You know that point when you’re about to go out of town and trying to whittle down the produce in the house? And then you end up with a potato and a handful of arugula and think, well I guess I’ll try to make a meal out of this…

It could just be me. Other folks might go for take-out at that point, but I like a good food challenge.

I especially like it when an attempt to use up some random food ends up being really, really delicious.

My baked potatoes normally get ALL the fixin’s thrown on top. Why not, right?

Well, think of this as the minimalist baked potato. Minimal effort and ingredients that yield huge flavor in return.

It starts out in the usual manner. Rub some oil on the potato, sprinkle it with salt, stab it with a fork a few times.

The fork part can double as a way to relieve some stress if you need it to.

The potato gets thrown in the oven and forgotten about for the better part of an hour. Once it’s done, you’re 2 minutes away from potato magic.

Have you sautéed arugula before? I hadn’t until I made this dish. It’s crazy how much 30 seconds in a pan can change the flavor. Especially if there is butter and garlic in said pan. It mellows out a little and becomes more like spinach’s funky cousin.

Arugula and garlicky butter taste really nice with parmesan cheese, so that goes on top. Going out of town or not, I’ve always got some Reggiano in the fridge!

Click here to view this recipe.

Oh popcorn. What a long and tumultuous relationship we’ve had.

There was, of course, the early childhood stage: occasionally that unmistakable smell and sound of kernels popping on the stove would fill the house and I knew a special treat was on the horizon.

Then there was the teenage stage. I was responsible for more of my own meals by then and hey! Popcorn can totally be a meal, right??

As often as I could get my hands on it, I ate popcorn. Breakfast, lunch, snack – didn’t matter. I basically ate it until I never wanted to see it again.

And then for a while… I just didn’t eat popcorn at all. Sad times.

Now that I’ve developed some self control, I love whipping up homemade popcorn before hubs and I sit down to watch a movie.

The best part of making popcorn from scratch: you can throw in any ingredients you have hanging around and make it your own.

I usually try different flavor combinations each time, but I made this version with lemon, thyme and parmesan cheese recently and I’m hooked!

Salty, cheesy, herby, lemony… and gone 5 minutes into the movie.

Maybe I should start making larger batches?

Or I guess I could just stick to that whole self control thing.

We’ll see.

Click here to view this recipe.

My calendar just informed me that it’s March. Apparently this has been the case for a few days now.

It also informed me that there’s this holiday coming up where we all pretend to be Irish for a day, so I guess my recent craving for shepherd’s pie worked out pretty nicely.

Any dish where you have meat, veggies, mashed potatoes, wine, AND cheese all in one sloppy package is an instant winner in my book. And when you’re as busy as we’ve been lately, a dish that provides a family of two with instant comfort food for a week is a huge bonus.

Like yesterday for example, when I was trying to start working on this post, photographing the next one, preparing for a cocktail party, and talking on the phone all that the same time. Doesn’t work, in case you were wondering. At least lunch was taken care of – we had leftover shepherd’s pie.

Speaking of life and time saving phenomena, have I ever expressed my love for potato ricers? Absolutely 100% perfect, lump-free mashed potatoes every time. Or perfect, lump-free anything else you want to mash. Best $7 I ever spent.

So since I have literally nothing I need to accomplish today beyond relaxing and scarfing down leftovers from last night’s party, I’m just gonna cut to the chase.

Buy potato ricer.

Make shepherd’s pie.

Receive bacon.

Eat really, really well for a week.

Click here to view this recipe.

Oh, hello again!

That brief recess in posting was brought to you by my best friend – Patrice! She came to visit for 5 magnificently lazy days filled with gluttony, bad TV, even worse movies, and some short-lived adventuring in and around Mountain View. We even made up a couple of cocktails! One of which might be worthy of posting, the other… maybe not so much. We also burned things with a kitchen torch. Delicious things.

As soon as I dropped her off at the airport yesterday morning, I was missing home. Good thing I’ll be there in 3 days! Woohoo!

