepared on the stovetop, leaving the oven free for my other dishes—and as nice as potatoes, butter, dill, and salt and pepper taste together, that method is really the star of the show here. Cooking the potatoes in a covered dish over low heat (or lowish, anyway--more on that in a second) produces all the tenderness of a steamed potato with a bit of the roastiness of a fried or baked potato, all coated with what is basically a brown-butter dill sauce. In short, it is excellent.

The reviews of this recipe were generally positive, but they were split about evenly between people who had no trouble with it and people who simply could not get their potatoes to soften over low heat. One commenter suggested that this might be a divide between people with gas stoves and those with electric ones, and my experience bears this out—I have an electric stove, and after 20 minutes over low heat in a cast-iron Dutch oven, my potatoes barely seemed cooked at all; there was hardly even any steam when I lifted the lid. But once I raised the heat to medium, everything went smoothly and the potatoes came out perfectly done. So use your discretion here, but I’d recommend medium heat unless it starts to seem like your butter is scorching. Or maybe start low and then increase if you need to?

2 tablespoons unsalted butter
1¼ pounds fingerling potatoes, rinsed but not peeled
1 teaspoon coarse kosher salt
¼ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1 ½ tablespoons chopped fresh dill

1. Melt the butter in a Dutch oven or large heavy-bottomed pot over medium heat. Add the whole potatoes, salt, and pepper, and toss well.

2. Cover the pot tightly and cook over low to medium heat for 20 to 30 minutes, until the potatoes are just tender when tested with a small knife. From time to time, shake the pot without removing the lid to prevent the bottom potatoes from burning.

3. Turn off the heat and allow the potatoes to steam for another 5 minutes. Toss with the dill, and serve hot.

Serves: 3
Time: 35 minutes
Leftover potential: Unknown. I used more like ¾ pound of potatoes, and we ate them all in one sitting. I imagine they’d make OK leftovers, though.

CHICKEN AND LEEK PIE(S)

This recipe from Jamie magazine, which I found at A Good Appetite, is basically a deconstructed version of one of my favorite Jamie Oliver creations, Pancetta-Wrapped Chicken Breasts With Leeks and Thyme—but in pie form. How could I not love it? Especially when I had an orphaned sheet of puff pastry in my freezer and some leftover cooked chicken already in the fridge?

The filling was a cinch to make and tasted delicious, like a sophisticated version of creamed chicken. The pie-making was slightly more challenging, mainly because of my own anxiety and ineptitude. Since A is not a fan of pot pies and I am sucker for anything stuffed with something else (dumplings, ravioli, empanadas, calzones, etc.), I took a cue from A Good Appetite, which mentioned that this might make a nice filling for a homemade hot pocket, and made hand pies instead. It soon became apparent that my filling was too liquidy, no matter how much I cooked it down trying to thicken it (I didn’t have nearly 14 ounces of chicken, as it turned out, and it didn't help that in my desperate attempt to cook it down meant that the chicken chunks broke down into tender strands, so that even scooping it out with a slotted spoon didn't help much), and I had way too much of it; I was barely able to pinch the edges of the dough together without filling running out everywhere, and I had so much filling left over that if I’d had more puff pastry I could have made twice as many pies if I’d wanted to. By the time I threw the baking sheet in the oven, I was swearing up a storm and convinced that I’d ruined a perfectly good filling and doomed dinner by trying to experiment with these little pies instead of just going with the pot pie. I was sure that all the filling would drain out during baking, leaving me with a burnt mess on the pan and soggy, empty pastry shells.

But not so! There was some filling leakage, but thanks to my use of a silicone mat, it didn’t make much of a mess. The pies still baked up near-perfectly, crisp and brown with plenty of tasty filling left inside. They still looked a little homely, but we both loved them—and I ate the leftover filling for lunch the next day with a spoon, which was just as tasty as the pies had been. I’ll certainly be making these savory little morsels again, and while I’ll try to improve on my first attempt by using the correct amount of chicken and maybe having more puff pastry to make more pies with, it’s comforting to know this recipe will work even if I think I’ve effed it up.


IMPORTANT UPDATE: I did a much better job making this for the second time, with some adjustments to the recipe: I had closer to the correct amount of chicken (still more like 12 than 14 ounces), cut it into bigger chunks (1/2-inch cubes, whereas before the chicken had been more shredded), and cooked it less long. It helped that I used about 1/2 cup less broth, so the filling was much less runny. Then, remembering how much leftover filling I'd had before, I went ahead and used a whole package of puff pastry--two sheets instead of one (I still had a bit of leftover filling, but more like a spoonful than a bowlful). So I got twice as many pies for my efforts. Fewer of them leaked in the oven, and the leftovers didn't get soggy--they were nice and crisp even days later. All these changes are noted below.

1 slice bacon, chopped
1 tablespoon fresh thyme leaves
1½ teaspoons olive oil
1½ teaspoons unsalted butter
2 large leeks, washed, trimmed, and thinly sliced (white and light green parts only)
Salt and pepper to taste
14 ounces cooked chicken, cut into chunks
1 heaping tablespoon flour
1½ to 2 cups chicken broth (use less when making hand pies)
1 tablespoon creme fraiche
1 sheet puff pastry for pot pie, or 2 for hand pies
1 egg, beaten

1. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees if making pot pie, 400 degrees if making hand pies.

2. Over medium-high heat, add the bacon and thyme to a large skillet. Add the olive oil and butter and cook for a few minutes. Add the leeks and stir for about 3 minutes to coat everything. Season with salt and pepper. Cover and reduce heat to medium-low. Let cook for 30 minutes, stirring from time to time.

3. Stir the chicken into the leeks. Add the flour and stir again. Pour in the broth and the creme fraiche. Turn the heat up and bring to a boil. Season again if needed.

4. If making a pot pie: Pour the filling into a large pie pan. On a floured surface, roll the puff pastry out until it is at least 1 inch bigger on all sides than your pie pan. Trim to fit over your pan with a 1-inch overhang. Carefully place over the top of the pie and press down the sides. Brush with the beaten egg. With a sharp knife, add a few slits in the top. Bake for 35–40 minutes until the crust is golden brown.

5. If making hand pies: Using a rolling pin, roll the puff pastry dough out to make it into a little bigger rectangle. Cut into four rectangles. Brush a little beaten egg onto two adjacent sides of each rectangle. Using a slotted spoon, place a heaping spoonful of the sauce into the middle of each rectangle. Fold over to make a triangle and press the edges together to seal (you may need to stretch the dough a little). Place on a baking sheet lined with a silicone pad or parchment. Brush each pie with beaten egg. Use a sharp knife to poke two slits in the top of each. Repeat with the other sheet of puff pastry and the rest of the filling (you may still have a little left over), for a total of 8 pies. Bake for 15 minutes. Turn the heat down to 350 degrees and bake another 10–15 minutes until golden brown. Let cool a few minutes before serving, because the filling will be really hot.

Serves: 4–6 (The pot pie will serve 4; if you make hand pies, you’ll get 8, but you'll likely eat more than one pie in a sitting—we ate 1½ apiece with a side salad at dinner.)
Time: 1½ hours
Leftover potential: Better than expected, at least for the hand pies. I don’t like reheated puff pastry because it seems to get soggy and greasy, but the leftovers I ate remained crisp and nearly as tasty as the first time around. I wouldn't say they improve with age, but they hold up.

