Cottage pie

I don't usually post meat-based dishes on this blog, but now that fall has arrived and temperatures are starting to drop, a hearty, comforting meat-and-potatoes recipe seemed appropriate. Our freezer is stuffed with meat from our CSA and I've really enjoyed trying out new recipes for the various cuts of meat that we receive. We recently got some lamb sausage, which I decided to use for this cottage pie, adapted from Dorie Greenspan's Hachis Parmentier recipe in Around My French Table. While the original recipe uses beef stew meat and pork sausage, I used ground beef and lamb sausage. This is comfort food at its best - warm, tasty, and filling. I especially enjoyed the thin layer of cheese that topped the mashed potatoes, which formed a nice crust as the pie baked. Cooking and eating this cottage pie today has made me finally accept that fall is here for real, and I'm ready to enjoy the beauty of the season and the foods that go with it!

What is your favorite comfort food for when the weather turns cold?

Gorgonzola-apple quiche

I love apples. When I was a kid, my dad would let me pick out 5 or so items (anything I wanted) from the supermarket as incentive for keeping him company while he did the grocery shopping, and a bag of apples was always in my top 5. I realize now that I was a really weird good kid - I can only hope that my future children will be just as good at choosing healthy food over junk! Anyway, fresh apples is one of the things I love most about fall in New England. So many varieties to try, each with unique flavors. Last weekend, after I picked up several pounds of apples from the farmers' market, I realized that I'd never get through them all unless I started cooking with them in addition to just eating them plain. This Gorgonzola-apple quiche from Dorie Greenspan's Around My French Table was the first recipe that caught my eye. I love the combination of Gorgonzola cheese and apples in salads and now I can report that it works just as well in quiche. The quiche really was lovely - very tasty, though not quite traditional, with chunks of sweet-tart apple, salty cheese, and sweet onions. It only used up one apple though...I might have to make it a few more times to get through the rest of the ones I bought!

Do you have any savory apple recipes to share?

Leeks vinaigrette with hard-boiled egg

I've read other bloggers' glowing descriptions of leeks vinaigrette, but the dish never really appealed to me. Boiled leeks, really? How could that be good? So I never bothered to try it, until I saw the recipe in Around My French Table. It includes a grated hard-boiled egg - which resembles mimosa flowers, according to Dorie Greenspan - and this made the dish sound just interesting enough that I decided to finally try it...and it was delicious. I should have known better than to doubt a dish that is a French classic. It was nice to let the leeks be the main component of the dish, instead of chopping them up and using them as an aromatic like I usually do - this preparation really showed off their delicate flavor.

French onion soup

Happy New Year! Starting this blog was one of the best things that I did in 2010 (not the very best thing I did though - that would be marrying Andrew). It's been a wonderful experience so far - this space has truly helped me focus my interest in food, explore new recipes and ingredients, and develop my own ideas about responsible and healthful eating. I'm very much looking forward to this new year of cooking and blogging. I want to take a minute here to thank everyone that has visited this site. I was really nervous about putting myself out there in this way, and your comments and encouragement have meant a lot to me. I wish you all a happy and healthy year, filled with good things to eat.

There's no particular reason why this post is the first one of the new year. It just happens to be something that I made recently that is fitting for dinner on a cold winter night. Better make it a weekend night though, because it starts out almost 40 minutes of cooking onions...it's worth it though. This soup may not be much to look at, but it is gooood. The soup is tasty on its own, but the cheesy toasts on top really make it special. And locally grown onions are plentiful right now, so it's nice to let them be the star of the show for once.

Quiche with summer greens

I buy a lot of vegetables that have greens attached, like turnips, beets, radishes...these greens are all edible and have interesting flavors, and I try hard not to waste them. But I'm really not that good at cooking greens and often struggle with finding ways to use them. Well, I have officially found one really, really good (albeit time-consuming) way - I ended up using last week's turnip and radish greens in a variation of Julia Child's spinach quiche recipe, and it was so good. This preparation took the bitter edge off the greens, embedding them in a creamy custard baked in buttery pastry - it's hard to go wrong when cheese, cream, and butter are involved.

I'm pretty new to Julia Child's recipes, and to French cooking in general. I received Mastering the Art of French Cooking as a wedding gift a few months ago and so far have only made the quiche recipe. That recipe alone is enough to convince me that this book will be a great addition to my cookbook collection - not so much for everyday cooking, but definitely for guests and weekend cooking projects. I made the blue cheese quiche a couple months ago, and had made some extra pastry dough which I stored in the freezer. I thawed it in the fridge for this quiche, and it tasted every bit as good as the freshly made version. I also used 50% whole wheat pastry flour for this dough, which worked really well. This pastry dough requires blind baking (pre-baking, weighted down with dried beans, so that it doesn't get too soggy when you add the filling), which is a bit of a pain - make sure you budget enough time for everything.