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StrawberryPlum Turns 2!

Afternoon at the Kitchen TableJust like that, a year came and went and my little blog is celebrating another birthday.  2!  It’s been 2 years since I started arming myself with the camera upon entering the kitchen.  2 years of using my blog as a reason to spurge on figs at the grocery store.  2 years of sharing words, pictures, and recipes.

Let’s use this milestone as an excuse to take an afternoon coffee and cake break (like I need an excuse…) and spend a moment looking back on some of the best recipes and my favorite posts of the year.  Thank you for being here!

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Zucchini & Caramelized Onion Gratin

Zucchini & Caramelized Onion GratinI’m not entirely sure which is more abundant this time of year, zucchini or zucchini recipes.  And with that said, this is my contribution to the year’s zucchini files.

I’m standing tall and proud next to my contribution–this gratin is so delicious I’ll be tempted to devote next year’s garden entirely to zucchini!  Thin rounds of zucchini are layered and baked with caramelized onions and creamy Fontina cheese.  Breadcrumbs and Parmesan add a crispy, nutty layer of flavor to the top and bottom and a smattering of olives and/or anchovies adds a salty briny-ness that counters the sweet onions.

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Chickpea, Tuna & Caper Orecchiette Pasta Salad

Tuna, Chickpea & Caper Orecchiette Pasta SaladI thought I was done blogging.  I thought I’d finally had enough of the self-imposed stress and enough standing on chairs, photographing my dinner.  I’d thought I was ready put the project on the shelf for good.

The first couple of weeks were fun and it was certainly refreshing to cook without a notepad and a camera at my side.  I drank wine while I made dinner and didn’t worry about low-lighting or measuring cups.  I ate the same thing for days on end because, dang it, I felt like it and it wasn’t like I needed to come up with fresh content for a blog anymore.  

But then it started making me feel kind of sad.  And lonesome.  I missed the game, missed putting a little piece of myself out in the world.  So I’m taking it on again, with more of a relaxed approach.  I’m not going to feel bad if I don’t post every week, if my pictures aren’t perfect, if I don’t blog my way out of my day job.  I’m not going to worry that someone might not think something I post isn’t creative enough (who wants “creative” food all the time anyway?).  I’m going to remember why I started a food blog in the first place: because I love to cook and eat and my home kitchen is one of my happiest places.

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Tarragon, Scallion & Crème Fraîche Egg Salad

Tarragon, Scallion & Creme Fraiche Egg Salad SandwichGrowing up, my mother would religiously (pun somewhat intended) boil off a dozen eggs every year on Good Friday.  We’d color them, put them in our Easter baskets, and come Monday morning, toss them all in the trash.  Well, not quite all–I’d usually work up the courage to try one, gag, and vow to never subject myself to another and one of my brothers would inevitably hide a couple in my closet to be discovered later in the week.

Needless to say, we were not a hard-boiled egg family.  I thought everyone one like us, I thought everyone realized just how disgusting hard-boiled eggs were.  I didn’t realize plenty of people were raised loving egg salad sandwiches and most siblings would fight each over a deviled egg instead of seeing them as something only to be eaten on a dare.

A year or two ago, I made a conscious decision to give hard-boiled eggs an honest try.  I cracked open my “America’s Test Kitchen” cookbook and taught myself the proper way to boil an egg.  I started adding them to salads.  At first, I found them challenging.  Then I found them satisfying.  I even started to crave them and, eventually, I came around to what used to be my worst nightmare: egg salad.

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Parisian Gnocchi with Arugula Pistou & Crispy Prosciutto

Parisian Gnocchi 2

When people discover you have a food blog, suddenly everyone has a great idea for what you should cook next.  I get a whole lot of (well-intentioned) requests for things like gluten-free baking ideas, cute holiday treats, and homemade girl scout cookies/bloomin’ onions/pumpkin spice lattes/etc.  In other words, I often find myself gently reminding folks that I’m capable of eating an entire baguette on my way home from the grocery store so gluten-free baking is really not something I have a huge interest in, that “cute” is something I do very poorly, and there’s this special place called Pinterest where I’m sure those “top-secret” recipes you want me to recreate already exist.

So when my boss approached me with, “d’you know what would be great for your blog?” I braced myself and started thinking of ways to let him down easy and hold on to my job.  But he followed it up with, “Parisian gnocchi.  I think you readers would really like it.  Do you want my recipe?” 

Umm…yes, absolutely!  Finally, a suggestion I didn’t have to politely turn away! 

(Okay, fine. If you don’t know me in real life and you’ve never wandered over to my about page, I suppose it bears mentioning that my “real” job is waiting tables, so it helps that my boss happens to be the chef of a French restaurant.)

So armed with Vincent’s recipe, I went home to make Parisian gnocchi.  Parisian gnocchi are unlike the Italian gnocchi you’re probably more familiar with.  Instead of relying on potatoes, Parisian gnocchi are made with cheese-enriched pâte à choux, which is the same type of pastry dough that’s used make gougères, profiteroles, and other such treats.  Yup, copious amounts of cheese, butter, and egg–leave it to the French.  The cheesy choux pastry is piped into simmering water and poached.  From there, you can go ahead and eat them or shock them in cold water, then sauté and sauce them later.  I’ll walk you through the how-to and show you how I served mine.

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