PENNE WITH POTATOES AND ARUGULA

This is the perfect pasta dish for times of the year when not much exciting produce is in season, or (in my case) when you’ve been unable to make it to the farmers’ market and must rely upon the less-awesome offerings at the grocery store. It’s also the perfect pasta dish for bridging winter (hearty roasted potatoes, garlic, and rosemary) and spring (arugula, lemon, and no sauce to speak of). Oh, and it’s easy to make, it’s a well-balanced meal in a bowl (starch + salad, anyway), and it tastes really good, too.

The recipe is via the Smitten Kitchen, adapted from Chez Panisse Vegetables. Deb remarked that she thought it called for too much garlic (4 to 6 cloves), considering it’s not cooked very long, but I didn’t find it overwhelming; I used 4 cloves and maybe I cooked it a bit longer than the recipe called for, because the garlic didn't have that raw edge that makes it overpowering. Or maybe I just like those "unmistakeably all-American doses of garlic." If you’re worried, you can cut it back to 2 cloves, but I think a better solution would be to add it to the pan earlier, with the onions, to mellow out the flavor with a bit more cooking.

I made a few additional tweaks to the recipe: Originally, it called for ¾ pound penne, but who wants to be stuck with ¼ of a bag of pasta in the cupboard? I prefer to use the whole package and call it a day, so I just upped the amounts of potatoes and arugula to compensate. I also cut way back on the olive oil—the original recipe called for ½ cup, which seems excessive; mine turned out plenty tasty with about half that amount. To further moisten/flavor things up, I threw in some reserved pasta water and doubled the lemon juice. I would also recommend being really generous with the salt; potatoes cry out for it, and the dish risks being bland otherwise. I didn’t add quite enough the first time around and thought the pasta was nice but lackluster, but then when I sprinkled a little extra on my leftovers the next day, they perked right up and tasted awesome. For further flavor enhancement, we garnished with a little Parmesan, and A suggested adding bacon in a future experiment. OK, granted, A always suggests adding bacon to everything (did I tell you that I made him bacon chocolate-chip cookies for Valentine’s Day?), but since bacon goes quite well with arugula (see: Corn, Arugula, and Bacon Salad) and, of course, with potatoes in breakfasty goodness, it’s actually not such a crazy idea. If I try it, I’ll let you know how it turns out.

P.S. I just realized that with this recipe, arugula has scored more than enough mentions on this blog (we're up to five arugula-centric recipes) to earn its very own sidebar category! Congratulations, arugula! I guess I like you more than I thought I did.

1 to 1½ pounds firm boiling potatoes (I used small red potatoes, but Deb suggests fingerlings), sliced ⅓ inch thick
About ¼ cup extra-virgin olive oil
Coarse salt and pepper
10–12 ounces arugula, washed and drained
1 small red onion, thinly sliced
4 cloves garlic, minced
1 sprig rosemary leaves, chopped
1 pound penne pasta
Juice from 1 lemon
Grated Parmesan cheese, if desired

1. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit. Toss the sliced potatoes with about 1 tablespoon olive oil, plus generous salt and pepper to taste. Spread them in a single layer in an ovenproof dish or on a baking sheet (for easy cleanup, line with foil or parchment) and roast in the oven until golden brown and cooked through, about 15 minutes (I flipped mine over midway through). When done, remove from the oven.

2. Meanwhile, bring a large pot of salted water to a boil for cooking the pasta. Add pasta and cook until al dente. Reserve about ½ cup pasta water, then drain.

3. While the pasta is cooking and when the potatoes are done, heat a sauté pan, add about 1 tablespoon olive oil, and sauté the sliced onion until soft and translucent and starting to brown, about 5 minutes. Add the arugula and garlic, and sauté until they just begin to wilt and soften. Lower the heat, add the potato slices and rosemary, and toss together for a minute or two. When the noodles are done, drain them and add them to the potatoes and onion. Add the lemon juice and salt and pepper to taste. Drizzle with a little olive oil and add pasta water if the sauce still seems dry. Toss well. Sprinkle with Parmesan if desired.

Serves: 6
Time: 1 hour
Leftover potential: High.

BROCCOLI SOUP WITH LEMON-CHIVE CREAM

I am in full-on spring eating mode, which means I want to eat nothing but green, lemony things all day long. So although ordinarily I wouldn’t say a broccoli soup sounds exactly irresistible, this soup, full of not just broccoli but also leeks, green onion, chive, Parmesan, and lemon, called out to me with a siren song the instant I first saw it at Orangette. Obviously the superstar here is the lemon-chive cream, which would make a delicious dip on its own (and indeed, is reminiscent of some perfected form of sour-cream-and-onion potato chips), but the soup is nothing to sneeze at later. A far cry from heavy, army-green, cabbage-smelling cream of broccoli soups you may have met before, this is a simple, light (but with those rich spikes of cream), fresh concoction that’s the perfect way to celebrate the coming of spring. Even A, who confessed he was suspicious of this soup while I was making it, gives it the thumbs up.

I’m not a huge sour cream fan, so I used crème fraiche instead. (It only came in half-cup containers, so I ended up making a half-recipe of the lemon-chive cream, and that was plenty sufficient for the four servings of soup we got.) It was mad delicious (I may have licked the container clean when no one was looking), but it did lack a little zip, being not as sour as actual sour cream, so I ended up doubling the lemon juice. Next time I may try Greek or European-style plain yogurt instead.

For the soup:
1 tablespoon unsalted butter
1 tablespoon olive oil
2 medium leeks, white and tender green parts only, sliced
1 small yellow onion, coarsely chopped
3 cloves garlic, coarsely chopped
1½ pounds broccoli, both crowns and stems, trimmed and coarsely chopped
5 cups chicken or vegetable stock
1 rind (about 2 inches square) from a piece of Parmesan cheese
¾ teaspoon kosher salt, or less if your broth is well salted

For the sour cream:
1 cup sour cream, crème fraiche, or plain yogurt (preferably Greek yogurt)
2 scallions, white and pale green parts only, very thinly sliced
¼ cup minced chives
1 teaspoon grated lemon zest
2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
½ cup finely grated Parmesan cheese
½ teaspoon kosher salt
¼ teaspoon pressed or minced garlic

1. In a stockpot or Dutch oven, warm the butter and oil over medium heat. Add the leeks and onion and cook, stirring occasionally, until they have softened and the onion is translucent, about 10 minutes. Add the garlic and cook for one minute. Add the broccoli, stock, Parmesan rind, and salt and stir to mix. Bring to a boil, reduce to a simmer, and cook, partially covered, until the broccoli is tender, about 20 minutes.

2. While the soup cooks, prepare the cream. In a medium bowl, stir together the sour cream, scallions, chives, lemon zest, lemon juice, grated Parmesan, salt, and garlic, mixing until fully combined. Taste, and adjust as necessary. (If you are using crème fraiche, you may want to add more lemon juice; if you are using yogurt, you may want to use less lemon juice and/or add some olive oil and a pinch of sugar.)

3. To finish the soup, remove the Parmesan rind. Using a blender and working in small batches, purée until very smooth, then return the soup to the pot (or purée it in the pot with an immersion blender). Add a few dollops of the cream mixture (about ⅓ cup) and stir to incorporate. Taste for seasoning, and adjust as necessary. If needed, rewarm the soup gently over low heat. Serve the soup with a spoonful or two of the remaining cream on top.

