Roasted Chicken with Lemon, Caper & Parsley Sauce

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Roasted Chicken with Lemon & Caper Sauce

Ever since we entered September, all I’ve wanted to do is lie in bed, wrapped up in a quilt with the breeze blowing through my open window, and read.  Well, that and gorge on comfort foods (ahem, see that time I baked and ate way, way too many chocolate cookies).

My latest addition to my fall comfort food repertoire was these roasted chicken thighs.  I baked the chicken with sliced red potatoes and made a 2-minute pan sauce with capers, lemon, parsley, and a few dots of butter.  It ended up being exactly what I was looking for–minimal effort with big comfort food results and just the sort of thing I’d happily eat any night of the week.

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Chewy Chocolate Cookies with Rum-Soaked Cherries

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Double Chocolate Rum Cherry Cookies

I have a complicated relationship with chocolate.  I spent the first 20 or so years of my life not liking it at all.  Marbled birthday cake?  I’ll just eat the white parts, thank you very much.  Oreo cookies?  Yup, I was the type to lick out the centers and try to pass off the slobbery wafers on unsuspecting siblings.  Chocolate ice cream?  Honestly, I’m still not into it.

But at some point, a little chocolate seed in my food brain started to sprout and now I find myself craving it from time to time.  You don’t see a lot of chocolaty recipes around here, because my cravings tend to require immediate action–no time for recipes or pictures.  When I need chocolate, there’s usually not time to wait around for butter to soften or ovens to preheat, it’s more of a how-can-I-get-half-a-bag-of-chocolate-chips-into-my-mouth-as-quickly-as-possible sort of situation.

Well, I found myself in a days-long chocolate mood last week.  My pantry was in rough shape–not a chocolate chip or baking bar in sight.  I cleaned out my freezer, hoping to find a forgotten brownie or slice of cake.  No luck.  I tried concocting a frothy/sludgy iced mocha with cocoa powder; didn’t work.  I needed intense chocolate, something I could hold onto, chewy, fudgy, and decadent.  I needed to do it right.  I needed a big batch of cookies.

These cookies are everything I could’ve asked for and most definitely worth a trip to the grocery store/waiting for the oven to preheat.  They are intensely chocolaty, fudgy in the center, chewy around the edges.  I snuck in a handful of rum-soaked cherries but I imagine chopped walnuts or candied ginger being equally delicious.

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Swiss Chard Torta with Pine Nuts & Raisins

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Swiss Chard Torta with Pine Nuts & RaisinsEvery time I step into my backyard, I am amazed by how much Swiss chard my little garden is capable of producing.  For going on 2 months, I’ve been eating chard a few times a week either with pasta or in garlicky sautés with potatoes or beans.  And while I’m still not sick of it, I have started looking for a few new ways to prepare it.

This past weekend, I looked to one of my forever-favorite cookbooks for inspiration, Marcella Hazan’s Essentials of Italian Cooking and found a recipe for tegliata di biete, a Swiss chard torta with pine nuts and raisins.  Now this is the kind of recipe you might skip over if you were simply flipping through the book and didn’t happen to be sitting on a mountain of chard, but it’s exactly the sort of recipe I love to stumble upon.  There’s nothing especially flashy about, but it’s a perfect example of how with effort and care, a few simple ingredients can be transformed into something entirely new, nuanced and intriguing.

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Croatian Chard with Potatoes & Garlic (Blitva)

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Croatian Swiss Chard with Potatoes
It’s been a little while since I’ve shared a new recipe here.  I didn’t mean for it to be that way, it’s just that a switch flipped and, magically, summer began.  Suddenly, I was less interested in spending time in the kitchen and a whole lot more interested in digging up dirt and taking long walks.    

Now, of course, I’ve still had to eat but it’s mostly been a lot of mishmash salads and really simple dinners.  One of my recent favorite simple (and slightly extravagant) dinners was an evening spent on my patio, eating a giant T-bone and a big pot of garlicky Swiss chard and potatoes.  And don’t get me wrong, though the steak was certainly nothing to sneeze at, I think I was actually more upset when I finished my last strand of chard.

So let me give you a little background on this side dish–I certainly didn’t invent it and, quite honestly, I think a few years ago I would have thought it was an odd combination.  Around this time last year, I took a trip to Croatia and was first introduced to blitva, garlicky sautéed Swiss chard with potatoes.  I saw it on darned near every menu, ordered it a few times, and worked it into my repertoire once I got home. 

Dubrovnik Rooftops

 

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Coriander, Fennel & Mint Lamb Meatballs

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Lamb Meatballs

It’s no secret, my eating habits are largely dictated by the weather and these meatballs are certainly no exception.  Last week, I found myself in my cozy kitchen seeking shelter from a spring slop-storm and immediately scrapped the “oh, I’ll just make a nice healthy salad for dinner” plan I’d originally had and made a big pile of meatballs for dinner instead.

And I’ve got to say, these meatballs were worth suffering through the bout of spring slush to experience.  They’re tender and fragrant, spiced with coriander and fennel, that have been simmered in a simple tomato sauce.  They’re speckled with black olives, spiked with fresh mint, and just the thing to put on your plate on a rainy night.

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