nutmeg – The Kitchen Illiterate

Dorie’s Cheese Souffle

Whew. The last two weeks, nay, the past month has been crazy nuts. We have been BUSY. There’s been traveling, and hiking, and visiting with friends and family. There’s been working and more working. There has been stress, but thankfully, there has also been plenty of laughter to alleviate some of it, and there has also been some darn good food here and there along the way.

Like this souffle. I made this weeks ago, right before things got hectic, and I’ve been waiting, sometimes less than patiently, to share it with you. If you’ve ever thought of making a souffle, and pushed the idea aside thinking it’s too hard, think again. I, too, left my souffle dreams unfulfilled because I thought I wasn’t up to the task. They have a reputation as demanding and persnickety, and I’m not always good with persnickety. But this was surprisingly easy. And wow, delightful. It made an ordinary Sunday night dinner feel so special.
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Squash and Swiss Chard Pasta Bake

We spent Thanksgiving weekend with my family in San Diego, and although I had some kind of notion that I would have something to share with you all here, I slipped firmly into vacation mode when I got down there, and barely even touched my laptop the whole weekend. I was far to busy being entertained by my favorite little person. I did cook Thanksgiving dinner with my brothers, as usual (they smoked a turkey this year!), but I didn’t get as intense about the meal as I have in the past. I didn’t come up with a cooking schedule, I didn’t try to manage every corner of the kitchen, I didn’t even have recipes for some of the side dishes we made. And while things might not have come out to the table as perfect as a Martha Stewart photo shoot, I was considerably more relaxed than usual. And that was definitely something to be grateful for (so was that smoked turkey; it was incredible).

We drove back on Saturday, and the drive was not so much something to be grateful for. I think in the future I’ll be much more willing to fly home for Thanksgiving; the traffic could have been worse, certainly. But my back still hurts from 10 hours in the car. And as soon as we got home, we were thrown into a very busy week. I’m just glad my mom sent me home with leftovers, because otherwise we wouldn’t really have anything to eat.
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An Even Better Chicken Florentine

Over three years ago, I made Chicken Florentine for the first time, and ever since then, it’s been the most frequently viewed recipe on this site. By a landslide. The people, they love Chicken Florentine. But I’ve never been entirely happy with that recipe. And let’s not even talk about the photographs in the post; they make me cringe. In the years since, I’ve made Chicken Florentine a handful of times again, and I’ve tweaked the recipe here and there each time. I just knew it could be even better, and I was right. My friends, I think I finally have my best Chicken Florentine recipe, and I knew I had to share it with all of you.
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Creamy Squash Rigatoni

Whew. After a whirlwind week in San Diego with my family for Thanksgiving, it was kind of strange to come back to my small, quiet, still little house in Walla Walla. And also, it was cold. It is decidedly winter. And while I’m so not a fan of wintery things like frost and being cold, I am a huge fan of wintery things like squash and pot roast and sweaters and being cozy in my little house while the wind howls away outside. This pasta is perfect for that. It is also very rich. When I cooked this it was probably the first time I served myself dinner and couldn’t finish it. And not because it’s not good. It’s great, and I heartily enjoyed the leftovers. But be warned: It is rich. It might be best to serve this in small portions, with a crisp and light side salad.
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Greek Celebration Bread

Crazy, but true: I have been writing this here blog for three years today. A lot has happened in three years, and not just in the kitchen. I know I’ve said it many times before, but it’s true: When I first started writing here, I really didn’t know much about cooking at all. I’d always enjoyed doing it, but my technique left much to be desired. My favorite meal was rice and beans from a box, and I was so freaked out about raw shrimp I didn’t look closely enough to see that they weren’t de-veined before cooking them. I thought baking bread from scratch was Little House on the Prairie stuff, and I didn’t have the first clue that broccoli has a season.

In celebration of three years of cooking and writing and taking pictures of food, and learning my way around an oven, I decided to splurge this week and bake this lovely Greek Celebration Bread, from Reinhardt’s The Bread Baker’s Apprentice, as my weekly breakfast loaf. And it does feel like a splurge from my usual plain, whole wheat loaf. This bread is fragrant and tender and rich and really freaking fabulous.
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