Serves: 4–6
Time: 40 minutes
Leftover potential: Good. The freshness of this soup is one of its main selling points, so I wouldn’t keep it for days on end, but I did eat the leftovers for lunch the next day, and as usual with soup, the flavor had only improved overnight.

CHRISTMAS LIMA BEANS WITH CARAMELIZED ONIONS AND BACON

This is as sexy as lima beans will ever get.

Of the many varieties of Rancho Gordo heirloom beans I received for Christmas, the ones I was most unsure what to do with were, ironically, the big, reddish-brown-and-white-dappled, supposedly chestnut-flavored Christmas lima beans. So I was excited to find this recipe from the Rancho Gordo cookbook (which my library annoyingly doesn't have) at the Kitchn. Although it was written for Florida butter beans, it mentioned that Christmas lima beans could be used instead. Score!

I hardly need to bother saying that it was delicious. As if anything could taste bad when covered in caramelized onions and bacon! But the beans themselves had a wonderfully savory flavor (I can’t vouch for whether it was reminiscent of chestnuts or not, having never to my knowledge eaten a chestnut to begin with) that made this dish more than the sum of its parts. The only flaw was that, although I cooked them even longer than the recipe called for, they didn’t turn out quite soft enough for my taste. The one I tested before declaring them done and turning off the stove was perfectly tender, but when we began to eat I discovered that most of the others were firmer and a few were downright crunchy in the middle. I’m not sure I can blame the recipe—I was a little impatient, what with being distracted by watching the Oscars while I cooked, and these are big honkin’ beans, possibly bigger than the Florida butter beans, so maybe I needed to adjust the cooking time accordingly. Anyway, it’s an easy fix: allow plenty of time to cook them and make sure they’re fully soft, and with very little effort you’ll have one heck of an elegant-yet-comforting (and very pretty, if I do say) dish that’ll please bean-lovers and lima-phobes alike. I’m so happy that I have a stash of enough Christmas lima beans to make this three more times in the future.

½ pound Christmas lima beans
4 slices high-quality bacon, diced
2½ medium yellow onions
2 celery stalks, diced
2 garlic cloves, finely chopped
Salt to taste
¾ teaspoon fresh thyme leaves
Freshly ground black pepper to taste

1. Place beans in a stockpot and cover with three inches of cold water. Soak for 4–6 hours.

2. Add more cold water if needed to cover the beans by 1 inch. Place stockpot on the stove and bring to a boil. Reduce heat to low and simmer, partially covered, until beans are beginning to soften, about 1 hour.

3. In a medium, heavy skillet over medium heat, sauté the bacon until fat is rendered and bacon is beginning to brown, 8–10 minutes. Remove bacon with a slotted spoon and drain on paper towels.

4. Pour off all but 2 tablespoons of bacon fat from the pan and reserve. Chop half of an onion and add to the pan over medium heat. Add celery and garlic and sauté until soft and fragrant, about 10 minutes. Add vegetables to the beans, reduce the heat to low, cover, and simmer until beans are tender, 1 to 1½ hours. When beans are nearly soft, season them with salt.

5. After adding vegetables to beans, cut the remaining 2 onions in half, then slice them thinly. Add the remaining 2 tablespoons of bacon fat to the skillet and set over medium-low heat. Add the sliced onions and a few pinches of salt. Cook, stirring, until onions wilt. Reduce heat to low and cook, stirring occasionally, until the onions are medium brown, soft, and caramelized, 45 minutes to 1 hour. Add 2 tablespoons water and stir to loosen any browned bits on the bottom of the pan. Add the thyme and season to taste with salt and pepper. Add the bacon to the onions and heat gently.

6. When beans are fully tender, place them in serving bowls (drain off any excess liquid first) and top each serving with some of the onion-bacon mixture.

Serves: 4
Time: 2–3 hours, plus soaking time
Leftover potential: Good.

ZUCCHINI AND BRIE SOUP

This is one of my older recipes (so old, I don’t remember where I got it and can’t find it online), and apparently I don’t make it too often because I’ve never posted it here before. So when I made it last week, it was with a critical eye—obviously it’s not one of my cherished faves, so should it be eliminated from the repertoire?

Luckily, this simple-but-unique soup passed the test with flying colors. It’s exceptionally quick and easy to prepare, requiring only a few basic ingredients. It’s a lovely, cheerful pale-green color, with the delicate flavors of zucchini and Brie. And even though it’s cheesy and creamy, the overall effect is light and refreshing, the kind of soup you could enjoy year-round. Keeper!

2 cups sliced zucchini
1½ cups diced peeled potatoes
1 medium yellow onion, chopped
4 cups vegetable or chicken broth
1 cup diced Brie cheese, rind removed
salt and pepper to taste

1. In a soup pot, combine the zucchini, potatoes, onion, and broth. Bring to a boil, reduce to a simmer, and cook, stirring occasionally, about 15 minutes or until the potatoes are tender. Remove from heat, add the cheese, and stir until just melted.

2. Puree soup in batches in a blender or food processor until smooth. Return to the pot, heat through, and season with salt and pepper to taste.

Serves: 4–6
Time: 30 minutes
Leftover potential: High

ROASTED CHICKEN v.2.0

This photo doesn't begin to do justice to the majestic roasted chicken that emerged from my oven that night. But that's only because while carving the bird, I happened to lick my fingers and they tasted so delicious that all of a sudden I was hunched over the carcass stripping leftover scraps of meat off it with my hands and popping them into my mouth like some kind of animal. So this photo is inadequate because it was taken under the influence of a frenzied need to EAT THAT CHICKEN LEG ALREADY. But at least you can get a sense of the beautiful golden-brown skin on the chicken. (The potatoes look really dark, but that's because some of them were purple and red potatoes, not Yukon Golds.)

Forget my other roasted chicken recipes.

OK, maybe don’t completely forget them, but try this one first.

Usually, I don’t like to be bothered too much with methodology when I’m cooking. I just want to know the ingredients I need and how to assemble them. I like to follow directions, but I don’t like to fuss. I find America’s Test Kitchen interesting on an academic level, but I never want to make their recipes.

Some foodies loooove to bicker about the best way to do things, comparing chocolate-chip cookie recipes or potato-mashing techniques. I tend to just find a recipe I like and stick with it. I rarely spare a glance for new potato-leek soup recipes, for instance, because I already have a potato-leek soup recipe I really like. It’s just more restful for my easily-overwhelmed brain that way. And let’s face it, I like consistency and routine. Occasionally, yes, it turns out that what I like can be improved upon—I liked this mac and cheese just fine, right up until I found my super-awesome no-white-sauce 2:1-ratio-of-cheese-to-macaroni version and promptly left the old one in the dust. But I thought I was perfectly happy with my reliable, made-dozens-of-times roasted chicken with vegetables recipe. I was wrong.

