Other comments from the readers was that the cookies don't spread much when cooking, which is a bonus. I'm not sure what makes a cookie spread or not - the overall structure of the dough has to do with it I'm sure but the temperature of the dough counts too. But PB is darn sticky so I guess that might be why it didn't spread either. BTW, that's the strawberry vanilla jam in those cookies.
Yum, yum, yum!! Tastes just like a PB&J sammie and made Patty a believer (she says she's not a PB fan, I see 3 jars of PB in your pantry that beg to differ...)
Next was something savory to go with the Rose wine and Pink Peppercorn Jelly - pork seemed like a good option for that and Porchetta was the first thing that came to mind. I have to take a side bar here and tell you all that I LOVE porchetta - which is an italian pork roast with garlic and herbs. Every time I think about porchetta, I think about my semester in Italy and the market that was daily in our piazza and the porchetta man. Yup, porchetta man. This guy had a food truck-like van and sold pork products - sausages and porchetta. We could just run down the stairs of our building and across the street to the porchetta man for a sandwich and life was good.... Well needless to say, with all that nostalgia, I have yet to make porchetta. Since we have some dietary issues with garlic in Patty's household, I tried to look for a recipe that was lower on the garlic factor but still high in the flavor department. I stumbled upon this recipe from Esquire magazine in the "Man Food" section...it's pork, stuffed with pork!!
First brown a sliced fennel bulb. Add pork sausage and fennel fronds (and some other stuff, Patty made this while I was making cookies...read the recipe if you wanna know the specifics). Let filling cool to room temp.
Patty flirted with the butcher at the store to have him so expertly butterfly out the pork shoulder roast. Fill with stuffing and roll like a jelly roll.
Secure with butchers twine (also procured by flirtation).
Now for the record, Patty wants me to tell y'all that she did the running suture on the pork roll on the left and I did the measly 3 knots on the right... In my defense - she's a nurse, I'm a pharmacist...I never learned how to suture and she works at urgent care on the side...it was no contest!!
Place your rolls of goodness on top of sliced onions and bake at 350 degrees for 2.5 hours.
When you slice them, they look like this! Fabulous with the pink peppercorn jelly and the apple-pear sauce we made. Yum, yum, yum. This is what Sunday cooking is like for us all the time...well not really - but maybe it should be.
The cooking continued and I made Squash bread based on a recipe from America's Test Kitchen. Love America's Test Kitchen. If you have never heard of them, look on PBS for their show. They test recipes over and over tweaking as they go to make the best recipe for anything. They also use ingredients you can find in the regular grocery store. They also have a great magazine and I recently stumbled upon their podcast - all great things.
What I liked about this recipe is that you cook the pumpkin on the stove first. They did it to get the "can" taste out of the canned pumpkin, I thought it would work well with the hook squash I cooked last week because it was a little on the watery side, so this helped concentrate those flavors. You add the spices as well. Once the squash has cooked down, you add cream cheese.
Add the other ingredients once the mixture has cooled down a bit and add the topping...
Yay, squash bread! And a delicious breakfast it makes too!
Phew! What a day of cooking. What I didn't take pictures of was a lasagna we made with the tomato sauce I made last week....we are stocked with delicious goodies for the rest of the week! Although I hear there is a refrigerator monster at Patty's house.
After all that work, a glass of wine was well deserved, especially in these cute glasses Patty got from a glass blower while she was on vacation in North Carolina. Love the colors.
No comments:
Post a Comment