FFWD Minted Zucchini Tagliatelle

When I saw the title of title of this recipe I was pretty excited.  I make a pasta with (cooked) zucchini that's been julienned and pesto that I really like.  It's a great way to use up zucchini, and a little bit healthier than just eating pasta with pesto (although I do that frequently too!).  I was hoping this recipe would be similar to that one.  I was pretty disappointed when I opened the book and realized that this didn't actually include pasta, and that the zucchini remains raw.  I'm lucky that I really enjoy all vegetables (except for mushrooms), but I'm kind of picky about which ones I'll eat raw, and zucchini isn't really one of them.  But, it's for the blog so I tried to have an open mind and make it anyway.  I followed the recipe exactly, but substituted in half yellow squash for the zucchini.  For some reason Paul has grown an absurd amount of yellow squash this year, but almost no zucchini, and it just seemed crazy to go out and buy zucchini.

This recipe wasn't hard to put together (thanks to my mandoline), but the prep did take a while, and then the hour it requires in the fridge made it pretty slow for a weeknight.  It was okay, but not something I'd make again.  I just wasn't that excited about it.  To go with it I served pasta and another squash dish - I told you I had a lot to use up!  The second dish was another Canal House one with harissa, olives, and feta.  It was much more exciting.

I also made the Salmon in a Jar recipe last week; another catch-up from last summer.  I was really looking forward to it, and maybe set my expectations too high, but it wasn't as good as I hoped it would be.  It was definitely good, but I liked the potatoes better than the fish (and I normally love salmon), and felt completely overwhelmed by all of the leftover olive oil that I had to use up.  So, all in all, nothing was bad, but this hasn't been my favorite French Fridays week.

FFWD Peach Melba

I had an impossible time photographing this dish.  The combination of the lighting (it was dark out), my dark table, and my dessert glass just didn't work at all.  Luckily, this was much easier to make - and to eat - than it was to photograph.  I decided to make the raspberry-cassis ice cream that Dorie recommends and was so glad I did.  It was quick to make, the consistency was perfect, and I loved the clean, fresh flavor.  A perfect summer ice cream, but I love that it can be made year-round with frozen berries.  The dessert as a whole was definitely good, but the ice cream really stole the show.  This would also be a perfect dinner party dessert.  It's pretty and tasty enough for company, and everything but the assembly can be done ahead of time.  We canned 12 quarts of peaches last month, and I'm looking forward to using them to make this dessert in the winter.  It's always fun to be reminded of summer!

TWD Popovers

I've been meaning to make popovers for a while now, but have never gotten around to it.  I don't know what I've been waiting for.  These were incredibly easy.  I love recipes that involve nothing more than throwing simple ingredients into a blender and processing.  The only change I made to the recipe was replacing almost all of the white flour with whole grain flour.  I had only wanted to replace about half of the flour, but I actually ran out of white.  I thought it worked surprisingly well.  I'm sure they weren't quite as light and fluffy as they would have been otherwise, but I liked the additional flavor the multi-grain flour gave the popovers, and they still had a very nice texture.

My only complaint comment is that my popovers were not uniformly shaped at all.  I'm not exactly sure what I did wrong.  I poured the batter evenly into my muffin tins, only made five per 12 cup tin, and most of them still looked like they grew at an angle (the one in the photo on the right is representative).  I'm wondering if it's because my oven is uneven.  I'm curious to see if anyone else had this problem.  These were great on their own, and even better with the homemade blackberry jam that I canned a few weeks ago.


This post participates with Tuesdays with Dorie.  Visit our hosts Paula and Amy to get the recipe, and go here to see what everyone else thought of the recipe.

FFWD Cafe Style Grated Carrot Salad

Sometimes I worry that my blog reads like an advertisement for Sara Moulton, but I do absolutely love her.  Her Cooking Live show is my first memory of watching the Food Network, and still my favorite.  I just loved how calm, and real, she always seemed.  I also own - and love - all three of Sara's cookbooks.  Which gets me to my point.  I already have a carrot salad recipe.  It's Sara's.  It starts with cumin seeds and olive oil, adds paprika and lemon juice, and finishes with golden raisins and sliced green olives with pimentos.  It is my favorite carrot salad and one of my favorite salads, period.  Whenever I make it, I have to stop myself from eating the entire bowl.  I certainly didn't need another carrot salad recipe, and if it wasn't for the blog I probably wouldn't have tried this one, but here we are.  

Paul's carrots have been doing great this year, so to start my salad I just had to go out to the yard to pick some.  I love having carrots so readily-available (although I hate the 20 mosquito bites I acquired in the 5 minutes I spent in the yard!).  As I was making the salad, it was all I could do to stop myself from adding the green olives.  I continued to follow the recipe, using my fancy walnut mustard and adding golden raising and toasted walnuts.  (Dorie recommended the mustard on OpenSky.  It was a splurge but I absolutely love it).  Paul took a bite of the salad, and commented on how great it was.  I asked him if it was better than Sara's.  First he said yes, he thought it might be.  I gave him a look.  Then he said no, he thought they were both good, but appreciated having this one as a change.  I tried the salad.  It was surprisingly good.  Not as good as Sara's (at least in my opinion), but the walnut mustard and toasted walnuts did give it a nice flavor.  I'm actually considering making it again for a barbecue on Sunday.  I guess there might be room in my life for two carrot salad recipes!