The trouble all started with the post on the Zuni Café roasted chicken and bread salad at Smitten Kitchen. I’d heard plenty of praise for the Zuni chicken before—it’s downright developed a cult—but never seen photos that made it look so droolingly good, that made me hungry for it right then and there. Reading the recipe, it became clear that it would be best achieved using a cast-iron skillet or a roasting pan, which I don’t have. (I want a cast-iron skillet at some point, but I didn’t want to have to buy one before I could have roasted chicken. Typical hunger logic.) I did a quick online search for a workaround, and while I didn’t find much information about what else I could roast the Zuni chicken in, I quickly gleaned two pieces of information: (1) To hear some people tell it, the Zuni chicken-roasting method is transcendent, possibly life-changing; (2) It is likely that the high-heat cooking will make a mess of your oven, fill the kitchen with smoke, and possibly set off your fire alarm. Then there were the people who thought Zuni was overrated and professed their allegiance to some other chicken-roasting religion, like Cook’s Illustrated or the Barefoot Contessa. I was starting to feel overwhelmed. But still hungry.

Apparently just a glutton for punishment, I straight-up Googled “best roasted chicken recipe.” Just as my head was starting to spin, I happened on this post at My Husband Hates Veggies. First of all, the chicken looked delicious (and oh wow, those perfectly browned potatoes!). Second, it seemed to be a thoughtful synthesis of several popular methods (I recognized the day-long brining and careful drying from the Zuni method, and the lemon and thyme in the cavity from the Barefoot Contessa recipe). Third, it had some intriguing-looking features that included boiling the potatoes with the lemon and garlic before roasting. Feeling adventurous, I decided to give it a try on a Sunday night.

The process wasn’t hard, and since I could boil the potatoes while preheating the oven, it didn’t take any longer than my old recipe (in fact, the bird cooked for less time because the heat was higher). And the results were completely miraculous. Unless it’s sort of emergency, I will never roast a whole chicken without rubbing salt on it 24 hours beforehand, and I will never forget to dry it thoroughly. As promised by the Zuni devotees, those two easy measures ensured the crispest skin and most flavorful meat I’ve ever eaten. Meanwhile, the hot lemon and garlic infused the whole chicken with additional flavor and kept the meat, even the breast, unbelievably moist. The higher-temperature cooking made for a perfectly cooked bird (with my old recipe, even with the help of a meat thermometer, I sometimes ended up undercooking). And the trick of boiling the potatoes before roasting them was brilliant—while with my old recipe they’d sometimes get blackened on the outside before they were soft on the inside, here we had perfectly tender interiors surrounded by an addictively crisp-fried shell (like French fries! But unlike fries, they even stayed crunchy when eaten as leftovers the next day, after being reheated in the microwave). And, to mimic my favorite part of my old recipe, other vegetables could be added to the mix—I threw in some carrots and parsnips (unboiled) that I needed to use up, and while I should have cut them into bigger pieces to prevent charring, they still turned out tasty.

This really is the perfect roasted chicken. It’s my go-to recipe for now on, and even if in the future I decide to return to my other recipes for the different flavors (smoked paprika, honey) they can offer, I will always follow some of the basic steps of this one (SALTING and DRYING, people). I may have finally learned the value of methodology.

1 whole 3-pound chicken (the best quality you can find, preferably organic and free-range)
1 large lemon
10 garlic cloves, unpeeled
2 sprigs of fresh thyme
Plenty of coarse kosher salt and fresh-ground pepper
Olive oil
1½ pounds small Yukon Gold potatoes

1. Prep your chicken about 24 hours ahead of time by patting it down with paper towels and covering it liberally with kosher salt. Really massage it into the skin, and inside the cavity as well. (Be sure to remove giblets or any neck pieces from the cavity first!) Place in a baking dish (not the one you’re going to use to roast the bird) in the refrigerator and cover with tin foil or plastic wrap.

2. When ready to roast, preheat the oven to 425 degrees. Slice the potatoes in half, or in quarters if they are larger. Add them to a large pot and cover with cold water. Add the lemon and the garlic cloves, and cook over high heat until water boils. When it does boil, add salt to the water.

3. Remove chicken from refrigerator and wipe it off with paper towels until it is as dry as possible. Place in a roasting pan (I use a roasting rack on a heavy baking sheet).

4. Once the potatoes are tender, drain everything. Add the potatoes back to the hot pot you cooked them in to dry off. Take the lemon (use tongs and be careful; it’s hot!) and pierce it 8–10 times with the tip of a sharp knife. Stuff the lemon inside the chicken cavity, along with the hot garlic cloves and the thyme. Drizzle the bird with olive oil and rub it all over, then rub kosher salt and freshly ground pepper all over it. Place the bird breast side up to cook, and tuck the wings underneath.

5. Place the roasting pan in the oven and cook for 30 minutes.

6. Remove the pan and lower the oven temperature to 375 degrees. Give the cooled potatoes a quick stir in their pot, then add them to the roasting pan. Stir them around in the hot fat and juices that have accumulated, so none are dry. Position the potatoes cut side down. Return the tray to the oven and cook for another 45 minutes.

7. Chicken is done when juices run clear and a meat thermometer inserted into the thickest part of the thigh reads 180 degrees. Remove pan from oven and let stand 10 minutes. Remove the potatoes to a serving dish and sprinkle with coarse salt. Remove everything from the chicken cavity (carefully, again!)—you can discard the lemon and thyme, but it’s great to serve the garlic with the potatoes. Carve the chicken and serve.

Serves: 4–5
Time: 2 hours, plus 24 hours of brining
Leftover potential: Insanely high. Aside from being eaten plain the next day (with the magically still-crisp leftover potatoes), leftover chicken can be used for sandwiches, salads, soups, pizza, or anything else you like (you can freeze it for months). And once you’ve stripped off all the meat, don’t forget to use the carcass to make chicken stock. Delicious and thrifty!

CRISPY SALTED OATMEAL WHITE CHOCOLATE COOKIES

Two Saturdays ago, A and I were feeling under the weather and had canceled our afternoon plans in favor of lying limply around the house. But first, I managed to drag myself to the kitchen and bake these easy cookies, and they made us supremely happy. I don’t care for white chocolate, and I usually prefer my oatmeal cookies on the soft side, but there’s something irresistible about these. The recipe is from the Smitten Kitchen, where Deb sums it up perfectly: “They’re crispy, but not because they’re hard or because they’re thin but because they practically hollow out when they bake, leaving you with this… shell of an oatmeal cookie with rich bits of white chocolate scattered about and the tiniest flaking of sea salt on top.” And oh, that salt is so so good, providing an excellent counterbalance to the sweetness of the white chocolate, as well as an excellent opportunity for me to use the fleur de sel I got for Christmas (thank you!). I won’t be throwing dark chocolate over for white chocolate anytime soon, but these cookies are well worth trying and are a unique addition to my repertoire.

I’m sure hand-chopped chunks of great-quality white chocolate would rock these cookies even harder, but I’ll admit I took the shortcut and used Trader Joe’s white chocolate chips. They contain cocoa butter, so they’re “real” white chocolate, and they taste good to me.

1 cup all-purpose flour
¾ teaspoon baking powder
½ teaspoon baking soda
¼ teaspoon table salt
14 tablespoons (1¾ sticks) unsalted butter, slightly softened
1 cup sugar
¼ cup packed light brown sugar
1 large egg
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2½ cups old-fashioned rolled oats
6 ounces good-quality white chocolate bar, chopped (or non-artificial white chocolate chips)
½ teaspoon flaky sea salt (like Maldon or fleur de sel) for sprinkling on top

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Line your baking sheets with parchment paper or Silpat. Whisk the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and table salt in a medium bowl.

