Day 30: Enchiladas, and the Key to a Happy Kitchen

Today, Day 30(!), I decided to try my hand at something we both love: steamed pork-belly buns. While we have yet to try Momofuko's, the NY restaurant that has made these famous, we used to scarf them down at the recently closed Shaun's in Atlanta and anywhere else we could find them.

David Chang's Momofuko recipe is widely available on the internet (only problem: there are two versions, with different instructions...). I found a recipe for the bun dough that looked a bit simpler in the L.A. Times. I compared the two David Chang recipes, and decided to go with the one that calls for brining the pork belly for 6 hours instead of 12. I made the dough and let it double in size. Then I went with Jim to an unusually chaotic Dekalb Farmer's Market, bought pork belly, came home, and covered the pork belly in a sugar-kosher salt mixture. We ran out to the mall to take care of a return I've been putting off and look for some new dress shirts for Jim. And somewhere along the way, we realized that, while we could possibly get home and cook the pork belly in the oven for two and a half hours, it wasn't going to get on the table before 10 p.m., or without a whole lot of stress.

We've discovered this month that, much like it in a marriage, it's important to be flexible in the kitchen. Especially when you're cooking with someone you love. Especially when you've been confined to the same kitchen for a whole month.

So, dear Reader, we decided to shelve the pork buns (temporarily!) and make enchiladas, which had been scheduled for Tuesday night. We had some leftover shredded chicken and some leftover flank steak. I roasted tomatillos with a little homemade chicken stock, garlic, and dried chilies, then blitzed them with the immersion blender. The chicken was heated in a little stock and seasoning; the steak was simply sliced. Into softened carrot tortillas went the meat, and into a pan lined with tomatillo salsa. A little shredded cheddar on top, ten minutes in the oven, and voila! Dinner. Delicious! And at 7:30 p.m., not 10 or 11.

While I was preparing tonight's meal, I was also doing the legwork for tomorrow. I divided my bun dough into 17 pieces, rolled them into balls, and let them rest again. I began rolling them into discs, brushing one half with oil, and folding them over. Then the scary part: actually steaming them. We have a big stock pot with a steamer insert, and I thought this might work. The first batch took longer than I expected (7 minutes instead of the promised 3), but when we tried one, it tasted exactly like what we've had in restaurants: soft, sweet, dense and pillowy all at once. The subsequent batches were steamed over a more ferocious boil, and cooked in 3-4 minutes.

As I type this, I can hear the pork belly sizzling away in the oven. After it's through cooking, I'll chill it in its own juices overnight. Tomorrow, I'll prepare quick-pickled cucumbers, reheat the buns and the pork, and dinner will be served. Of course, the way things smell in here now, we may devour that pork belly as soon as it comes out of the oven...

Stay tuned for Day 31...

Day 29: Pasta and "er, um..." sauce

We were going to have a pasta dish. We knew this much. And ever since scarfing down Chelsea's amazing "devil duck" on day 25, I've been craving our homemade noodles, which, quite frankly, I think would be delicious with just a sprinkling of salt and pepper--maybe not even that. But we only have three more nights left, and now's no time to be boring, right? Moreover, we had a ton of leftover produce in our vegetable basket, and we both cringe at the thought of throwing anything away.

So while the pasta was drying (we made thick, pappardelle-style noodles), we went to work on throwing some sort of sauce together. From our surplus, we used one leek, three ripe tomatoes, some garlic, and three slices of bacon. Nothing fancy, but it was a mighty good dish--salt and fat from the bacon, sweetness from the leeks, and acidity from the fresh tomatoes.

With only two nights left, our vegetable basket is empty but for about a pound of fingerling potatoes. Suggestions?

Day 28: Thai Beef Salad, Spring Rolls Reprise

In this morning's post Chelsea mentioned that she woke up craving last night's spring rolls; indeed, at about midnight, I could have sworn I heard her mumbling about rice paper in her sleep. Knowing that she was planning on another batch, I decided to complement the rolls with a simple Thai beef salad. At the Dekalb Farmers Market I picked up about a pound of flank steak, which I marinated in soy sauce and fresh lime juice. Right before it was time to grill the steak, I sprinkled a little bit of sugar on both sides of the meat--I could be wrong, but I think this helps the steak char. After cooking the steak for about five minutes a side and letting it rest, I cut it into thin slices, which I put over mixed greens, cucumbers, and red onions. Meanwhile, Chelsea and Hedgejo deftly assembled the rolls. The steak was perfectly done, and the rolls looked impeccable. The perfect meal, it seemed, was on my plate, but then as I sat down to enjoy, before I knew it -- alas, alas, dear reader! -- my plate was on the floor.

I'm not sure what my face looked like, but it couldn't have been pretty, for our forever-rapacious pups stayed right where they were. I took a deep, deep breath, picked up the greens and steak, tossed them out, and put together another salad. Luckily, we had more than enough steak for another helping, so except for my blushing ego there was no real harm done. Plus the pups have informed me that our carpet now tastes delicious.

Day 27: Thai Coconut Soup and Fresh Spring Rolls

After my duck debacle earlier in the week, I wanted something simple for dinner last night. I decided to make one of Jim's favorites, Thai chicken and coconut soup. This is a simple recipe: throw together homemade chicken stock, lemongrass, ginger, thai chilies, lime juice, and fish sauce. Right before serving, toss in some chopped chicken breast and a can of coconut soup. When the chicken is cooked through, garnish with cilantro, and serve. Ta-da!

We had several cooked chicken legs left over from making stock earlier in the week, so instead of the usual chicken breast, I shredded the leg meat and tossed it into the soup. Jim thought it was even better with the dark meat.

To go along with the meal, I made fresh spring rolls, something I'd never tried before. I didn't have a real recipe, so I was a little nervous, and I had to go to a sketchy looking Asian grocery store next to a strip club to find rice paper wrappers. Boy, was it worth it.

To make the rolls, I took some of the shredded chicken and tossed it in a little bit of rice wine vinegar, then rolled the chicken up in softened rice paper wrappers with rice vermicelli, lettuce, cilantro, basil, mint, cucumber, and carrot. It took me a couple of tries before I got the hang of rolling up the soggy, sticky rice paper, but the results were amazing. I served the spring rolls with a dipping sauce made of equal parts fish sauce, lime juice, and sugar. The rolls were so clean, refreshing, and delicious... I woke up this morning wanting some for breakfast, and I'm making another batch for tonight's dinner.

Day 26: Braised Chicken and Artichokes

Wednesday saw us with two pots on the stove. On one burner, team artichoke, backed by a brilliant supporting cast of bacon, onions, carrots, celery, and white wine. On the other burner, six chicken legs, which I browned for about seven minutes a side before adding, well, another batch of carrots, onions, celery, and then some of our homemade chicken stock. After about an hour of braising separately, the artichokes joined the chicken pot, which then went into the oven at 350 for about an hour and a half.