To tide me over until then, I needed to make something from my childhood. Lemony Caesar Salad, perhaps? Why yes! There was a time when my mom made this damn near every night as part of our dinner and I loved it.

I called my mom to get the recipe. We spent several minutes bouncing a series of guesses and approximations off each other as we struggled to remember exactly how this salad was made years ago. I jotted down some notes and set off to experiment.

It tasted just like I remembered – only better. Anchovy paste was replaced with whole fillets, and pre-shredded grocery store brand parmesan cheese was swapped out for large shavings of Parmigiano Reggiano (you have to say that in the Giada voice); I even used organic lettuce. Then there’s the homemade croutons from good quality bread.

Oh. My. Gosh. Heaven. Josh said it was the best caesar salad he’d ever had – and that was after it sat around for a while being photographed!

This salad is legit. It has elements of a classic caesar salad – the coddled egg, anchovies – but it’s different. My mom loves lemon, so her version has a good amount of lemon juice, and no mustard or worcestershire to stand in its way.

This is the caesar salad I grew up on – the one all others are compared to. It’s bright and acidic, which explains why I never really liked the super creamy kind. My mom made sure to remind me to put “2-3 garlic cloves” in the recipe, because not everybody loves garlic as much as I do. Yes, mother…

Click here to view this recipe.

If there had to be a theme to my Valentine’s Day, I think it would be “making food for Josh that he absolutely loves and I never make for some reason.” A close runner up would be “delicious.”

This man’s favorite breakfast, brunch, and lunch is a croque madame. I know this not because he’s ever told me explicitly, but because when he sees that one is offered in a restaurant, his menu closes immediately. For someone who probably wouldn’t ever call himself a “foodie,” he sure can talk your ear off about how great a croque madame is. And his face lights up like a Christmas tree while he describes it to you.

Back in San Diego, he had a mental score sheet of how all the croque madames in town stacked up to each other, and the elements of each he liked best.

You’re probably getting the picture. So… the fact that I had never made him one of these decadent delights until recently is a crime. I don’t even have a good excuse! “I don’t know,” doesn’t really cut it here! This needed to be corrected.

Lucky for him, I have a food blog to be thinking about – I just couldn’t make such an epic breakfast without sharing it with you. Sometimes that means making it twice.

Since cooking a new recipe while photographing it on a weekday morning sounded hilariously impossible, he got a sandwich on Sunday when I took these photos, and one on Tuesday for Valentine’s Day. It kind of worked out perfectly since the recipe makes 4 sandwiches, and a bechamel sauce will keep in the fridge for a few days. I prepped the entire recipe but only assembled two sandwiches at a time- voila!

I think I redeemed myself using this recipe from Alex Guarnaschelli. Josh ranked this rendition second only to one from the mac daddy of French comfort food in San Diego – Cafe Chloe. That’s quite an accomplishment if you ask me; some of my favorite meals of all time have come from that tiny little restaurant.

So now you’ve met meal #1 from the day of “making food for Josh that he absolutely loves and I never make for some reason”. What did the rest of this lovely holiday consist of? Well…

In the afternoon I went to Josh’s work – Meebo. They asked me to be a judge for their Valentine’s Day baking contest! Much fun and indulgence was had by all. AND! I got a cute little book on cupcakes for all of the super hard work that goes into judging a baking contest. I’m available for next year, just FYI.

After that, it was time to get started on dinner! And what was the second food Josh loves that I had never made? RIBS. Again, don’t know what my problem was there, but I fixed it! I also made two of his favorite sides: roasted asparagus, and rustic (aka I couldn’t be bothered with peeling them) mashed potatoes.

By the way, I’ll definitely be coming back with a rib recipe in the near future – the technique I used was unbelievably easy and yielded amazing results!

For now, I leave you with the croque madame!

Click here to view this recipe.

Sometimes your timing is just off. Like right now. The beginning of this week was all rainy and gloomy-like, causing me to dream of a thick, hearty stew. But by the time I bought the ingredients and got around to making one, I think it was about 68 degrees and sunny. Where is all this infamous Bay Area weather I kept hearing about? I think it’s Mother Nature’s timing that’s off.