2. Beat the butter and sugars until light and fluffy. Scrape down the bowl with a rubber spatula, then add the egg and vanilla and beat until incorporated. Scrape down the bowl again. Add the flour mixture gradually and mix until just incorporated and smooth. Gradually add the oats and white chocolate and mix until well incorporated.

3. Divide the dough into 24 equal portions, each about 2 tablespoons. Roll between your palms into balls, then place on lined baking sheets about 2½ inches apart. Using fingertips, gently press down each ball to about a ¾-inch thickness.

4. Sprinkle a few flakes of sea salt on each cookie.

5. Bake until cookies are deep golden brown, about 13 to 16 minutes, rotating baking sheet halfway through. Transfer to wire rack to cool.

Yield: 2 dozen
Time: 45 minutes

FISH & CHIPS DINNER

I am inordinately pleased with myself for trying this set of recipes, and even more pleased (one might say downright smug) that I pulled them off. Sure, fish sticks and oven fries seems like a safe bet—in fact, this readymade menu is basically designed for picky kids. But keep in mind that I didn’t grow up eating fish sticks or fish sandwiches; I hated fish as a child (I blame my few limited experiences with the dreaded orange roughy). The first time I ventured to even try fish and chips in a restaurant was less than 10 years ago, I’ve only been cooking fish at home for 5 years or so, and I’ve never cooked anything other than salmon. I don’t like coleslaw and tartar sauce makes me shudder (I prefer my fish with malt vinegar and lemon). So there were a lot of hurdles to overcome here. But when I saw the photo of this meal in the “Family Style” column in November’s Bon Appetit, it just looked so tasty and fun, and it was well-reviewed online, and A was encouraging, so after hemming and hawing about a million times, I went ahead with it. Even while I was cooking I wasn’t sure everything was going to work out, but then suddenly it did. Pretty brilliantly, if I do say so myself. And I do.

In short: The fish sticks are straight-up awesome. The breading is crispy and flavorful without being deep-fried, with a welcome bit of kick from the cayenne. But it wasn’t all about the breading—the halibut really shone through, and I loved the texture and non-fishy flavor. My only complaint was that it was hellishly expensive—“fresh” (meaning frozen and then thawed) wild Alaskan halibut was an astounding $24.99 per pound at the Whole Foods fish counter. Relieved that I’d decided to only make a half-recipe, I headed over to the freezer case and found a bag of frozen wild Alaskan halibut steaks at $13.99: still steep, but not quite as insane. When I got them home and thawed and cut into sticks, however, I realized I’d paid that price for just 12 ounces of halibut, meaning that (although it was still cheaper than the “fresh” stuff) there was just enough for two and a half fish sticks per person. We didn’t starve or anything—they were hefty sticks and there were plenty of oven fries on our plates—but once I tasted just how good the fish was, I was sad to have so little of it. My mission will now be to find a more affordable source of quality halibut so I don’t have to break the bank to make this meal again.

The fish recipe is the real gem here, but I highly recommend making the whole menu. The oven fries were unsurprisingly delicious—again, a healthier, non-fried take on the restaurant standard. And I may not like coleslaw, but this was its most tolerable incarnation. I don’t like mayo, and the dressing on this was a non-creamy vinegar-based one (no oil, either—again, a healthier update); I don’t like cabbage, and I found a coleslaw mix at Trader Joe’s that was predominately made up of shredded broccoli stems supplemented by smaller amounts of shredded carrot and shredded red cabbage (I used half the bag for my coleslaw and have been enjoying the rest sprinkled over my green salads). In my heart of hearts, I’d probably still have preferred a green salad for my vegetable, but I’d have the slaw again—it was important in terms of replicating the classic restaurant meal. And I even tried the tartar sauce and have to admit it wasn’t bad. The fish was so good it didn’t really need it, but A was a fan of it (as he is of all dips and sauces) and again, it was key for restaurant-style verisimilitude.

Best of all, even though I had to think carefully about the order of operations and dirtied a few too many bowls in the process, this seemingly complicated meal of four separate recipes came together in just a little over an hour, no longer than it usually takes me to make a weeknight dinner. We both really enjoyed it, it was refreshingly different from our usual fare, and it was even pretty healthy.

Oven fries:
1 pound large unpeeled Yukon Gold potatoes, each cut into 8 wedges
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 teaspoon fleur de sel or coarse kosher salt

Quick tartar sauce:
½ cup mayonnaise
3 tablespoons sweet pickle relish or finely chopped bread-and-butter pickles
1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice

Five-minute slaw:
2 tablespoons red wine vinegar
1 tablespoon sugar
1 teaspoon coarse kosher salt
⅛ teaspoon celery seeds
2 green onions, thinly sliced
1 8-ounce package coleslaw mix

Pan-fried fish:
1 pound 1½-inch-thick halibut filets
¾ cup panko
1½ teaspoons finely chopped fresh Italian parsley
1 teaspoon coarse kosher salt
1 teaspoon finely grated lemon peel
¼ teaspoon cayenne pepper
2 large egg whites
2 tablespoons dark ale
2 tablespoons olive oil
Lemon wedges for garnish

1. To make the oven fries, preheat the oven to 450 degrees. Toss all the ingredients in a medium bowl to coat the potatoes well with olive oil and salt. Place the potatoes, points facing up, on a rimmed baking sheet and roast 15 minutes. Reduce oven temperature to 400 degrees and continue to roast until potatoes are tender and golden, about 20–30 minutes longer.

2. While oven fries cook, make tartar sauce by mixing all ingredients in a small bowl. Cover and chill until ready to use.

3. To make slaw, whisk first four ingredients in a large bowl, then add green onions. Add coleslaw mix and toss well.

4. To make fish, cut halibut into sticks and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Heat oil in a large nonstick skillet over medium-high heat. While oil is heating, combine panko, parsley, salt, lemon peel, and cayenne in a shallow bowl; in a separate shallow bowl, whisk egg whites and ale. When oil is hot, dip fish sticks in ale mixture, turn to coat, and shake off excess; then place fish in panko mixture and turn to coat all sides. Add fish sticks to skillet and cook about 2 minutes on each side, until all sides are golden and fish is opaque in center. Transfer fish to paper towels, sprinkle with salt and pepper, and serve immediately.

Serves: 2
Time: 1 hour, 15 minutes
Leftover potential: I’d say low, because fried foods (even oven-fried and pan-fried ones) don’t reheat that well. I deliberately halved the recipes in order to have no leftovers. But Bon Appetit did have a pretty decent-sounding suggestion for making a fish sandwich out of the leftover fish sticks, tartar sauce, and slaw on hamburger buns, so give it a try if it floats your boat.