The chicken skin was crispy, but the meat was moist and tender--the best of both worlds. In fact, this dish was so good that I feel like I either need to come up with some tale of trepidation or diagram the steps of some culinary cartwheel that I had to perform, but no, even the artichoke prep -- a task that usually has me either drinking or swearing or both -- was easy.

Day 25: Devil Duck and Humble Pie

As I labored over tonight's dinner, I kept thinking of a phrase from reality-tv cooking shows: "Even good cooks have bad days in the kitchen." (I think Alton Brown says this most often, when sending The Next Iron Chef contestants packing.) Tonight was an example of a pretty good cook having a pretty awful time of it in the kitchen. 

I had high hopes for the meal: pasta with dark red duck sauce, a Mark Bittman recipe. Plus, we had something to celebrate; we learned today that one of my poems has been nominated by the journal Ploughshares for a Pushcart Prize. We planned to make homemade pasta, and this afternoon I decided to go a step further and shape the pieces into farfalle. What could go wrong?

Things started out well--before Jim came home, I placed two duck legs in a skillet and began the long process of cooking them over low heat. Jim came in, made egg pasta dough, then let it rest for an hour. So far so good. The problems began when the dough was ready--suddenly everything needed attention at once, and there weren't enough hands to do it all. Or at least not to do it all gracefully. 

Jim took over cooking the onions, reducing the wine for the sauce, and shredding the cooked duck meat, while I struggled to get the pasta rolled out and then cut and formed into those blasted bow-ties. What was I thinking?? In a single night, I had managed to forget everything I know about pasta making. By this point, it was approaching 9 p.m., I was very hangry, and the sauce, when I tasted it, seemed to have only one note (wine, wine, wine). Things spiraled downhill from there, with me telling the bow-tie pasta pieces exactly what I thought of them.

The worst part of the night? The finished product was fantastic. I think the extra half hour of simmering while I cursed at the pasta made all the difference in the sauce. The pasta was horribly misshapen, but delicous, and the sauce was rich, tender, complex... honestly, it was one of the best dishes I've had in recent memory. Which means I have to go through all of this again some other night. Only next time I'll be serving fettuccine.

Day 24: Roasted Tomato Soup and Salad

After the red meat bonanza that was this past weekend, it was time for a simple, clean, mostly-vegetarian meal. I made a creamy tomato soup, topped with a parmesan toast and served with a mixed green salad.

I dug the basic recipe off of Chowhound a while back, but I've cut wayyyyy back on the quantities of butter and cream, so this is how I make it: Open two 28-ounce cans of whole tomatoes, and spread the tomatoes on a foil-lined baking sheet, setting the liquid aside. Sprinkle a little brown sugar on the tomatoes, then roast them at 450 for 30 minutes. When the tomatoes are ready, begin the soup: melt a little butter (I use 2 TBS or so) over medium heat, and add chopped shallots and a tablespoon of tomato paste. Lower the heat and sweat the shallots for about ten minutes. Whisk in two tablespoons of flour, then add two cups of chicken broth (we used homemade, which made a big difference), the roasted tomatoes and the reserved tomato juice. After a few, or several, minutes, blend it all together with an immersion blender. At this point, you can add fresh basil or any seasonings you'd like. The soup will be very creamy on its own, but I add about two tablespoons of cream right before taking it off the heat. (The original recipe calls for 8 TBS!) Oh, and after taking it off the heat, I add a little sherry to taste.

This soup is so delicious. The roasted tomatoes and the shallots give it a richness and depth I haven't found in any other tomato soups. Plus, it could easily be made vegetarian by using a rich vegetable broth and taking out the cream.

Jim made parmesan toasts for the soup, and I have no idea how he did them, but it involved the broiler, ciabatta bread and freshly grated cheese. We served a simple side salad as well, which served a dual purpose of cleaning out the fridge: we topped mixed greens with some leftover dressing Jim had made and the very last of his balsamic onions.

Day 23: Chili, Super Bowl Chili

Late in the 2005 season, things weren't looking good for the Pittsburgh Steelers: they hadn't yet clinched a playoff spot, and darker still, it looked as though Jerome Bettis was going to have to retire without a Super Bowl ring. What could a displaced Steelers fan in Texas do? "Well, we're going to eat chili," I told my friend RT. "We're going to eat chili, and they're going to win." So I made chili, and the Steelers beat the Lions at Pittsburgh, clinching a playoff berth. I made chili, and the Steelers beat the Bengals. The next week, I made chili, and the Steelers beat the Colts, despite Bettis' famous goal line fumble. A week later, I made chili and the Steelers beat the Broncos. I made chili, and the Steelers won the Super Bowl. That year was so unlikely that, instead of becoming a tradition, the chili retired--Bettis got his ring, the Steelers won their fifth Super Bowl, and all was right with the world. And since then the Steelers have won another Super Bowl, without the help of these magic beans. Yet, after a five-year retirement, the chili's back. Why? Well, I think the chili wants to prove a few things, mainly that its performance in the 2005 playoffs was anything but a fluke. Also, I think the chili was concerned. Sunday, you see, was the late Myron Cope's birthday, and the thought of the Steelers losing on such a sacred date was too much. So the chili's back, poised to strike.

About the chili: Like Dick LeBeau-designed blitzes, no two chilies are alike. With that said, I generally use the following process, tweaking it however the situation demands. First, I cook about two pounds of ground meat (usually sausage) in a large soup pot. Once the meat is brown, I add about two onions, cook them until they're soft, and then add ground cumin, various chili powders, and pinches of several spices. Five minutes after the spice, I add a bottle or two of beer to deglaze the pan, and then I add a can of tomatoes, some tomato paste, and four to six cups of beans. Since Sunday was a big game, I used reconstituted dry beans that Chelsea had prepared that morning.

Sunday's chili was perhaps the spiciest I've ever made. To balance the flavors out a bit, before sitting down to watch the game we added a healthy dollop of sour cream and copious amounts of cheddar cheese to our bowls. Chelsea also made some cornbread, over which we served the chili. We chowed down, and the Steelers went ahead by twenty-four points in the first half. But I made a slight mistake. The chili was so spicy I decided to rest my GI tract and did not have another helping during the second half. This, I'm convinced, allowed the Jets to score nineteen unanswered points. Luckily, though, the Steelers somehow hung on, leaving me to suffer heartburn instead of heartache. In two weeks they play the Packers in the Super Bowl. I'm sorry to say it, but cheese most likely will be barred from that game's chili.

Day 22: A Night Off

When I mentioned to friends that we'd started a blog called "30 Days & 30 Dinners" for Restaurant Free Month, someone gently pointed out that January has 31 days. Uh, we knew that, really. Not only does 30 Days... have a nicer ring to it than 31 Days, but we knew that, inevitably, something would come up to keep us out of the kitchen one of those 31 days.