FFWD Warm Scallop Salad with Corn, Nectarines, and Basil

Paul and I got into a little bit of an argument about this recipe.  When we sat down to eat I told him that Dorie had said (in the recipe headnotes) that it was a little bit of a stretch to put this in a French cookbook since it was really something she had made in Connecticut, but that she had made it once in France.  Paul started to argue that the recipe seemed to have more of a California than a New England influence.  I probably should have just smiled and nodded, but I wanted to defend Dorie.  I started to argue back that the combination of fresh seafood, corn, and tomatoes is very New England and that he shouldn't be arguing with Dorie, who clearly knows much more about this than he does!  Regardless of its origins, we both really enjoyed this salad.  It's hard to go wrong with summer produce that's this fresh.  I'm not totally sure how I feel about the nectarines - I think they might be better chopped up - they didn't feel like they really incorporated into the salad, but I definitely enjoyed all of the flavors and how easy this was to put together.

FFWD Tomato-Cheese Tartlets

I always laugh when people negatively review recipes, but then in their comments happen to mention that they made substitutions for half of the ingredients and didn't actually follow any of the instructions.  It cracks me up, but I doubt the recipe writers are quite as amused!  But this is my blog so I'll comment anyway, even though I don't think I've actually earned the right.  

I had already done my shopping for the week when the recipe was posted, so I decided just to wing it with whatever I had in the house.  This probably would have worked out okay, if my oven had chosen to cooperate.  When I got home I started to preheat the oven while I rolled out the puff pastry dough.  The oven still wasn't hot yet, so I worked on preparing the toppings.  It still wasn't hot, but I figured I was just hungry and being impatient, so I started working on the salad.  Luckily, I finally opened up the oven and realized it was completely cold.  Paul took a look and decided it must be the igniter (we're still waiting for the part to arrive to test this theory - I'm really hoping he's able to fix it!), so the oven was out.  Since it worked so well for other things we, stupidly, decided to try to cook the puff pastry on the grill.  These were obviously way too delicate for the completely uneven heat on the grill.  I was only going to share the top picture but, in the interest of honesty, here's how the "tartlets" turned out.

I ended up eating the only non-burned one and Paul ate the non-burnt halves of the other pieces (I decided it was his fault they were burnt because he was in charge of the grill).  The pastry definitely didn't puff, but it was cooked enough to be edible.  Topped with olive tapenade (that I actually had leftover in the fridge), a combination of fresh and sun-dried cherry tomatoes, and some good sharp cheese, they were actually pretty good.  This is definitely a recipe I'd try again, when I actually have a working oven!

TWD Berry Galette

This recipe really is a keeper.  (My mom and I still say that.  I thought it was so funny to read in the recipe head-notes that it is an expression used by old-fashioned cookbooks.)  I was very excited to make this recipe and everything started out very well.  Paul and I went to a pick-your-own farm this weekend.  In addition to 50+ pounds of tomatoes and 20+ pounds of peaches to can, we picked blackberries and raspberries.  Combined with some store-bought blueberries, I had the perfect filling ready for the galette.

The trouble started when I started to make the dough.  I'm really curious to see if anyone else had problems with it.  I thought I followed the directions exactly, but I must have mis-read or mis-measured something, because after mixing it in the food processor I was left with a very wet, sticky mess.  It wouldn't even come close to forming a ball.  My only change was substituting half of the AP flour with whole grain flour, but that should have made the dough drier, if anything.  I didn't know what to do, so I just threw small handfuls of flour - trying to alternate between AP, whole grain, and cornmeal - into the dough and kept mixing with my hands until it was dry enough to form a (very sticky) ball.  I then threw it in the freezer (I didn't have the full two hours to refrigerate it) and tried to forget about it.  When I came back to it - after leaving it on the counter long enough for it to thaw - it was still very sticky, but with some AP flour for the board I was able to roll it into a circle.  

I was still worried about the texture of the crust, but continued on.  From there, the recipe came together very quickly.  I skipped the sugar and just drizzled honey on top of the berries.  The galette was ready to bake, but my oven is currently broken, so Paul offered to try grilling the galette.  I was nervous (especially after some mishaps over the weekend) but didn't have a better idea, so we went for it.  We checked the galette frequently, and after about 30 minutes it looked perfect.  We tasted it and it was just delicious.  I couldn't believe that the crust had come out so well.  I love the simplicity of it.  The star really is the fruit.  My only complaint was how small it is!  I wish I had made two!

Our hosts for the week are Lisa and Andrea.  Go to their sites for the recipe, and to the TWD site to see what everyone else thought.