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A New Love: Jacques Pépin's Fast Food
Talking Him Into It - Feeding The Guy
Another Change, and Two Summer Shortcakes
« The Postage Stamp Kitchen - or Why I Love My New Hand Blender | Main | Best NYC Date »
So it may be a little early to be doing next month's Weekend Cookbook Challenge, but events have conspired to put recipes relating to the theme in my path, so here it is, my take on the theme of Foods in Shades of Orange. Many months ago I was given a copy of the beautiful cookbook The Tra Vigne Cookbook: Seasons in the California Wine Country, but I had yet to crack it until last night, when I finally opened it to make the Roasted Beet, Onion and Orange Salad (I had some oranges that I was afraid would go bad and some hazelnuts left over from a baking project, so the recipe looked perfect). I was planning on eating it with some kind of roasted chicken or turkey or something, but I didn't really like the idea of waiting for meat to cook for an hour.
So yesterday when I came across a recipe for Venetian Pumpkin Risotto in the cookbook The Jewish Kitchen (which I've been going through for a work-related project), I thought I had found the perfect solution. My dinner was fairly quick and painless to make, and consisted of both a dish made with oranges and a dish with a nice orange color (aren't the pictures pretty?), but unfortunately, neither recipe really worked out for me. For some reason the salad was not nearly as good on my tongue as it was in my mind, and though The Guy loved the risotto, I found it drier than I like, and the butternut squash didn't retain much flavor in the finished dish. These problems are probably both my fault, since I'm sure the salad is excellent at the Tra Vigne restaurant, and I didn't use the specific type of rice called for in the risotto recipe (I used plain arborio, the book calls for something more specific) and therefor had to add more stock than I should have. Overall it wasn't a bad meal, but I don't think it's a good sign when you don't want to eat the leftovers for lunch.
Posted by georgia to Kitchen and Cooking , Reviews on February 14, 2006 12:57 PM | permalink | Email this post
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Yes, those pictures are SO PRETTY!
That sure stinks that the recipes didn't turn out as well as you would've liked. :( Tsch. I hope you enjoyed participating anyways! :o)
Thank you so much for joining in (yet again!). I hope you had a good Valentine's Day! :o)
Posted by: Alicat at February 15, 2006 10:33 PM