Sure enough, Day 22 was our day off. We ventured to a neighbor's for a dinner party featuring baked chicken, salad, and brownie pie, plus plenty of wine and conversation. After so many meals at home, it felt like we were eating in a restaurant.

We'll be back tonight or tomorrow with Day 23's meal: sausage and three-bean chili with cornbread, served alongside the Steelers-Jets playoff game.

Day 21: It's Taco Night in Decatur!

As Jim mentioned in his last post, I was in Tennessee last night giving a reading at Lee University. This morning I led the Advanced Poetry Workshop and had lunch with the students, who were bright, inquisitive and engaging. I left Tennessee in the afternoon, and so great is my dedication to Restaurant Free Month that, instead of driving home at the end of my 2.5 hour drive, I went straight to the farmers' market and shopped for dinner. And not just any dinner. On my way home, I'd decided it was Taco Night in Decatur!

As the wife of a hockey lover, I watch more NHL games than I care to admit. Whenever the Pittsburgh Penguins have an away game against a Canadian team, Jim gets more excited than normal. Why? Because it's Hockey Night in Canada! As near as I can tell, Hockey Night in Canada! is just like Hockey Night in America, except the eccentrically adorable Don Cherry covers the intermission reports.

What does this have to do with dinner, you ask? Nothing, except that whenever I make tacos, I walk around saying, "It's Taco Night in Decatur!" in the same inflection as the Canadian Broadcast folks say "Hockey Night in Canada!"

Taco Night, at the most basic level, is about the meat -- grass-fed ground sirloin mixed with a little flour, a little water, and a blend of spices and seasoning (chili powder, paprika, salt, cayenne, garlic, lime) -- and about the tortillas. I make my own, using a Rick Bayless recipe (I must make mine smaller than he does, because this yields enough dough for 18-20 tacos). Making homemade tortillas takes some effort, but believe me, once you have had them you will never want to go back to store-bought. They elevate the humblest filling to the sublime. (They also make an unbelievable breakfast taco.)

Tonight I planned on making a avocado-tomato salad, but when I got home I realized the avocados, the ripest I could find, were hard as rocks. Instead, I chopped the tomatoes and mixed them with fresh cilantro for a taco topping, and served it alongside sour cream and grated sharp cheddar.

Jim and I both agreed that tonight's tacos were the best I've ever made. Definitely worth broadcasting.

Day 20: BLT... I mean, BOLT

I had to fly solo last night, as Chelsea was away, dazzling the students at Lee University with her poems. Exhausted after a day of teaching and then studying for my comprehensive exam, I decided to keep things simple and make a BLT, adding some of the previous night's onion marmalade (see the unfortunately sloppy picture below).

Nothing much to report here: I baked the bacon for twenty minutes or so at 325, made a simple mayonnaise to which I added some fresh chives, and then cut up some lettuce and sliced a tomato. This all went between two slightly toasted slices of bread. I'm not sure if John Milton ever had a BLT (I suspect not), but mine went deliciously well with "Lycidas," which now, at least in my edition, has a bit of mayo on it.

Day 19: Hamburger, Avocado Salad

But for the sad remains of what were once robust snowmen, all of last week's snow has melted, and as a result Atlanta is a soggy mess. This afternoon it nearly got up to sixty degrees, and for about fifteen minutes the sky was an immaculate bright blue--enough hints to trick this displaced northerner into thinking about spring and, at the same time, grilling. So this lukewarm January night we made a very sunny meal: burgers topped with bacon, onion marmalade, and blue cheese. For a side, we had a beautiful avocado and tomato salad, dressed in a balsamic-lemon vinaigrette. Here's how it all went down...




About an hour before cooking the burgers, I started making the marmalade by sweating three thinly sliced onions, adding a 1/3 cup of sugar to the pan after about ten minutes. Once the onions looked dry, I poured in some balsamic vinegar (about 2/3 of a cup). Twenty minutes or so later the balsamic had cooked down and we had ourselves a sweet and tangy burger topping.

I'm a purist when it comes to burgers, so we simply formed our ground sirloin into patties and headed out to the grill. I tried something a little bit different this time: instead of cooking the burgers directly on the grill, I placed our cast iron skillet over the grate. The thinking here was that using a pan would keep the burgers moist should I overcook them--an understandable concern since we were grilling at 9pm, with only a dingy porch light to see by.

Meanwhile, Chelsea sliced the avocado in half, which she immediately brushed with the balsamic-lemon vinaigrette to keep it from browning. She then cubed it and the tomatoes, before putting them both back into the halves. This salad pays tribute to one we shared at the Robert Is Here fruit stand right outside the Everglades.



If you ever get a chance to visit the Everglades, you have to stop at Robert Is Here. The produce selection there is baffling, and calling it a fruit stand is a little misleading, for Robert Is Here is part zoo, part farm, part hangout. Most importantly, though, it has the best best milkshakes I've ever had (go with mango). Robert Is Here also features fantastic live music, and their house musician was deemed "the best finger-picker in Miami" by a local paper, a proclamation I certainly agree with.

Day 18: Risotto Redux, and What Not to Do with Hot Stock

Dinner tonight was an amazing risotto from the Essential New York Times Cookbook: Risotto with Radicchio and Sausage. Sausage and radicchio are two of my favorite foods, so I figured I couldn't go wrong. I opted for chicken sausage and decided to half the recipe when I noticed that it made 8 "Main Dish Servings." (Jim has a big appetite, but I thought that was a little much...)

To prepare the risotto, I chopped a small onion, then cut two small heads of endive and a head of radicchio into shreds with a santoku knife. The onion and sausage went into the hot Le Creuset with a tablespoon of butter and a little olive oil. After two minutes, in went 1/4 cup of white wine. After the liquid had nearly cooked off, I threw in the endive and half of the radicchio and cooked it until wilted.

After all of this deliciousness, I added Arborio rice and tossed it until coated in the oil. (If you have never made risotto, the trick is to coat the rice in oil/butter/fat, then slowly add hot liquid a little at a time, stirring frequently, so that the rice cooks slowly, releasing its creamy starch into the dish. A good risotto is a beautiful thing.)

I began adding my stock, and that's where my troubles began. Even though the stock had been warming on a back burner while all of these other things were happening, my first scoopful of warm stock was not warm at all. In fact, it was ice cold. I raised the heat to high, kept stirring my risotto, and after about five minutes reached for another cup of stock. Lukewarm this time. (Note to self: investigate that burner.) Jim put the lid on the pot, and the next time I checked, the stock was boiling.