Oh well. Every once in a while, Father Time smiles upon you. Like a night last year when I poked my head in the fridge and pulled out a few things at random to start dinner.  I had no idea what the finished product would be, but the stars aligned, and this stew was born.

Pure happenstance, I tell you. Red potatoes, fresh baby spinach – these are things I don’t often have on hand unless I’m planning a dish ahead of time that requires their presence in my kitchen. But there they were, along with chicken thighs, leeks, carrots, shallot, and thyme. Usual suspects. Oh – I was also going through simultaneous Marsala wine and red lentil phases at the time, so they came to the party, too.

And what a party it was! The center of attention, of course, was the chicken. She had way too much to drink – that Marsala is strong stuff! Thankfully her friends shallot and leek were there to mellow her out a bit.

This stew will delight any chicken fan. The meat to veggie scale is heavily weighted on the chicken side. And! It’s all swimming in a warm, super thick chickeny bath. Use homemade chicken stock if you have it (if you don’t, it’s time to make some!) – it really intensifies the chickenyness of this stew. Yes, I just said chickenyness.

Click here to view this recipe.

Whoa, where did this day go?! I guess I got a little distracted by that amazing 49ers game (and black bean hummus, and good beer). That’s kind of how this whole week has felt, actually. I cooked this lovely little side dish on Thursday (I think?) and I’m just now sitting down to tell you about it. So let’s cut right to the chase.

We’re in kale season, and as my friend said the other day, “chicks love kale”. While I agree, I’m willing to bet guys love it just as much (even if they aren’t as ready to admit it). Kale is one of those things that I think is impossible to dislike. If you don’t like kale, you just haven’t had it prepared the right way. So whether you’re a kale lover, a secret kale lover, or a kale skeptic, this is a wonderfully bright and tasty side dish that marries the milder, sweeter variety of kale – lacinato – with some really delicious flavors.

Let’s be honest, could you ever go wrong with lemon zest, parmesan cheese, and garlic? That’s a trio of awesomeness that will lift any dish from the realm of regularity into that of the heavenly. The cannellini beans add a creamy element that can’t be beat. Throw in some tomato paste and red pepper flakes, and we’re golden. On top of it all this dish is pretty easy. A little prep, one pan, and a rich, hearty side dish is all yours. Or I guess you could share. Just don’t be surprised if you convert some skeptics with this one, or better yet, get a guy to admit they love kale.

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I’ve always loved any kind of meal-in-a-bowl. Or in this case, a meal-in-a-ramekin. Especially in the fall; it makes comfort food all the more comforting. This one is loaded with all kinds of quintessential fall goodies: leeks, butternut squash, rainbow chard, and turkey. This is a great use for the last of that Thanksgiving turkey, by the way. For next year. I hope you aren’t eating two week old turkey.

In my case, I scored one on sale at the grocery store about a week after Thanksgiving. I had cooked many kinds of turkey before, but never a whole one. I thought this would be a great opportunity to practice roasting a whole turkey without having to worry about serving it to anyone but Josh! He would understand if we had to go out for pizza instead. On Thanksgiving… I don’t think people would be so accepting.

So with the combined guidance of Michael Symon and Ina Garten (I used his technique with her flavor profile) I created THIS. I was so excited, I didn’t know what to do with myself. Except eat it of course. Not only did it look beautiful and taste amazing, but I’ve never had a juicier piece of turkey meat. All hail the butter soaked cheesecloth! Anyway, we’ll get into that later; I’m getting off track.

Since this pot pie has a lot of hearty fall flavors in it, I wanted to make sure it didn’t feel heavy. I used puff pastry for the crust (let’s not kid ourselves – puff pastry is pure fat but it feels lighter than a feather!), skipped the heavy cream in favor of Greek yogurt, and added a little lemon zest to brighten it up. The result is satisfying without leaving you in a post-pie food coma.

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