Week 12 (2023) - Three Sisters

In Native American culture, the three sisters were corn, squash, and beans, three crops that when planted together, all supported each other to grow and thrive. Those three ingredients were found throughout many Native American recipes, and although we eat plenty of corn, squash, and beans as a family, and it would be easy to find recipes that included any or all of them, I knew I wanted to make something indigenous to the Americas to truly represent this theme. I requested a bunch of cookbooks from the library, and after skimming through them, I settled on the three sisters salad with shallot vinaigrette from The New Native Kitchen: Celebrating Modern Recipes of the American Indian, by Chef Freddie Bitsoie and James O. Fraioli.

The salad included onions, garlic, carrots, celery, thyme, zucchini, corn, white beans, and spinach, with a vinaigrette consisting of lemon juice, shallots, garlic, and olive oil. The vegetables are all cooked, so this was more of a warm/room temperature salad.

We liked this salad, especially the flavors of the vinaigrette. It tasted light and healthy, and was a good match for the heavier components of our dinner (rotisserie chicken and garlic bread). The recipe intro stated that they couldn't match this summer salad (which we ate in early spring) to any particular community, but for us, this will be for the AtWCC for the USA. Since we're doing each state and territory separately, we'll be counting the indigenous recipes that we try there. Now that we've found a bunch of cookbooks, looking forward to trying more!

Week 6 (2024) - Normandy

Normandy is a region in Northern France, and while I have a general familiarity with French cuisine, I wasn't sure what dishes in particular came from Normandy. After reading through a bunch of recipes, I found a bunch of ingredient that were repeated over and over - cheese, cider, apples, and alcohol, specifically Calvados, an apple brandy that is only made in Normandy. I had no interest in cooking with alcohol for this challenge, which eliminated a bunch of dishes that seemed like they wouldn't be quite the same if modified, and my lactose intolerance doesn't really love creamy cheeses like Camembert, also from the region. So finding a recipe for this challenge ended up being far more difficult than I thought it would be!

I eventually settled on endives au jambon (endives with ham), a specialty of Northern France and Belgium, based on recipes from Pardon Your French and Complete France. The endives are cooked first until tender, then wrapped in ham, and then covered with a rich Mornay sauce (basically a béchamel plus grated cheese, which was gruyere in this case). The second recipe topped it with some breadcrumbs and cheese, which I also added. The endives are then baked and sometimes broiled, but I skipped the broiler step since we don't have any sort of bowl-like vessel that's broiler-safe. It turned out fine with just baking, but was missing that nice browned layer on the top.

The only real issue that I found when planning out the cooking was that I had three endives that totaled about 230 grams, while the main recipe I was following had four endives that were around 200 grams each. Big difference. That did mean that the endives cooked faster, but it also meant that I was going to have way too much sauce. Rather than cutting down the sauce recipe since my brain was feeling a little tired, I decided to just use the sauce on top of some celery we had in the fridge that needed to be cooked soon. Surprise celery gratin! I searched to find out the origins of celery gratin to see if I could link it back to Normandy in some way, but couldn't find anything that said that.

The endives were really tasty. Very rich and heavy, definitely not something we would eat all the time, but good. (I say that, but I said that the last time I made celery gratin too, and here we are again, a couple months later, with another celery gratin. It's a good way to use up warehouse club-sized packs of celery.) Perhaps in the future, whenever we get to France, I'll find some way to make some other dishes representing Normandy, but for now, satisfied with how this challenge turned out!

Start of the Year (2024)

First set of challenge blurbs for the 2024 challenge! Hoping to catch up on the other posts from this year before I get even more off track on the timing (again) ...

Week 4 - peeling

Peeling should have been an easy challenge to figure out, but I didn't want to just do something like potatoes because that was something I would use a peeler on. I eventually chose a shaved asparagus salad from Two Peas and Their Pod to be the starting point for our salad. I haven't had much raw asparagus, so this would be something new. Unfortunately, my plans to make a gigantic salad went out the window when my asparagus shavings didn't look nearly as good or robust as the recipe photos, and when the peeler would stop shaving anything but scraps once I got halfway through each piece of asparagus.  I have no idea what I was doing differently or wrong, but it became a bit tedious trying to get good pieces of asparagus, and I was still left with the question of what do with all the parts I couldn't peel. I ended up just doing a small side salad and roasting the rest instead.