It was still boiling a few minutes later, when I reached for another half-cupful, somehow splashing myself with a few drops in the process. Ever the cool cucumber, I jerked my hand at the burn, and poured a quarter-cup of boiling stock down my shirt sleeve. Our 9-year-old neighbor Hedgejo was over for her daily visit with us and our dogs, so I neither screamed as loudly nor said any of the horrible words I imagined, and after a trip upstairs to apply some numbing spray to my wrist, I returned to finish dinner. Luckily, Jim took over stirring duties in my absence.

And that, my friends, is how not to make risotto.

Happily, everything turned out beautifully. After the stock had been absorbed and the rice was al dente, I finished the dish with a little butter, the rest of the shredded radicchio, and some parmesan. It was an incredible mix of bitter and sweet, and I'd make it again in a heartbeat, burns and all.

Day 17: Leek & Potato Soup

I'll be honest: dinner was the last thing I wanted to think about today -- not because I was tired of planning or cooking another meal. I just couldn't imagine eating one.

I have an iron stomach when it comes to everything but stress. Give me a carton of sour cream two weeks past the sell-by date, and I'll eat it with no problem. Put me in a roomful of people with the stomach flu, and more often than not I'll walk out unscathed. Now, give me something to worry about -- the rising cost of healthcare, say, or the carpet that desperately needs replacing -- and my stomach's the first thing to go.

I've apparently got some very serious things on my mind right now, because my stomach wasn't having any part of breakfast or lunch. I thought I might be sitting dinner out, too, but I knew, dear readers, that I have certain obligations to uphold. What was a queasy Restaurant-Free-Monther to do? Luckily, when I came home from work, Jim had found the perfect solution for my mind and my stomach. (OK, maybe not my mind...) He was prepping a light leek and potato soup, courtesy of that Tom Colicchio cookbook we keep raving about.

Jim began by cooking a couple pieces of bacon (ok, maybe the soup wasn't completely light...), then sauteed some chopped leeks. In went several potatoes, diced very small. Then three cups of our homemade chicken stock, which had been warming on the stove. Five minutes before serving, he finished the soup off with a small amount (2 TBS) of butter, which I'm pretending I don't know about, and some chives. Oh, and he topped the soup with a parmesan toast.

This soup is amazing. (Jim said he would be happy to have it in any restaurant, which is high praise indeed. He also thinks I jinxed myself by writing that last post on how good we've been feeling eating at home...) The soup's flavors were exquisitely melded. The vegetables were cooked perfectly, holding their shape but dissolving on the tongue. And, best of all, it was creamy without any cream. It was the ultimate comfort food.

We're Halfway Through! Mid-Month Progress Report

It's hard to believe, but it's January 17th, which means we're more than halfway through Restaurant Free Month. Jim and I took stock over the weekend of how the month is going so far, and I thought I'd share our thoughts:

1. Unlike the other times we've gone restaurant-free, we haven't missed eating out at all. We suspect that when the month is over we'll probably continue to cut back on eating out.

2. We're feeling really good. I'm not trying to lose weight, but I stepped on the bathroom scale this afternoon (after eating a big bowl of leftover pasta) and noticed that I've dropped a few pounds. We attribute this to using fresh, non-processed foods. You have probably figured out that we do not shy away from meats, butter or bacon (ahhhh, bacon!), but we still use a lot less oil and fat than we might find in a restaurant or if we were eating a bunch of processed foods.

3. We've been doing a good job of re-purposing ingredients. We mentioned in our first post that we often find ourselves tossing food out each week. This month we've paid closer attention to what's in our pantry and our refrigerator drawers, and we've been able to put those herbs and veggies to good use. A great example of this is Jim's fried rice; our Enchiladas Verdes also combined chicken stock and leftover roast chicken, with fantastic results.

4. Most importantly, we've eaten some unbelievably good meals. So far, we haven't had any duplicate meals, besides a recurring side dish of chickpea salad, and for the most part we've been cooking new meals or things we haven't had in the past year. We were trying to decide what our favorite has been, which is a real challenge. (We both fell in love with Day 16's Enchiladas Verdes, so that may be the winner. But then there were those lentils with chicken sausage. And the chicken in riesling. And that pork belly. Who could forget the pork belly?)

There are 15 more days to try new recipes and discover new favorites. Bring it on!

Day 16: Enchiladas

Remember, we've pledged to use almost everything, to not let a single spoonful of our leftovers end up in the garbage can--a good idea, considering our trash service was suspended last week because of the snow. Knowing that we'd soon have the leftovers from our roasted chicken, I started preparing for enchiladas and picked up some tomatillos on Friday afternoon, along with a package of the Dekalb Farmers Market's carrot tortillas. Lately, Chelsea's been making some delicious homemade tortillas, but I figured we had earned a little convenience, plus the FM's tortillas are delightfully cheap and, more importantly, well made.

To start, Chelsea cleaned and then roasted the tomatillos, first by themselves, and then with a sliced chili, a clove of garlic, and a cup or two of our homemade chicken stock. Meanwhile, I picked apart the leftover chicken, shredded it, and then reheated it in a pan with about a half cup of stock and a pinch each of cumin and chili powder. After they were done roasting, Chelsea took the immersion blender to the tomatillos, making a beautiful salsa verde and redecorating our ceiling in the process...

We wrapped the shredded chicken in the tortillas which we had soaked in a bit of the tomatillo juice, and then placed the stuffed tortillas in a sauce-lined baking dish before spooning on more salsa verde and topping it off with some shredded cheese. Then into the oven it went for fifteen minutes.

Quite possibly the dish of the month. The chicken was moist, maybe even a little bit sweet, while the salsa verde had a subtle tartness to it. For a side, Chelsea cooked up a pot of dried black beans, seasoned it with cumin, cayenne, and a clove of garlic. Plates were licked.

Day 15: Homemade Pasta with Veal-Pork Ragu

When Jim described Friday's amazing roast chicken, he failed to mention that he was simultaneously making an incredible pasta sauce for Saturday's dinner. Do I have the best husband, or what?

Friday night, Jim made a ragu of ground veal and pork, a large can of Italian tomatoes, plenty of carrots and onions, white wine, and fresh chicken stock. After simmering away for a couple of hours on the stove, the sauce went into the fridge for the flavors to marry overnight.

On Saturday, we put the pasta sauce back on the stove over low heat and set to work on the pasta. Pasta-making is a team effort in our house. During the halftime of the Steelers-Ravens playoff game, Jim made the dough, whisking eggs and a little olive oil into organic flour, kneading until it was supple, then letting the dough rest for an hour. I took over from there, dividing the dough into six portions and running them through our Imperia pasta machine. I had a helper, our neighbor Hedgejo, who had never seen a pasta machine in action. (She was impressed, and declared today that she wants her own pasta machine.) Hedgejo helped me turn the crank, and kept track of which sections of pasta were ready to be cut into tagliatelle.

