Another day, another book that I’m embarrassed not to have cooked from. Maybe it’s because menu books can be a little intimidating. I always feel that if I don’t do a whole menu, I’m failing. But things being what they are, there wasn’t a complete menu that we could realistically tackle. So we optimistically dove into the “Spring” section of David Tanis’ lovely book A Platter of Figs and Other Recipes, even though it was snowing while we were cooking, and decided on lamb and beans.

We’re not likely to have real spring lamb anytime soon, but we had a nice boneless leg, and we’d just gotten the latest bean club shipment from Rancho Gordo which contained flageolets. It was an obvious choice.

After trekking up to Morse’s Sauerkraut for olives, we started putting this dish together. We put the flageolets on to cook, and make the olive relish. It’s super simple – olives, garlic, lemon, and anchovy. So delicious. We decided to do those the night before, so all we had to do the day of was roast the lamb and dress the beans with salt and pepper, thyme and olive oil. To serve, spread the beans onto a platter, and put the sliced lamb and olive relish on top.

Boy, howdy, this was good. The lamb was delicious, especially with the pungent olive relish, but the flageolets were the star. All of the lamb juice soaked into the beans, and the herbs from the lamb and the lemon and everything just made the beans incredibly flavorful. And of course, they’re Rancho Gordo beans, so they’re impeccably fresh and creamy. (We used the rest of the batch of beans to make a lemony flageolet salad which we couldn’t get enough of.) With this deliciousness, we drank a 2017 Chiroubles Chatenay that was out-freaking-standing. The next day we dashed back up to Now You’re Cooking and got a few more bottles from our guy Joel.

And this book (number seventeen in the project) really is lovely. Some day when we’re not trudging through a foot of snow, we’ll do some actual menus out of it. But we did find one other recipe to make – his Parsnips Epiphany-Style. I mean, they’re just parsnips roasted with oil and salt and pepper, but they were heavenly. We served them with a roast turkey last week. So good.

Next up: The Hands-On Home.

Another day, another book that I’m embarrassed not to have cooked from. Maybe it’s because menu books can be a little intimidating. I always feel that if I don’t do a whole menu, I’m failing. But things being what they are, there wasn’t a complete menu that we could realistically tackle. So we optimistically dove into the “Spring” section of David Tanis’ lovely book A Platter of Figs and Other Recipes, even though it was snowing while we were cooking, and decided on lamb and beans.

We’re not likely to have real spring lamb anytime soon, but we had a nice boneless leg, and we’d just gotten the latest bean club shipment from Rancho Gordo which contained flageolets. It was an obvious choice.

After trekking up to Morse’s Sauerkraut for olives, we started putting this dish together. We put the flageolets on to cook, and make the olive relish. It’s super simple – olives, garlic, lemon, and anchovy. So delicious. We decided to do those the night before, so all we had to do the day of was roast the lamb and dress the beans with salt and pepper, thyme and olive oil. To serve, spread the beans onto a platter, and put the sliced lamb and olive relish on top.

Boy, howdy, this was good. The lamb was delicious, especially with the pungent olive relish, but the flageolets were the star. All of the lamb juice soaked into the beans, and the herbs from the lamb and the lemon and everything just made the beans incredibly flavorful. And of course, they’re Rancho Gordo beans, so they’re impeccably fresh and creamy. (We used the rest of the batch of beans to make a lemony flageolet salad which we couldn’t get enough of.) With this deliciousness, we drank a 2017 Chiroubles Chatenay that was out-freaking-standing. The next day we dashed back up to Now You’re Cooking and got a few more bottles from our guy Joel.

And this book (number seventeen in the project) really is lovely. Some day when we’re not trudging through a foot of snow, we’ll do some actual menus out of it. But we did find one other recipe to make – his Parsnips Epiphany-Style. I mean, they’re just parsnips roasted with oil and salt and pepper, but they were heavenly. We served them with a roast turkey last week. So good.

Next up: The Hands-On Home.

I’ve never actually dined at The Herbfarm, but I’ve visited. During the ten minutes in which I attended culinary school in the ’90s, our class took a field trip out to the farm and restaurant. It’s a truly magical place which makes even me want to garden. When Jerry Traunfeld’s The Herbfarm Cookbook came out in 2000, I immediately bought it and read all of its amazing, creative recipes, and, naturally, never made any of them.

But here we are, at book number sixteen in our project, and I’m delighted to have finally cooked out of this book. We decided on Steamed Mussels with Rosemary and Roasted Garlic Sabayon, partly because I’ve never made a sabayon, and mostly because we love mussels and they’re very inexpensive here.

The sabayon was delicious, and super simple to make. You just take egg yolks, roasted garlic, the winey liquor from the mussels, and some lemon juice and whisk it all over a double boiler until it gets all smooth and rich. I don’t have a metal bowl, so I used a glass one. This slowed down the process, but fortunately I had some wine, and I don’t mind whisking. It’s very soothing.

Then the sabayon gets poured over the cooked mussels and you dive in! It’s SO good. The sauce is light but rich, and heady with the scent of roasted garlic. I’d make this every day if I thought I could get away with it. This is a dish where you need bread to wipe up the sabayon in the bowl. We didn’t have any, so we unashamedly licked our bowls. And we’d do it again.

Next up: David Tanis’ A Platter of Figs and Other Recipes

Today’s blog post brought to you by culture shock! Since early November, we’ve been cooking through the Alice Waters (and related) books in our collection. Alice’s style is so distinctive and iconic. Her insistence on freshness and seasonality, simplicity and elegance has shaped American cooking for the last forty years. Her books are spare, beautifully illustrated and have a lovely energy about them.

Progressing backwards through our alphabetical collection, we come to Weber’s Big Book of Grilling, by Jamie Purviance and Sandra McRae. It’s…not by Alice Waters. It’s…masculine. Big, glossy, no-nonsense, direct, and with a foreward by Al Roker! “I feel really manly,” Roker writes, “It’s about 25°F outside and snowing, and I just came in from the cold with a platter of grilled meat in my hand. Anybody can grill when it’s sunny and 80°F in the shade, but it takes a real man to brave the elements…” Seriously, Al? Well, Nathan grilled in 20°F weather and didn’t brag about reinforcing rigid gender stereotypes.

Sorry. This is actually a fine book. There are about a dozen bookmarks in it, and it’s one of our most referred-to cookbooks. It’s the go-to for tri tip and ribs. There’s nothing terribly innovative or creative in it, but it’s got good solid advice, and this Jamaican jerk chicken recipe that we made was absolutely delicious. It’s very simple – just take green onions, chiles, garlic and spices, whiz ’em up in the food processor. Use this insanely fragrant paste to marinate some chicken, then hand it all over to a man to take outside and grill. What could be easier?

Next up: The Little House Cookbook