Coq au Riesling

Mar 8, 2014

Having family stay with me always means I’m going to try something special in the kitchen. This one had been at the top of the list for quite a while. But while it seems kind of fancy (it’s a little like the chicken version of boeuf bourguignon), it’s actually not that difficult or time consuming. And it tastes awesome.

This dish’s flavor combination is so rich and layered—you build a base of the bacon and onions and garlic sauteed in butter and oil, simmer for a while with some sweet white wine, then finish the whole thing with some cream. It’s rich, but not overly so—the mushrooms and chicken keep it from becoming too much.

You can serve as you see fit, over rice or pasta or mashed potatoes. While I’m not really a mashed potato person, my garlic mashed potatoes were the perfect foil for the sauce (which is fairly runny). You probably do need to serve it over something, though, or the sauce will be hard to corral.

Souper Jenny’s Hungarian Mushroom Soup

Feb 25, 2014

All this cold weather and the snow days we’ve been having have made me crave soup. So I dug out some old Souper Jenny recipes and this guy jumped out at me.

Souper Jenny is an Atlanta (Buckhead, to be specific) institution. The owner and her staff have been serving healthy, fresh soups, sandwiches, and salads to crowds often backing out the door for over 15 years. A while back a few co-workers and I got to do a cooking class with the head chef, where she walked us through making five of their awesome soups in a couple hours.

When perusing the recipes initially, I was least excited about mushroom soup. So I was shocked when we were tasting everything later and this may have been my favorite—or right up there with the lamb & Guinness stew. The flavors were so much more complex than I expected, the scent was amazing, and the creaminess really hit the spot. It was also super easy, a win in my book.

Julia Child’s Boeuf Bourguignon

Nov 17, 2013

This is going to be kind of epically long, guys. But don’t be scared, because this is totally doable.

I’ll tell you a not-so-secret: I don’t like roast or stew. Never have. Growing up in the Midwest, with grandparents who raised cattle, I ate a lot of roast with little potatoes and carrots. Even beer or deer roast on occasion. And it just never did it for me. That’s why I’ve never had that same fascination with Julia Child’s boeuf bourguignon that other cooks seem to have. To me looking at it, you put tons of work in and at the end you get…stew??

My mom came into town a couple weekends ago and brought me, among other things, my new car (my hip wasn’t up to 16 hours in the car), apples and potatoes from my grandma’s garden, and a bunch of new steaks and roasts. As I was poking through recipes, looking for something we could attempt together, I kept coming back to Julia Child’s classic dish. For one, I felt like I had to attempt it just from a “legitimate cook” standpoint, plus I have an unholy fear of raw meat, so I figured my mom could help me trim and cut up the roast. So we decided to give it a go.

What I wasn’t prepared for was how GOOD it was! My house smelled amazing all day, and when we finally got to taste the sauce?? OH MAN. Layers upon layers of rich flavor. This wasn’t just stew or roast, this was beef in awesome sauce. I realize it’s a little more work than a typical roast or stew, but if you’re going to be home all day and can tend to it from time to time, what you get in the end is totally worth it. And there’s wine, so that should be incentive enough…

Rosemary Chicken Lasagna

Mar 10, 2013

When my mom was here a couple months ago, we got quite ambitious with dinner one night. We started with this rosemary chicken lasagna, which I’d been wanting to make for forever, and finished with white chocolate lemon lava cakes. And despite the work, we weren’t sorry—we WERE stuffed!

The flavor on this lasagna was so interesting! The rosemary added a nice depth to the bechamel, the chicken and mushrooms provide good protein, and the lemon zest was such a lovely counterpoint to the richness of the cheese and sauce.

It was nice to have the second set of hands when assembling everything and making the bechamel, but it’s a fairly easy recipe—just make sure to give yourself enough time so you’re not frantic trying to put it together. For me, being frantic takes the fun out of cooking.

This is definitely the most interesting chicken lasagna recipe I’ve seen, and I will definitely be making it again!