I modified the recipe quite a bit for what we had and to simplify it. The salad itself consisted of asparagus, some baby greens (too expensive and rotted too quickly, probably could have skipped), crumbled feta cheese (my sub for shaved parmesan because that was pricey, and the grocery bill was already high due to the $6.99/lb asparagus plus the overpriced salad greens), chopped walnuts (recipe was pistachios, but we already had some open walnuts), and a dressing of olive oil, lemon juice, and some agave. The recipe also included avocados, but the ones at the store didn't look great either. The salad plus the roasted asparagus together cost about $11, which was more than the turkey cheeseburgers I served them with. All together, the meal was probably close to $19. I probably wouldn't make this specific salad again unless I figured out where I went wrong with the peeling, but the small batch I did make did taste good.

Week 5 - celestial

This was the first challenge this year that really puzzled me. All that came to mind was Celestial Seasonings tea, which I didn't really want to do for the challenge, and after reading more about it (here), really, really didn't want to do for the challenge. Ideas that came up in discussion included sun (like sun chips), moon (like mooncakes), planetary designs, and for a long time, the thing that made the most sense to do was something Star Wars-related (and there are some great recipes on their site). In the end, I wasn't feeling super artistic and I wanted to do something that would also work for dinner, not dessert, so I decided to go with zodiac signs, more specifically Pisces, and make fish. 

I found a recipe on Food & Wine for a baked flounder with Parmesan crumbs, and that sounded perfect for this challenge and a nice dinner. The fish was lightly seasoned with salt and pepper, and then topped with a mixture of melted butter, olive oil, parmesan cheese, and panko breadcrumbs. The dish was delicious and so simple to make, and it paired well with some roasted asparagus and smashed potatoes. Not the best for a low-calorie diet or the most affordable (the fish part itself was probably around $11, but not 100% sure because I can't remember the flounder price per piece, which meant a $24 meal when paired with the $8 asparagus and $5 potatoes, but we were absolutely stuffed and had leftover potatoes), but would definitely make all of it again.

Week 7 - discontinued

I was obsessed with the Wild Mountain chicken sandwich at Wendy's back in the early 2000s and so sad when they discontinued it. It was a crispy chicken sandwich with bacon, lettuce, tomato, onion, colby jack cheese (didn't realize we ran out of it before making this so had to substitute), and a southwestern sauce. I used the sauce from a copycat recipe of the Wild Mountain bacon cheeseburger, consisting of (vegan) mayo, paprika, cumin, garlic, lemon juice, cayenne, oregano, salt, and sugar, and I think it turned out pretty close to what I remember (but it has been about 20 years). Approximate cost was $8.95 for three sandwiches, so far cheaper than Wendy's would ever be. It was "only" a chicken sandwich, but I would absolutely make this again for the memories.

Week 10 - balling

My first thought for balling was meatballs, but then it became a challenge to figure out what type of meatball, since just about every culture has some version of meatballs. In the end, we were coming off a week of the flu and more illnesses, everyone was feeling fatigued, and we had to cancel a bunch of grocery trips, so the easiest thing to do was spaghetti and meatballs, something I personally really like anyway. These meatballs were a combination of Impossible burger, onion, garlic powder, breadcrumbs, flax egg, grated parmesan cheese (the green bottle kind), salt, pepper, thyme, and oregano, generally based on the recipe on the Impossible website. 

Rather than make my own sauce (school night, fatigue, etc), I just went with a caramelized onion and garlic jarred sauce and some whole wheat spaghetti. The total for dinner, including the roasted asparagus we ate on the side, was about $15.92, with some extra pasta and sauce left over. I doubt it would have cost this much five years ago (been cleaning out some old receipts), but 2024 prices are ridiculous, even for something basic like spaghetti and meatballs. But it is still cheaper than getting it at a restaurant though for the amount it made. Also, not sure if it was because our cheese was older or what, but our stomachs didn't respond too well to this, even though it did taste good. It did apparently reawaken some interest for spaghetti and meatballs from the little one, which was a nice surprise.

First 10 done (with some more individual posts to come)!