BLACK BEAN SOUP WITH CILANTRO-LIME SOUR CREAM

I chose this highly-rated recipe from Epicurious as an appropriately noble use for my Rancho Gordo midnight black beans and my new Dutch oven. I wanted a recipe specifically designed for using dry beans, involving a long simmer with flavorful ingredients. This one struck the right balance between delicious (bacon! sour cream!) and wholesome (everything else—lots of veggies and no extra fat besides the bacon). Don’t be scared off by the long soaking and cooking times—you only have to pay undivided attention to this recipe for about 30 minutes. Sure, you won’t be whipping it up on a weeknight, but make it on the weekend and it will certainly feed you happily for the rest of the week. It fit perfectly into my Sunday schedule: I started soaking the beans right away when I got up in the morning, read the paper, went to a museum, came home and chopped the soup ingredients and got them cooking in the later afternoon, cleaned the apartment while they simmered cozily, and for once did not have to miss the beginning of the season premiere of 24 because I was hustling to get dinner on the table. The result of this day of cooking was a substantial, flavorful soup, slightly smoky from the bacon, with a delightful burst of contrasting freshness from the cilantro-lime sour cream.

I’ll admit I was prepared for this soup to rock my world and make me turn away from canned black beans once and for all, but those expectations might have been a bit high. It’s certainly worthwhile to cook with good-quality dried beans now and again (they’re more affordable and healthier, and the process is enjoyable), and if I get my hands on any more Rancho Gordo black beans, this is a treatment worthy of them. I thought this soup might blow my quickie canned-bean version right out of the water, but although the flavor was more complex and the texture was satisfyingly meatier, it wasn’t so dramatically different as to inspire me to toss away my old recipe. The moral: Both versions can coexist. Sometimes you want a quick weeknight meal with convenient ingredients, and sometimes you want a slow-cooked, old-world weekend meal. Besides, simmering something on the stovetop for hours is great on a cool winter day, but torturous on a hot one--and I live in Southern California, so canned beans will continue to have their place in my pantry. That said, I will certainly make this soup again. In the meantime, I still have leftovers to enjoy!

A few notes: I used nonfat plain yogurt instead of the sour cream, because I’m not much of a sour cream fan to begin with and knew I wouldn’t miss the extra calories. And yogurt is tasty! Instead of my usual Trader Joe’s French Village, I tried what seemed to be a new TJ’s offering, Organic European-Style Yogurt, which turned out to be a great choice for this recipe—it was smoother and creamier than ordinary yogurt but also much thinner, aptly like Mexican crema, with a nice tart flavor. I highly recommend it if you can find it. Also, the original recipe had you add the tomato and vinegar with the rest of the ingredients, but Rancho Gordo’s bean-cooking guidelines say that adding acids too early in the process can make the beans tough, so I added them about 30 minutes before the end of the cooking time and have changed the recipe below accordingly.

16 ounces (about 2½ cups) dried black beans
6 bacon slices, chopped
¾ cup finely chopped celery
¾ cup finely chopped onion
¾ cup finely chopped carrots
¾ cup finely chopped leeks
6 to 8 cups low-sodium chicken broth (preferably homemade)
1 cup (packed) chopped fresh cilantro, divided
⅓ cup (packed) chopped fresh Italian parsley
1½ tablespoons minced garlic
1 jalapeño pepper, minced
2 teaspoons ground cumin
1 teaspoon ground coriander
1 large tomato, chopped
1 tablespoon red wine vinegar
¾ cup sour cream or plain yogurt
2 teaspoons fresh lemon juice
2 teaspoons fresh lime juice
Salt and pepper to taste

1. Place beans in a large bowl. Add enough water to cover by 3 inches and let stand about 6 hours or overnight. Drain well.

2. Cook bacon in a large, heavy pot over medium heat until brown but still soft, about 4 minutes. Add celery, onion, carrots, and leeks, and sauté until vegetables begin to soften, about 10 minutes. Add beans, chicken broth, ½ cup cilantro, parsley, garlic, jalapeño, cumin, and coriander. Bring to a boil. Reduce heat to medium-low, cover, and simmer soup until beans are very tender, stirring occasionally, about 2 hours. When the beans are just starting to become tender (after about 1½ hours), add the tomato and vinegar.

3. Working in batches, transfer soup to a blender a process until a slightly chunky puree forms, then return soup to pot (better yet, use an immersion blender until the soup is about half-blended). Season to taste with salt and pepper.

4. Mix sour cream/yogurt, lemon juice, lime juice, and remaining ½ cup cilantro in a small bowl. Season with salt and pepper to taste. Ladle soup into bowls and place a dollop of sour cream mixture atop soup (if you are making leftover portions, store the sour cream mixture in a separate bowl; do not add it until soup is reheated and ready to eat).

Serves: 8
Time: About 8½ hours, but only about 30 minutes of that is active cooking
Leftover potential: High (all soups improve with age), but remember not to add the sour cream until ready to eat.

CHICKEN BREASTS WITH BACON, ROSEMARY, AND LEMON

I made this before Christmas but didn't have time to post it, what with all the frantic baking. From Cook's Country via RecipeZaar via Ezra Pound Cake, it's a great treatment for boneless, skinless chicken breasts, which are not one of my favorite foods but still seem to find their way into my kitchen on a regular basis due to their sheer usefulness. This recipe uses the big, bold flavors of bacon, rosemary, lemon, and red pepper flakes to combat the dryness and blandness of the chicken, transforming it into an exciting, sophisticated, yet still super-easy weeknight meal. If you're anything like me, you won't be able to restrain yourself from licking the sauce right off the plate afterwards.

My only complaint was with the 1 and 7/8 teaspoons of red pepper flakes called for by the RecipeZaar version of the recipe. While I totally wouldn't put it past the America's Test Kitchen people to require such a randomly precise measurement, that's a lot of red pepper flakes--even my red-pepper-flakiest recipe, Spicy Roast Chicken and Tomatoes, tops out at 1 teaspoon. We (especially A) are spice fans, and lord knows you'll have to pry my red pepper flakes from my cold dead hands, but we agreed that even the 1 1/2 teaspoons I cautiously used seemed way too overpowering for this recipe. Later I did a more thorough Google search and found that (although the official Cook's Country version isn't available for free) several other online versions of this recipe called for just 1/8 teaspoon of red pepper flakes, suggesting that's the correct original measurement. Nice typo, RecipeZaar poster! And nice detective work, me! That's a biiiiiig difference in measurement. But 1/8 teaspoon is way too wussy, so I'm going to go ahead and recommend that you use 1/2 to 1 teaspoon of red pepper flakes.

4–5 slices bacon, chopped
¼ cup all-purpose flour
4 boneless, skinless chicken breasts
Salt and freshly ground pepper to taste
1 tablespoon unsalted butter
4 garlic cloves, sliced thinly
1 tablespoon fresh rosemary, chopped
1 teaspoon red pepper flakes
1 cup low-sodium chicken broth
2 tablespoons lemon juice

1. Fry bacon in a large skillet over medium-high heat until crisp, about 5 minutes. Use a slotted spoon to transfer bacon to a plate lined with paper towels. Spoon off all but 2 tablespoons bacon fat.

2. Place flour in a shallow dish. Season chicken breasts with salt and pepper, dredge in flour, and shake to remove excess. Add butter to reserved bacon fat in skillet and heat over high heat, swirling to melt butter. When foam subsides, reduce heat to medium-high and cook chicken until browned on both sides, 3 to 4 minutes per side. Transfer chicken to a plate (leaving fat in skillet) and cover loosely with foil.

3. Reduce heat to medium and add garlic, rosemary, and red pepper flakes. Cook until garlic is browned and crisp, about 2 minutes. Add broth and lemon juice, scraping up browned bits from bottom of skillet with a wooden spoon, and simmer until slightly thickened, about 4 minutes.