Just before we were ready to cook the pasta, we finished the sauce with just a touch of cream. Then the pasta went into a big pot of boiling water for three minutes (we cooked two batches). We topped the fresh pasta with sauce and grated parmesan. Everything was perfect: a rich sauce with layers of flavor, light yet sturdy strands of pasta. After eating a meal like this, it's hard to imagine ever going back to store-bought pasta again.

What can I say? We're a great team.

Day 14: Roast Chicken and Root Vegetables

If at the end of this month we name an MVP, or MVA (Most Valuable Appliance), our le creuset will win hands down. So far we've asked it to roast a duck breast, bake a couple pounds of mac and cheese, and stew some chicken thighs. It never complains about its workload, practically washes itself when the cooking's over, and on nights when it doesn't see active duty, it's always there on our counter, just looking awesome.

On Friday night, we called upon our cast iron hero again, this time to help roast a whole chicken. Every time I roast a chicken it seems like I try a different strategy: I've brined; I've cooked the bird upside down; I've used butter, butter and olive oil, or nothing but stock to baste it; I've surgically implanted sage leaves under the skin; I've trussed and I haven't trussed. This time I followed Tom Colicchio's method of browning the sides of the bird in peanut oil before sending it into a 375 oven for about fifty minutes. About twenty minutes into that time, I threw a tablespoon of butter into the pan and used that to baste the bird. I've given up on using thermometers--the things just make me anxious, so I've begun using the knife in the thigh test for my birds. Fifty minutes in the juices were clear. With the bird resting on our counter, I added some sliced carrots and parsnips into the still hot pan and cooked them in the drippings over medium heat. The final product was a delicious bird, served over arugula, and accompanied by parsnips, carrots, and baked potatoes. After years and years of searching, I think I've finally settled on the way I'll cook my birds.

Speaking of which, le creuset was most pleased with the way the Steelers roasted the Ravens Sunday night. Here we go:

Day 13: Leon's-Inspired Steak Sandwich and Chickpea Salad

We don't eat out a lot, so when we do, we want our meals to be memorable -- whether they are at a four-star restaurant or the neighborhood pub. One of our favorite places to eat is Leon's Full Service in Decatur. It's got wonderful food and great cocktails. While Jim explores all corners of the menu, I order the same exact meal every time we eat there: a steak sandwich, cooked medium rare, and a side of chickpea-cherry salad. Then I very carefully eat half of my sandwich and take the other half home for lunch the next day. As for the chickpea salad, well, there are never any leftovers.

We've debated stopping by Leon's during Restaurant Free Month just to have a drink, but we realize that we'd end up ordering some of their incredible french fries... so instead we've settled for recreating our favorites at home.

Last night Jim made a steak sandwich that was every bit as luscious as Leon's, and I cooked up a delicious chickpea-dried cherry-basil salad as a side. Here's what we did: Jim roasted red peppers under the oven broiler, then pan-roasted a sirloin. We topped ciabatta bread (NOT homemade) with a little mayo, arugula, roasted red peppers, thinly sliced steak, and gruyere cheese. (I added a little horseradish, which Jim avoids at all costs, to mine.)

While the steak sandwich preparations were underway, I cooked a pot of chickpeas on the stove. As the steak rested, I put the chickpeas in a baking dish, drizzled a tiny bit of olive oil and some red wine vinegar over them, added strips of fresh basil and chopped dried cherries, and stirred it all together. I put the baking dish in the oven for ten minutes or so at 350. When the chickpeas were nice and hot, I added a little more red wine vinegar and tossed in small cubes of smoked provolone. (The key here is that the provolone cubes get warm but do not turn into a gooey mess.) I don't know if this is anything close to the way that Leon's prepares their chickpea salad, but I can say that it is delicious!

The steak sandwiches, too, were gorgeous. And, like Leon's, the leftovers were every bit as good today!

Is there a restaurant meal you wish you could recreate at home? Do tell!

Day 12: Pizza

Either the night or the morning before we make pizza, Chelsea mixes together the dough, which sits on either the counter or in our fridge for at least seven hours. Eventually, I take it out of its bowl, divide it into however many pies we're going to have that night, and start to knead it. One of us, usually Chelsea, starts a simple tomato sauce, and most nights she also, as she did last night, takes care of sweating the onions, if we're going to have them, which we almost always do. I usually fry up some bacon, slightly under-cooking it so it won't burn in the oven. And then we grate cheese--fontina or mozzarella (if we're not using fresh, as we did last night). Once I'm done kneading, stretching, and -- if I'm feeling snazzy -- tossing the dough, we place it on a pizza peel dusted with corn meal (what the great Christopher Bakken would call "ball bearings"), and then shuffle it all into the hot oven.

I'm not sure how or why we divided our pizza-making into roles, but I'm glad we did, not just because cooking together cuts the workload in half, but because there's also something nice about the collaboration, especially when -- as it almost always is -- it's successful.



Last night we made three pies: a fresh mozzarella and basil pizza; then a bacon and onion with fontina cheese pizza; and then our signature dish: a prosciutto, fig jam, and blue cheese pizza. Though we've been making pizza for as long as we've been together, we were a little rusty last night since our pizza stone broke last summer and we had to endure six pizza-less months. Luckily, though, Chelsea's mother gave us a bigger and better stone for Christmas, ushering in what we hope will be a pizza renaissance. Overall, the pies were good--maybe not quite as crispy as we like, but we're still trying to get back into shape and figure out this new stone.

Day 11: Chicken Makhani

If an ice and snow storm descended on Atlanta, freezing its streets, closing many of its restaurants and supermarkets, even the usually stalwart Dekalb Farmers Market, would we know? "Hardly," we told ourselves last night while we were waiting for Chelsea's dish of chicken thighs, coconut milk, tomato paste, and and a blend of curry spices to finish its slow and tantalizingly aromatic cooking in our crock pot. Hardly, indeed.

Then I discovered we were out of vodka and all hell broke loose. Well, not really. It was around seven or so, and we had just finished a long day of working from home and we both agreed that we deserved a cocktail. So we got in the Honda and started navigating the un-plowed roads. I felt like I was back in my college town, Meadville, Pennsylvania, which is covered in snow from October until April. Sure, they have plenty of salt and snowplows up there, but those things are slow and you can't exactly wait for them to clear the roads when you have an 11 pm hockey practice (or beer special) to get to. And though the roads were anything but impassable, our journey ended in disappointment when we pulled up to an empty parking lot and closed store. Waiting at the traffic light to turn back home, we saw at least three other people pull their cars into the parking lot, all for naught. Alas!

Oh, but how quickly our troubles left us when we got back home. The chicken was delicious. Chelsea makes this dish every few weeks or so, and I'm always amazed with how it's both spicy and mellow, how it's filling but also light. The cooking process itself is incredibly easy since all the chef has to do is dump the ingredients in the crock and wait. And Wait. And wait. Here's the recipe: Butter Chicken.

