To ease my unhappiness at the abrupt end of Gourmet publication in November, I decided to cook every recipe in the last issue. I've been working my way through, to the delight of my family. For more background you can read the first and second batches of recipes. I finally got through the incredible dessert section, and this post includes some delicious entrees and side dishes.
Shrimp and Pancetta on Polenta, pictured at the right, was easy to make with the perfect blend of creamy, salty and seafood flavours. Pancetta, for those of you who don't know, is also known as Italian bacon. It is salt cured and spiced but not smoked, like American bacon. This is a 25 minute meal, and that's a pretty accurate time, once you get the shrimp cleaned.
Squash and Red Pepper Pilaf is a nice bright side dish with its big chunks of yellow squash. The pumpkin seeds add a nice crunchy touch to this dish.I served it with the Broiled Lamb Chops with Mint Chimichurri. The lamb chops are rubbed with a cinnamon and pepper blend before broiling, and they were succulent and delicious. At least this is what my family told me, since I have an aversion to lamb. Everyone else at the table couldn't get enough of them, eating every last scrap of meat, so I know they were good. The mint chimichurri was kind of like a mint pesto, made from a mix of fresh mint, fresh parsley, vinegar, olive oil and garlic. It was a perfect compliment to the lamb. I made this dish again for company a few days later, and it turned out just as well the second time around.
My teenage son made the Broiled Chicken, Romaine and Tomato Bruschetta. This was a complicated recipe, preparing many different ingredients and then broiling them each individually. They took up too much room on the broiler pans to put them all under there together. The recipe is for one person, and he was making it for five. By mistake, he spread the sauce on the bread instead of on the chicken before he broiled them. We also used round tomatoes instead of the plum tomato the recipe called for, because the round ones looked much riper and more succulent when I was buying them. It definitely took longer than the promised 25 minutes, even with me in there helping out occasionally. But the finished bruschetta were worth it, crunchy, garlicky, and filling enough to make a meal on their own. My son had some fun "building" the bruschetta, and they were extremely messy to eat, so have lots of napkins handy.
Lime-spiked Seafood with Roasted Sweet Potatoes is truly a gourmet blend of flavours and textures. This is a recipe written for two, so I made it as a lunch for my husband and I just before he went off on a week long business trip. It is scallops and salmon in a creamy sauce that is sharp with lime flavour and spicy peppers. The roasted sweet potatoes are a perfect base for the sauce, and are easy to prepare while the sauce is cooking, or vice versa.
Creamy Blue Cheese Spaghettini with Escarole and Walnuts is a fun take on the same old spaghetti. The blue cheese melts into a creamy sauce, and escarole and walnuts add texture and crunch. This dish is in "Ten Minute Mains". Well, it took a bit longer than ten minutes. Maybe I'm a slow cook, but it seems to take me longer to make most of these recipes than the magazine says it should. Still, this is an easy and very unique supper dish.
Lastly, I made Rava Dosas with Potato Chickpea Masala. This is a 40 minute dish, and sure enough it was a lot more work than previous recipes. The crepe-like pancakes, rava dosas, were deliciously light and easy to prepare. The filling has Indian spices. If I made it again I would add more hot peppers, just because I like spicy food.
This brings me right up to two full-fledged Thanksgiving turkey dinners. The first is a rural Pennsylvania Thanksgiving with no less than 9 side dishes, not counting the stuffing, as well as a turkey and several desserts. I will make all those side dishes piece meal instead of doing the whole dinner at once. The second is Deep Roots, a southern Thanksgiving meal, also with many side dishes and a seafood theme. I might do this as a complete meal if I can round up enough people to eat it all. So stay tuned for lots of turkey, stuffing and more pies.
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