Saturday, May 30, 2015

FFWD Celebration Week: The AHA Moment

This post didn't involve any cooking or even photographing, but was still probably the hardest to write.  Choose only 5 favorites?!?  First I went through the book and listed potentials.  My goal was to find recipes that I really thought were special to AMFT.  I absolutely love eclairs, but I've made excellent eclairs from several cookbooks, so those were out.  When I got through the book I had a list of 14 recipes.  Second, I cheated and looked ahead to the next celebratory weeks.  Roast Chicken for Les Parasseux was a definite contender, but I know it'll be my play-it-again recipe, so I decided to save it for later.  Then, I did the best I could to choose 5 from what was left.  Here they are:

#5) I remember when I made the Cheese-Topped Onion Soup that I was hoping not to like the recipe.  It's a lot more work than my usual onion soup recipe, and I was hoping it wouldn't be worth it.  It totally was!  We both absolutely loved it, agreeing that it was much better than my usual onion soup.  It's a little hot for soup in DC right now, but this is definitely a recipe I'll turn to again and again in the fall and winter months.

#4) Anybody who knows me shouldn't be surprised that two out of my five favorites are desserts.  (And it was hard to limit myself to just two!).  I've had a lot of apple cakes, and Marie-Helene's Apple Cake is definitely my favorite so far.  I loved that it really just tasted like apples, with enough butter and rum to hold it all together.  Another recipe that I'm looking forward to making this fall!

#3) The Deconstructed BLT and Eggs will always hold a soft spot in my heart because it's the first recipe I made with the group (and my first-ever blog post).  It's also one that I love.  Especially in the summer, this is my favorite way of eating.  It feels relatively light because it's a salad, but has delicious bacon and eggs on top.  At least in my book, it needs nothing else but bread or crackers to feel like a complete meal.

#2) I never would have predicted this, but I think the most revelatory dessert in the book for me was the Floating Islands.  We aren't big fans of meringue and I didn't expect to really like these, but they were absolutely delicious.  I just couldn't get enough of the contrasting textures.  I served these with poached figs, but I think they'd be good with absolutely anything.

#1)  My favorite recipe from AMFT is also the first one that I made, the Pumpkin Stuffed with Everything Good.  I found this recipe online before I owned the book, I think it may have been my introduction to Dorie, and absolutely loved it.  It's one of the reasons I knew that buying the book and joining this group was a good idea.  I make it at least once a year, and love it every time.  I know part of it's beauty is that it's completely adaptable, but I usually stick pretty close to the original recipe.  I mean, how could you go wrong with bread, bacon, cheese, and heavy cream?  

This walk down memory lane has certainly made me hungry.  I'm sad that we're almost done cooking together, I do hope we'll stay in touch, but I know the AMFT cookbook will continue to get a lot of use in my kitchen.

16 comments:

  1. I agree, this was more difficult than cooking. Great choices, and I had
    forgotten about the Deconstructed BLT and Eggs. That was a good one.

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  2. Marie Helene was a clear winner of this exercise! Great list Jora!

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  3. Wonderful choices! The floating islands were a definite aha moment for me - who knew something so elegant would be so easy to make?

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  4. Love your choices, Jora! The Pumpkin is also one of my favorites…I make it each fall to rave reviews! I will have to revisit the Deconstructed BLT and Eggs…I forgot all about it!

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  5. You have such a great list! I love a number of your recipes too - and a couple made my short list. Like you, I was thankful for the next couple of weeks to spotlight some of the other delicious recipes. This really is a lot of fun to see what everyone thinks!!

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  6. Choosing favourites was a hard task! I like your list and the reasons why you liked them.

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  7. Reviewing everyone's lists has made me very hungry today. I like your list and I need to make all those recipes. My job on what to cook next is getting much easier.

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  8. How cool is it that almost everyone has a soft spot for the apple cake and the pumpkin? I haven't made the apple cake enough to grant it a spot in my top 5. The pumpkin's versatility can't be beat. :-)

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  9. This was so fun. I enjoyed the stuffed pumpkin but have really gotten a kick out of seeing how many folks added that to their top five. Wow- would not have called that one, which makes this all the more fun. You nailed it too with the fact that even though we weren't actually cooking, this was a challenging week. I had not gone back to look over old posts in a long time and when I started sorting them the trip down memory lane had many detours as I started re-reading all the old posts. All fun - here's to celebration week #2 ~

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  10. Ha! 3 out of 5 of yours are also on my list. Obviously, we both have excellent taste.

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  11. Beautiful insights! I love this list. You always remember the first recipe you make with this group. :)

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  12. What fun to see your list! Great choices! I'll admit it's hard to pick just 5 favorites. I know I look forward to continuing to follow whatever cooking adventures you have time to blog about. I hope we'll keep in touch too.

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  13. Such great choices! I loved that apple cake, too :) Way too many good recipes from which to choose!

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  14. I took the same approach to looking ahead and removing all of my most repeated so that the two lists would be unique. Still not easy. I loved all of the recipes on your list and am now hungry after reading your post. Which might be ok if I hadn't just eaten breakfast!

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  15. I am in awe of your discipline to narrow this down to five.
    The floating islands were really delicious - I can remember ordering them for dessert at a French restaurant in NYC not to long after we made them for FF. My comment was that Dorie's version was better. FFwD has ruined me for most restaurant meals....

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  16. ooooh the BLT and eggs were a great one! its too hard to limit it to five! :)

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