What's Cooking This Weekend? Weekend of April 4-5, 2009

What's cooking this weekend? Are you having spring weather yet? Picnicking in the park? Or are you still braising and simmering with classic winter comfort food? Either way, it's a great weekend to be in the kitchen. Here are a few ideas for eating, drinking, and cooking from the last week.

Oh, and that plate of gorgeous sandwiches above is from Katin and Brandon's Casual Kitchen tour. So delicious! Makes us want some asparagus right now.

• Simple kitchen solutions: a pretty towel hook, and a recipe holder hack.

• Bacon-wrapped potato bites. All right!

• Have you tried goat yet? Apparently goat is the new lamb. Here's a recipe for succulent goat shanks.

• Tiny IKEA and Sudie's Pocket Renovation: two small but inspiring kitchens.

• Some good ideas for cooking with friends! Your experiences with dinner co-ops, Maria's $79 dinner party for a crowd, tips for plating food, and a cookbook too.

• Tips for keeping your kitchen shelves well-edited and pretty.

• 15 maybe-good-things from IKEA for the kitchen.

• A deliciously unique fruit cobbler.

• Early Easter treats: how Peeps are made (and a DIY recipe too) and a gallery of gorgeous spring cookies.

• Two cheeses to try: ricotta salata, and Humboldt Blue Fog (not a blue cheese).

• Look! DIY Girl Scout cookie recipes - buy a box and make a batch too.

• What kind of cuisine did you grow up with?

• Peanut butter is a good thing. Try barely-baked and completely no-baked peanut butter treats.

• Drinks of the week: double bock beer, herb-infused vodkas, wines for Passover and Easter, sweet ginger tea, and the difference between soy, rice, and almond milks.

• Opalescent blue jellies.

Have a wonderful weekend!

(Image: Kayla Hicks for Apartment Therapy)

Comments (14)

I think I'm gonna try something with wonton wrappers and do some type of vegetarian ravioli thing. Kinda vague. But on the weekends, I enjoy experimenting with food with results that have ranged from horrendous to surprisingly damn good. But, I still consume the horrendous, because wasting food is just wrong.

Tonight is leftovers: Bolognese from the freezer over rigatoni, focaccia and salad. Tomorrow I am going to try and stuff some artichokes with italian sausage, bread crumbs and parmesan cheese. I've never prepared artichokes this way before so it will be interesting to see how it goes. Sunday is roast chicken with whatever greens/sides I pick up at the farmers market that morning. Nothing too exciting I'm afraid but good eatin' nonetheless.

We're having friends over for dinner on Saturday; I'm going to try pita bread made with my sourdough starter. We'll also have some spicy red lentil pancakes, a chutney, and probably a carrot salad. Have not decided on dessert yet.
It's supposed to be 70F on Sunday! So I may have to rethink roast duck.

My daughter woke us in the middle of the night to let us know she wants to try brownies (she's never had one, but she just knows they're good). So I'll definitely be baking a pan. Also the broccoli-feta on fusilli (except I'll be using the goat cheese I've got in my fridge) and some kind of a carrot-tomato-ginger soup (I'm in clean out the fridge/pantry mode, still).

It is definitely NOT springlike in New York. It's not winter, but it's soup is still a very good choice!

Finally, predictably sunny weather for a whole weekend in Seattle. We've been cooler than normal since mid-January. My Weber BBQ has been patient, but I am not. I am smoking a peppered bay and garlic beef brisket on the deck in the sun. At 53 degrees, we are barely at our norm, but I will take it...

Three cheese fondue - first time trying it out. Dipping broccoli, asparagus, fresh baked herb bread, and granny smith apple. Hope it's good! (How could it not be, cheese is involved!)

Leftover balsamic/garlic/rosemary chicken breasts and peas. Plus about a billion Girl Guide cookies...somebody save me from my addiction...

Friends over for dinner on Saturday: ricotta gnudi in brown butter with sage and shavings of parmesan; Jamie Oliver's leg of lamb stuffed with herbs, bread, pancetta and pine nuts with roast potatoes and parnsnips; salad of shave fennel, Italian blood oranges, aragula and new crop green olives; Faith's lemon olive oil cake, marble cake (made with fine chocolate) and strawberries from Provence. Espresso and Spring blend tea. The wines we had were lovely...

Mschatelaine: what recipe do you use for the ricotta gnudi? I'd love to learn to make these.

We had friends for dinner on Saturday. Spaghetti with Meat Sauce, Garlic Bread, Salad with oranges and cranberries, and some of those tasty Milk and Honey Peanut Butter balls, but made with Soynut butter since I have a peanut allergy.

This morning, my first Dutch Baby pancake. Yum!

cmcinnyc - what a difference a day makes! It went from soup to salad weather overnight.

I made lasagna tonight. It was Mmm Mmm Good!

Maggie --

I used the recipe out of the March 2009 issue of Canadian House & Home. I think it needs some tweeking though -- everyone loved the gnudi, but they were pretty ugly -- il brutto buono. I found they were too soft to shape into balls.

http://www.houseandhome.com/recView.php?c=128016

I compared the recipe to others on the internet, and think that next time I make them, I will drain the ricotta first, and add only 2 eggs instead of 3 (most recipes only called for 1 egg), and will try to dredge them in a little flour while shaping them.

They were very good though.

I finally cooked for the boy, instead of him cooking for me. I'm really a better prep cook/kitchen cleaner than actual cook so it's a rare moment. But that just means I should try more often I supose. This time was a success, which is always encouraging. I made lemon-oregano chicken thighs, roasted asparagus w/ horseradish butter, and trader joe's harvest blend grain mix. It was a great dinner! And I didn't have to do the dishes, either! :)