Day 10: Salad, Salad, Pork Belly

On Sunday, I went to the Dekalb Farmers Market early, anticipating a rush due to the predicted snowstorm. It was a madhouse, even at 9:30 a.m. I stocked up on the components for three or four dinners -- including a first for me: a small piece of pork belly!

In the last year or so, Jim and I have had a bit of a love affair with pork belly. We love pork belly, and we love chefs who love pork belly, like Kevin Gillespie at Woodfire Grill, and Shaun Doty of the now-defunct Shaun's (his pork belly steamed buns will be missed). Our favorite, though, is the pork belly with ever-changing accompaniments at Craftbar, the Tom Colicchio restaurant where Adam Evans serves as Chef de Cuisine.

Flipping through Tom Colicchio's Think Like a Chef, I spotted a recipe for Braised Fresh Bacon that sounded like it could be the base for our beloved Craftbar pork belly. So with much anticipation and a little trepidation, I embarked on the three and a half hour project. (Hey, it was a snow day.) I browned the pork belly in a skillet, cooked some vegetables, then braised it for a couple hours with the vegetables and broth, then finished it with 20 minutes of roasting.

The result was pretty close to what we get in the restaurant (they fancy it up with pears, ginger and other accompaniments, depending on the season). Crispy on top, tender and succulent inside, and worth every hour of cooking time.

To stave off a heart attack at the table, I served the pork belly with two salads: a roasted romaine with blue cheese and a chickpea-dried cherry-basil salad, inspired by the much beloved one at Leon's Full Service restaurant in Decatur. (I usually grill the romaine for 3 minutes on each side, then drizzle a white wine viniagrette and blue cheese over it, but given the weather I just threw it into the oven for a couple of minutes while the pork belly roasted.) All in all, it was a pretty decadent meal, but I promise that the salads were large and the pork belly small.

As it happens, yesterday marked six months that we have been married(!). I can't think of many better ways to celebrate...

Day 9: Ravioli with Pork and Apples

For me, food offers so much more than physical sustenance. It's a way of connecting with other people, whether out in a restaurant or over a home-cooked meal. When I was a kid, my mother and I used to go out to lunches together, and it was our special time, discovering places to go and finding dishes we liked. I started cooking when I was young too -- I think it made me feel like a grown-up. Now that I am grown-up with adult problems, cooking helps me relax after a long day. And it's a great creative outlet, which is important when I'm not working on new poems (ie, often).

Today I made a dish I haven't made in a while: pork and apple ravioli with sage butter and apple cider glaze. The pork and apple is combined and pureed, stuffed inside homemade pasta, and topped with sage browned in butter, a little bit of browned pork, and an apple cider reduction. There are a lot of steps to this, but it's fun and relaxing to make if you have the time, and so good.

I was originally inspired by a similar dish at Atlanta's Pasta da Pulcinella restaurant, where I used to frequently have lunch with a close friend. My friend lost a battle with breast cancer three years ago, and there are a few restaurants I have trouble going to because of the memories of our meals together.

This is the recipe-less process for the ravioli (this assumes a basic knowledge of pasta-making):

Ingredients

Ground pork (I used a pound and had a lot left over)
Granny Smith apples (2 or 3 cups worth, peeled and chopped up)
Apple cider
Sage
Butter
Flour and eggs for the pasta dough
Parmesan

General Process
I make this up as I go along, but here's the general process:
1. Cook a pound of ground pork in a skillet until there is no longer any pink, putting a little apple cider in as it cooks. Set aside.
2. Cook the apples in the skillet with a little cider (1/2 cup or so) until soft.
3. Combine the apples with 2/3 of the pork (set the rest of the pork aside) and blend with an immersion blender or food processor. This will look like baby food at this point, but be delicious. Season to taste. Add a little parmesan if you'd like. Refrigerate if making ahead.

4. Prepare your favorite egg pasta dough and make sheets of pasta, rolling dough to the second-thinnest setting. Across half of each sheet of pasta, place spoonfuls of the apple-pork filling in rows two-across. Wet the other half of the pasta sheet with water and fold it over the half with the filling. Press to seal the edges and cut the ravioli (I have a little ravioli cutter that makes pretty edges and seals the pasta as it cuts it). Place the ravioli on a sheet dusted with cornmeal and let the ravioli dry for 15 minutes, then flip them over for another 15 minutes. Meanwhile, bring a pot of water to a boil.
5. In a saucepan, heat a cup or so of apple cider over medium heat and cook untl reduced by half.
6. Brown remaining pork in a skillet.
7. Cook ravioli for 3 minutes and drain.
8. As ravioli cooks, brown a little butter in a skillet and add chopped sage leaves.
9. Drizzle sage-butter and cider glaze over ravioli. Top with browned pork and grated parmesan.

So that's the process... and tonight's meal? Jim ate his portion, had another, licked his bowl and then licked my bowl. I think that says it all.

Day 8: Mac and Cheese Night

We're pleased--no, honored--to welcome our first ever guest blogger, Hedgejo. Who's Hedgejo, you ask? She's our nine-year-old neighbor, who announces herself when we open the door with a smile and a big "Hedgejo!" (it used to be "Hello," but the greeting has evolved over time).

Hedgejo is a friend and advocate of canines everywhere, a builder of model volcanoes and towering snowmen, a future badminton champion, and most importantly, probably the most respected mac and cheese connoisseur in the state of Georgia, if not the country. As far as we can tell, in her nine years on earth she has consumed more mac and cheese than almost anyone else. She tells us that if she had her way, she'd eat it for breakfast, lunch, dinner, dessert, and for her midnight snack. Needless to say, Chelsea and I were a little bit nervous to be cooking for such a respected expert. We pestered friends and colleagues for their favorite recipes, scoured the internet, and eventually followed the process Mark Bittman describes in How to Cook Everything, putting our own spin on it, of course.

Here's her review--I can't tell you how pleased we are: "Last night I had Mac and Cheese night with Chelsea, Jim, Audrey and Zadie. We watched two movies: Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory and Hotel for Dogs. The Mac and Cheese was really good and [so were] the carrots. But first they had to cook the Mac and cheese and carrots, so I played with Audrey and Zadie. Mac and cheese night was fun and yummy!"

There you have it, "Mac and cheese night was fun and yummy!" The neighborhood equivalent of Michelin star. Here's how we did it. Four cheeses went into this dish: gruyere, sharp cheddar (which Chelsea and I both concluded wasn't all that sharp), fontina, and parmesan. After grating these cheeses, we added them to a standard roux in our le creuset and then mixed in a pound or so of el dente pasta shells, topping it all off with bread crumbs before putting the pot in the oven at 400 for 15 minutes.

Chelsea also prepared a side dish of carrots in a honey-ginger glaze, which, as you've already heard, was also "yummy." We had a blast!