4. Return chicken and bacon to pan and simmer, turning chicken once or twice, until sauce is thick and glossy and chicken is cooked through, 2 to 3 minutes.

Serves: 4
Time: 30 minutes
Leftover potential: Medium. I can take or leave leftover chicken, but I have to admit that Ezra Pound Cake's recipe for turning these into sandwiches sounds pretty freakin' amazing.

BEST RECIPES OF 2008 AND OTHER NEW YEAR'S BUSINESS

Happy belated new year! After three weeks of feverish baking and canning before Christmas, two weeks in Minnesota being blissfully fed by others, and then two weeks of slow readjustment to everyday life, I’m finally back in the kitchen and back to the blog, and it seems a big fat update is in order.

Sharing recipes for the holiday treats I made seems to detract from their mystique, particularly when I’m giving them as gifts, so you probably won't be seeing separate entries on them anytime soon, but here’s a rundown.

The standards:

• My mother’s spritz recipe—absolutely the best I’ve ever tasted, puts all others to shame—using the cookie press handed down to me from A’s mom
• Chocolate peanut-butter balls on pretzels—my personal favorite of all the treats I made
• Carole Walter’s coconut-apricot cookies—simply awesome, and my favorite of the non-chocolate treats
• Apple butter—the only canning I did this year; I nearly forgot how fun it is!

The experiments:

• Rosemary roasted cashews—Wanting something more savory to give to the non-sweet-toothed among us, I originally intended to make a ton of different spiced nuts, but ran out of time and settled on just this recipe. It was so easy and delicious that I ended up cranking out four batches and will definitely make them again next Christmas. Or, you know, next week.
  
• Peppermint bark—I pretty much just made this to go into cookies (see below), but was impressed by how pretty, tasty, and crazy easy it was. Sadly, there was no peppermint extract at the store and I had to go with just regular mint extract instead, which gave the bark a slight wintergreen-gum flavor that kept it from being perfect. I’ll make it again next year with the right flavoring, maybe kicking it up a notch by using dark chocolate as well as white.
• Peppermint bark chocolate cookies—such a great concept, but so-so execution. I’m obsessed with Trader Joe’s Peppermint Jo-Jos and wanted to capture that classic chocolate-peppermint combo in a homemade treat, so I was happy to find this recipe. The result was tasty enough to try again, but not the ideal cookie of my dreams; I’d like a darker chocolate cookie with a moister texture (though that might have been my fault; I overbaked them) and more peppermint-bark pieces. I’m wondering if it would be possible to just add peppermint-bark pieces to Carole Walter’s delicious chocolate sugar snaps.
• Cream cheese sugar cookies—I love a good frosted sugar cookie, and when I tasted some at an office cookie exchange last Christmas I immediately snagged the recipe, but I shouldn’t have chosen to make them as a gift, considering it was my first time baking cutout cookies. A and I had a lot of fun making and decorating them together, but they ended up looking as though they were created by demented four-year-olds instead of college-educated thirtysomethings. The cookies seemed thinner and crisper than I remembered, and the icing recipe I selected was an epic fail, turning out so runny that it was really more of a glaze. The homely cookies still tasted delicious (I’ve been working my way though the leftovers in my freezer with increasing enjoyment), but the process was too frustrating and the cookies not interesting or attractive enough to become regular members of my Christmas-cookie rotation.

OK, enough about giving. Let’s talk about all the awesome food-related gifts I received! Thanks to my parents, I now finally have a good, heavy, tight-lidded, oven-safe Lodge Dutch oven, a cast-iron behemoth covered in adorable red enamel, and it cooks like a dream. I plan to spend the rest of the winter making soups, stews, braises, and no-knead bread to my heart’s content. In particular, I will be using it to cook beans, because thanks to my parents and A’s mom, I received a stash of nine pounds of delicious heirloom varieties from foodie fave Rancho Gordo! As a recent convert to bean-eating and a relative newbie to using dry beans, I’m taking things slow, but I’ve already been pleased with the results of using yellow eye beans for my fave stovetop baked bean recipe, and on Sunday I tried a great new black bean soup recipe (recipe to come) using the midnight black beans. Next I’m thinking maybe refried Vaquero beans, and eventually we’ll get brave and tackle the Christmas limas. It’s fun to be able to experiment with new ingredients, but the main point is that these are some of the best beans I’ve ever had—you really can taste the difference, and I’m already plotting my next Rancho Gordo order. (To A’s slight dismay, I think; he’s been gamely trying the new beans and claiming to enjoy them so far, but secretly he’s still a beanphobe.) Other great gifts included a little digital kitchen scale (sooooo handy), a pizza cutter that doesn't make my hand feel like it's falling off, reusable produce bags to use instead of plastic at the farmers’ market, another year of Cooking Light, a supply of Tea Source tea, fleur de sal, and Wisconsin honey with the comb still in it.

On to the year-in-review stuff: Last year I chose five best recipes, but this year I’ve made so much good food that I need to expand the list to ten. But I’ve created two separate categories of five each, so technically it’s not cheating!

Bookcook’s Five Best Recipes of 2008: New Standbys (these are the ones I’ve come to rely on and have already made over and over again, occasionally on a near-weekly basis…I’m looking at you, frittata)

1. Asian Dumpling Soup
2. Roasted Root Vegetables With Sausage
3. Monster Cookies
4. Zucchini-Potato Frittata
5. Stovetop Baked Beans

Bookcook’s Five Best Recipes of 2008: OMG I Made That! (these are the revelations, the showstoppers, the ones that’ll make you feel like a DIY diva or domestic goddess, but the dirty little secret is that they’re all simple and easy enough for everyday cooking)

1. TIE: Creamy Lemon Chicken and Roast Chicken With Pears, Shallots, and Leeks
   
2. Pan-Fried Lemon-Ricotta Gnocchi
3. DIY Taco Seasoning
4. Ranch Dressing
   
5. Dill Pickles

Can you believe there's not even a pizza recipe on either list? And I love pizza! That's how good these best recipes are. You really should try at least one of them immediately.

Last year, I listed my favorite food books, but I must have burned out on food reading because this year, none spring to mind. Last year, I also listed a bunch of resolutions, but most of them are still ongoing, so I don’t really feel the need to make more (a few I did actually cross off my list: acquire Dutch oven and kitchen scale, make gnocchi and pickles). In 2009 I’d definitely like to rejoin the CSA (P, the friend I split produce haul with before, got too busy with grad-school classes to cook regularly, but she’s recently expressed an interest in getting back into it) and finish adding photos to all the recipes on this site (except the sad, rejected ones in the Not Favorites category). I do have a huge wishlist of recipes to make and cooking experiments I’d like to try, including homemade yogurt, mayonnaise, ricotta, dumplings, tortillas, pita bread, and popsicles. And I won’t say that a pasta maker or ice-cream maker wouldn’t be nice. But mostly I’m happy with the way things are going here, so I’m just going to keep on keepin’ on. I hope you’ll keep on joining me...and I hope you're hungry!

