Weekend Cooking: The Kitchen Journal 13

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Because of travel and work and other events, this was my first real week of cooking since our summer CSA ended. As much as I love getting my box of veggies, its always feels so freeing to be able to plan meals without the restriction of the weekly harvest.

New Recipes: I tried several new recipes this week, and the two winners were both from Bon Appetit.

Eggplant Parmesan with Fresh Mozzarella is perfect for family meals, but I wouldn't hesitate to serve it to company. The recipe calls for roasting the eggplant in the oven, but if I served this in the summer, I'd likely roast it on the grill. The seal of approval came from Mr. BFR, who claims not to like eggplant; for this meal, however, he went back for seconds. The leftovers heated up beautifully and tasted just as good the second night.

Black Bean Soup with Roasted Poblano Chiles made a wonderful warming casual dinner with enough left over for our lunches the next day. I made two changes to the recipe: I added some chopped cilantro and threw in a second dried hot chili (we like the spice!). Oh, and I used my immersion blender instead pouring the hot soup into the blender. The recipe calls for chicken broth, but vegetarians could easily substitute a flavorful vegetable broth.

NOTE: The photos come from the Bon Appetit website and all rights and ownership remain with them.

New Toy: Last week, Sue over at Couscous & Consciousness made pot stickers using a nifty gadget called the Chef'n Pocket Maker. Fortunately, the plastic machine is available around the world, because I just had to have one! Right from the start I was thinking empanadas, which I plan to make one of these days. My first experiment, however, was pizza bites.

I made a regular white bread dough with a bit a of extra butter and used milk instead of water. I let it rise only once before I divided the dough into one-ounce pieces. I rolled each one out and cut it as instructed by the Pocket Maker.

The little machine was so easy to use and my appetizers turned out perfectly! My filling was mozzarella cheese, black olives, onion, and pizza sauce. They were so good and really not very difficult to make at all. Thanks so much to Sue for introducing me to a fun kitchen gadget.