Day 7: Thai Beef Curry with Red Pepper and Pineapple

There's nothing like a lazy Saturday morning. I've been curled up in bed all morning, reading articles on poetry and memoir, looking through the NY Times Cookbook, snuggling with the dogs, and talking with the husband. I could have stayed there all day, but said husband just pointed out that I'm behind on this blog post.

So let me begin in praise of yesterday's lunch, which, thanks to Jim, was simply one of the best sandwiches I've ever had. I came home on my lunch break to find warm, toasty ciabatta bread (Jim toasts the inside of the bread so that we don't scratch up our mouths) topped with thick slices of roasted turkey from the Dekalb Farmers Market, a little mayonnaise, perfectly crisped bacon, and parsley. (This is one of those instances where the whole is much, much greater than the sum of its parts... we've been talking about that sandwich since yesterday, and we're about to have another round for lunch today.)

Even when we're not experimenting with a month without restaurants, we probably eat out less than the average couple. Part of this is financial -- we live on a fairly tight budget, and we'd rather spend our food dollars on a few good meals than waste them on forgettable food. A bigger part, though, is that we keep finding meals we like, then realizing we can recreate them more healthfully at home, with tastier results.

Last night's dinner is an example of this. We used to frequent a Thai restaurant that served a delicious red curry with pineapple. On a visit to Jim's family, I discovered an "improvisational" curry recipe in one of my then-future-mother-in-law's cookbooks. Given my reluctance to follow a recipe precisely, this was right up my alley. I copied the recipe down on a sheet of scrap paper, took it back to Atlanta, and have been making my own red curry with great success ever since. My version uses beef, fresh pineapple and red peppers. It's a nuanced dish -- sweet, spicy, a little salty. We always say that we're going to make a vegetarian version with more veggies, but this is so good the way it is we never seem to vary it.

The beauty of this dish is that it's never the same way twice, because the sweetness or tartness of the pineapples and the juiciness of the limes is ever-changing.

Here, I attempt to reproduce my faded scrawled notes of the original recipe, with some commentary by me. The ingredient list looks long, but it's really quite easy to make, and many of the components are optional. We use a large electric skillet for the curry and serve this over jasmine rice.

Improvisational Red Thai Curry
originally from James Peterson's Sauces

2 lb beef, cut in 2 inch by 1/2 inch strips (sirloin strip, sirloin or flank)
2 TBS peanut oil (if browning meat -- optional but encouraged)

1 TBS peanut oil
1/4 to 1/2 cup red curry paste (we hope to start making our own paste soon, but for now we use an excellent imported red curry paste... adjust for spiciness here)
1 cup or so broth or water
2 to 6 TBS fish sauce (I prefer 5-6 TBS)

1 14-ounce can coconut milk (to reduce the fat, I use a 14-oz can of light coconut milk but also add a very small can of the full-fat variety)

Juice of two limes, or 2 TBS wine vinegar or cider vinegar
1 to 2 TBS sugar (optional, but I always find I need it)

1 fresh pineapple, cut in chunks
2 red peppers, seeded and diced
(This is our version of the curry... you may prefer mushrooms, bell peppers, beans, eggplant, etc.)

Thai basil or cilantro for garnish

Optional Aromatics: 6 kefir lime leaves and thick slices of galangal

Directions:
1. Brown meat in skillet or wok. Set aside and pour off oil.
2. Heat fresh oil over medium heat. Stir in curry paste and heat until fragrant. Stir in broth and fish sauce and simmer.
3. Stir in coconut milk and sweet and sour ingredients (lime, sugar, optional aromatics). Return to simmer.
4. Add pineapple and red pepper (or your choice of vegetables) and simmer until almost done.
5. Add meat and simmer until done/cooked through. (This is a dish that tastes better and better as the flavors marry.)
6. Garnish with Thai basil or cilantro and serve over rice.

Day 6: Pasta in Tomato Sauce

We had to be quick tonight since our friend Dionne was reading at the Highland Inn. So about twenty minutes before Chelsea was to arrive home from work, I chopped up an onion, sweated it in olive oil, and then added some leftover wine (I guess I missed a drop last night). Once the wine evaporated, I added the tomatoes and a little bit of vinegar. At some point during all of this, I started frying three thick slices of bacon, a compulsive action I have when I near a stove. When the slices were done, I broke them into pieces--my kind of garnish. We served the sauce over fettuccine. For a side, we made a salad of mixed greens and apple, dressed with Chelsea's delicious homemade vinaigrette. Fast and easy--as close as we'll get to fast food (thank god!). Dionne, whose story you can read here, read wonderfully in front of a packed house.

Day 5 Dinner: Butternut Squash and Leek Risotto

Dear Reader, you may have gathered that we have eaten well these past five days. We've also eaten a lot of poultry. Chicken kebabs, chicken stew, chicken sausage, duck. Tonight I decided to break away from the winged theme with a roasted butternut squash, leek, and sage risotto. And because we are not vegetarians, we couldn't help adding a little bacon as well.

The dish took about an hour and a lot of stirring to make (it was a risotto, after all), and it was absolutely incredible. I departed from the recipe quite a bit: I replaced half the chicken broth with mushroom broth (we try to keep homemade stock in the freezer, but we're out, and I was concerned about the sodium content in packaged broth; I soaked some dried porcini mushrooms in boiling water and used the liquid, whch added a nice flavor to the risotto). I substituted a small amount of butter for the cream at the end. And, of course, I cooked up a couple pieces of beautiful farmer's market bacon and sprinkled them on top.

The risotto was a wonderful mix of contrasting flavors: sweet, savory, complex. I am sure that a vegetarian version with vegetable broth would be wonderful too, but we thought that the bacon was a great counterpoint for the sweet squash and the sage. I can't wait for the leftovers.

Thinking Like a Chef

I admit it: I can't follow a recipe to save my life. Not because I can't cook well, but because I can't resist the temptation to make adjustments as I go -- a little more of this, a lot more of that. So I was happy to read the introduction to Tom Colicchio's Think Like a Chef, in which Colicchio complains about students wanting to know every step, every brand, to follow in his recipes instead of learning basic techniques and applying them to their own creations. (" 'How long do you cook that?' --My standard reply: 'Till it's done.' This last one usually meets with a few weak smiles and a slightly hostile silence...")

The cookbook takes a different approach than most. It begins with foundational techniques (roasting, braising, blanching, etc.) then shows how to start with single ingredients and build off them to develop great meals, such as the duck breast with root veggies that Jim made last night.

As a huge fan of Colicchio's Craft and Craftbar restaurants, I can't wait to try some of these dishes (especially the braised pork belly, which looks like it might be the foundation for the dish at Craftbar). Best of all, I won't feel bad about not following the recipes.

What cookbooks inspire you most?