SPINACH-GARLIC PIZZA

It would never have occurred to me to put Boursin on a pizza, but I’m so glad I found this recipe from Eggs on Sunday. Spinach and garlic are a natural combination, and the garlic-herb cheese amps it up times ten, not to mention having a really appealing creamy-browned texture when cooked. Originally titled “Green Garlic Monster,” this is certainly not for the garlic-averse, but it isn’t so intent on being super-garlicky that all other flavors are obliterated. The parsley (another great pairing with earthy spinach) and the red onion brighten things up nicely. My only quibble is that the recipe only called for “two large handfuls” of spinach; I used a 6-ounce bag, which was more than that, and this particular spinach-lover still wanted more. Maybe I made a bigger pizza than the recipe intended, but there was a lot of crust showing through. I’m going to try 10 ounces next time and see what happens. Regardless, this is an excellent addition to my burgeoning pizza recipe collection.

Pizza dough for 1 pizza (1 lb)
½ cup finely chopped flat-leaf parsley
2 tablespoons olive oil, divided
2 tablespoons grated Parmesan cheese
6–10 ounces baby spinach
2 large garlic cloves, minced
½ small red onion, very thinly sliced
Half a round (2½ ounces) Boursin garlic-herb cheese (or other soft garlic-herb cheese)

1. Preheat the oven to 450 degrees.

2. Roll out your pizza dough and place on an oiled or cornmeal-dusted baking sheet.

3. Heat 1 tablespoon olive oil over medium heat. Add the spinach and garlic and sauté until spinach is just wilted and bright green, about 2 minutes. Season with salt and pepper to taste and set aside.

4. In a small bowl, mix the parsley with the Parmesan and the remaining 1 tablespoon olive oil.

5. Spread the parsley mixture over the pizza crust. Lay the red onion slices on top, then add the sautéed spinach. Crumble the Boursin over the top of the pizza.

6. Bake for about 8 minutes, until cheese is melted and crust is nicely browned.

Serves: 4
Time: 30 minutes
Leftover potential: Good

SAUTEED SHREDDED ZUCCHINI WITH SHALLOTS AND LEMON

Look, yet another way to combine vegetables with shallots and lemon! I will never tire of those flavors. This is a nice, simple-but-interesting side dish that reminds me, with its crisp greenness, of deconstructed zucchini fritters. It reminds A, for some strange reason, of Rice-a-Roni. But don’t let that put you off; he clarifies, “I always liked Rice-a-Roni!” I’ve never tasted Rice-a-Roni myself, but surely it doesn’t have a shallot-and-lemon flavoring? Still, I suppose the shape and texture of the shredded zucchini is vaguely rice-like, and maybe the nutty brownness it achieves when briefly sautéed over high heat is somehow reminiscent of rice too? Or we could all just ignore A on this one.

Anyway, aside from the minor travail of shredded and squeezing the zucchini, this is an easy and fast-cooking recipe to throw together, and it will pair well with most flavors. We ate it with the splendid roast chicken with pears, shallots, and leeks, and the fact that I even remember we had a side dish at all in the face of such blinding magnificence should tell you that this one is surely worthwhile. The original recipe says it serves four, but the two of us ate it all in one sitting.

5 medium zucchini, ends trimmed
1½ teaspoons salt
2 shallots, minced
1 tablespoon olive oil, divided
1–2 teaspoons fresh lemon juice
Freshly ground black pepper to taste

1. Shred zucchini (on large holes of a box grater or with shredding disk of a food processor). Place zucchini in a colander in the sink and toss zucchini with 1½ teaspoon salt. Let drain for at least 10 minutes. Wrap zucchini in a kitchen towel (in batches if necessary) and wring out extra moisture.

2. Place zucchini in a medium bowl and break up any large clumps. Add shallots and 2 teaspoons oil and toss to combine thoroughly.

3. Heat remaining 1 teaspoon oil in a large nonstick skillet over high heat. Add zucchini mixture and spread evenly. Cook without stirring until bottom layer browns, about 2 minutes. Stir well, breaking up any clumps, then cook until new bottom layer browns, about 2 minutes more.

4. Remove from heat and stir in lemon juice and salt and pepper to taste.

Serves: 2-4
Time: 20 minutes
Leftover potential: Unknown

ROAST CHICKEN WITH PEARS, SHALLOTS, AND LEEKS

This. Is. Amazing. If you only make one chicken recipe from this blog, make this one. Now! Hurry! You can thank me later.

I was a little suspicious about the pears. I’m not a proponent of putting fruit in savory dishes. (Big chunks of fruit, anyway; lemon and lime juice and zest obviously get a pass.) Sure, I’ve made exceptions—Brie and apple soup and butternut squash with sausage and apples—but in general if I see any hint of cranberries, figs, plums, raisins (god forbid) or any other such malarkey in a non-dessert recipe, I turn the page. I’m just close-minded that way. But the photo at Sassy Radish was so succulent-looking, I would have made any recipe that followed it, even if it were titled “Raisiny Chicken in Raisin Sauce.” Luckily, the title name-checked shallots and leeks instead, which I love. But then there was that pear, plus all that orange juice…would this chicken just be a mass of fruity sweetness?

Not at all. The chicken doesn’t even taste overwhelmingly orangey, but the juice gives the skin an impressive caramelized, burnished finish. Those sweet pear and orange flavors are facing off against savory shallots, leeks, garlic, olive oil, salt, and chicken fat, and they all melt together into a luxurious, addictively delicious compote blanketing tender, juicy, falling-off-the-bone chicken. (Do not even consider substituting chicken breasts or anything boneless and skinless here—the dark meat is integral to the moist, complex richness.) This is guaranteed to knock the socks off anyone you serve it to. They’ll be convinced that after years of expensive culinary-school training, you spent hours laboring in the kitchen over a hot stove crafting this gourmet masterpiece for their enjoyment. The kicker is that not only is this dish unique and mad tasty, it’s one of the easiest main dishes I’ve ever made. Throw everything in the pan and bake it—not even for that long, because you’re using small pieces of chicken instead of those dense, honkin’ breasts—and magically it transforms into molten awesomeness. Oh, and? And! If you’re still hesitant about using dark meat, let me just inform you that a package of 6 drumsticks at Trader Joe’s cost me under $3. TOTAL.

Delicious, creative, sophisticated, easy, pretty quick, and cheap? Folks, we may just have found the holy grail.

6 chicken drumsticks and/or thighs (bone-in, skin-on)
1 pear, thinly sliced
2 shallots, finely chopped
1–2 leeks, thinly sliced (white part only)
2 cloves garlic, minced
½ cup freshly squeezed orange juice (about 2 oranges)
¼ cup olive oil
1 teaspoon coarse salt
Freshly ground black pepper to taste

1. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.

2. Wash and pat dry the chicken parts and place in a 9-by-11-inch glass baking dish. Surround the chicken with the pear, shallots, leeks, and garlic. Pour orange juice and olive oil over everything and season with salt and pepper.

3. Bake for 20 minutes, then turn the drumsticks over and return to the oven for another 20–25 minutes. Remove from oven and let stand for 10 minutes before serving.

Serves: 3
Time: 50 minutes
Leftover potential: This yields a modest amount of food—for a while there, I didn’t even think we were going to have any leftovers because midway through our first drumsticks we were in such rapture that we’d already decided we needed to have a third one apiece, but this is actually pretty rich stuff, and after our second drumsticks we were definitely sated. A ate the two leftover drumsticks a couple of days later and reported that they were just as excellent as the first time around.