Duck and Root Vegetables

On tonight's menu, pan-seared duck breast, with roasted root vegetables (pearl onions, carrots, parsnips, turnips, leeks) and apples. Not too many pyrotechnics to this dish: I chopped up the vegetables, cooked them in just a little bit of duck fat -- we have to be somewhat healthy, after all -- and then put that skillet in the oven at 375 for about a half hour. I added the apples to the skillet twenty minutes or so after placing it in the oven. I then seared the duck and put it on top of the still-roasting vegetables until it was medium-rare. Everything was a hit, except maybe the overly bitter turnips, but even they were -- what's the right word? -- entertaining.

Through it all, I had what's quickly become my favorite cocktail, a vodka drink, with two parts lemon juice, one part lime juice, one part agave nectar, and a garnish of fresh ginger. This drink was first introduced to us by Craftbar as a Sunshine Squeeze, which is fine and all, I suppose, but hardly the sort of drink a hockey player, even a twerpy one like myself, would ask for. We're thinking of renaming it: a Hip Check? a Shiner? Ah, but a Texas beer already has that name, alas. Please, suggest away.

Sausage and Lentils with Fennel

Chelsea finished out her three-day rampage of deliciousness by preparing this Sausage and Lentils with Fennel dish from epicurious.com. Other than using chicken sausage instead of pork, she didn't deviate much from the recipe. My, the process was simple: after heating the lentils, she chopped up a beautiful fennel bulb, a few carrots, and a medium onion; meanwhile, I sauteed the sausage. Our kitchen is pitifully small, and just a few cutting boards and stray pot lids can completely cover our counter space. Though it can be a frantic place to cook, there's something charming, at least to me, about the way we duck, slide, spin, and curtsy out of (or sometimes into) each other's way, all the while managing to not step on our two hopeful and sometimes successful canine scavengers, one of whom made it into tonight's picture.


The end result of tonight's effort was a hearty and subtle bowl of goodness, one that features three parts of the fennel plant: the bulb, the fronds, and the seeds. This pleased my inner geek to no end.

Day 2: Chicken in Riesling

Is it wrong to admit that I spent the morning dreaming about lunch? Not in my book, at least not when lunch is leftovers from a great meal.

For Day 2 of Restaurant-Free Month, we were a little more ambitious. I don't normally cook new recipes for company, in case something goes horribly, horribly wrong. But I really wanted to try a Chicken in Riesling recipe from the now-defunct Gourmet magazine, and we really wanted to see our friends A. and D. I decided to make an exception.

I love a good stew, and I welcome any chance to pull out my beloved Le Creuset casserole dish. The Chicken in Riesling recipe is similar to a Coq au Vin, only with white wine, a finishing of cream, and a lot less cooking time. I made very few adjustments to the recipe. (I didn't want to deal with a whole chicken, so I bought thighs and legs; I added a spoonful of sour cream since our market didn't have creme fraiche; and I left the skins on the red fingerling potatoes for more color.) The stew takes only an hour to make and calls for browning the chicken then braising it in Riesling with carrots and leeks. Parsleyed potatoes and a little cream finish the dish. It was incredibly good and tasted like it had been cooking all day. We sopped up the sauce with crusty bread... otherwise we'd have licked the bowls.

In case the stew went terribly awry, I decided to make one of our favorite appetizer/salad dishes so that there would be at least one good thing on the table -- endive with walnuts and blue cheese in a white wine viniagrette. This is so easy and delicious: buy two or three heads of endive, pull off the largest, prettiest leaves, then chop the rest of the endive and toss it with blue cheese, toasted walnuts and a homemade viniagrette (I whisk together two or three tablespoons olive oil with two or three teaspoons of white wine vinegar and add a little salt and pepper). The chopped salad mixture is served on top of the whole leaves. It doesn't keep well, so the end of the night saw me picking at all the leftover pieces so we wouldn't have to throw them out. (It was a dirty job, but someone had to do it.)

Our friends brought a delicious bottle of homemade (!) sparkling (!) red wine and a pumpkin cheesecake. We ate and drank very well and stayed up late talking and laughing. It was a great start to the new year.

Leftovers and lunch

This month isn't really about saving money, for that would imply we have some to save; it's really about not spending money we don't have. So, with our hands on our empty wallets, we pledged to try our best to not let a single lettuce leaf or slice of bread go bad. That means most of our lunches will have to be the previous night's dinner. Unfortunately, though, last night's dinner was Chelsea's chicken kebabs, a dish that almost never makes it to our Tupperware. Indeed, we were left with nothing more than a serving or so of rice and a half breast of chicken. Still travel-weary and uncreative (not to mention dismayed by the Penguins' poor showing at the Winter Classic), I decided to make chicken fried rice.



I chopped up an onion and some ginger (two of our produce basket's staples) and then two carrots. Then I cut the chicken breast into pieces, sauteed those with peanut oil in our non-stick skillet, then added the vegetables. Once those looked cooked, I added the rice. After the rice started to brown a bit, I added three slightly beaten eggs to the pan, scrambled them, and then topped it all off with a dash or two of soy sauce. Filling, but not cloying, as it so often is when the chef uses too much soy sauce--it wasn't bad. Most importantly, though, we have no leftovers left over.

Day 1: Unskewered Red Curry Chicken Kebabs

Happy New Year! We rang in 2011 at a wedding in Charleston, S.C., and drove back to Atlanta on the 1st. It was late afternoon when we got home, so we knew better than to try anything too ambitious for our first dinner. Instead we turned to an old standby, unskewered chicken kebabs in a red curry marinade, served over jasmine rice with a yogurt-mint dressing.

I discovered this recipe last year from Food and Wine: Red Curry Chicken Kebabs with Minty Yogurt Sauce. I was drawn to the simple ingredients, most of which we keep on hand (we keep Thai red curry paste in the pantry at all times for another recipe). I made the dish once as written, and then the modifications began. For starters, in the marinade I use less oil than the recipe calls for and probably more thai curry, I put almost no honey in the dressing (a teaspoon or so) and more lime and mint to taste, and at this point I don't measure anything.

For six months or so, we grilled the kebabs, until one night last winter I went out to light the grill and found a hungry creature looking for crumbs inside it. That was the night we learned that the oven broiler works just fine. Better even, since we can skip the skewers and just dump the chicken pieces on a big tray, making this quick dish much, much quicker. We do cut way back on the oil when we broil, since it has nowhere to drip away. This makes the dish spicer, which is just fine with us.

It takes only about two minutes to whisk the marinade together, and I usually throw the chicken in the oven once the rice is cooking, turning it every few minutes until nice and crispy. The yogurt dressing can be made ahead or while the chicken is cooking. It's simple to make yet completely satisfying and complex. (The picture below doesn't do it justice...)

Last night's dinner was served with Citrus Squeeze cocktails (our version of the Sunshine Squeeze served at Craftbar Atlanta: fresh lemon, lime and ginger mixed with vodka and agave nectar). Delicious!