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The December bon-appetit cover is always a little intimidating. This year was no different – the peppermint meringue cake with chocolate buttercream looked fabulous, but seemed like a lot of work. I decided (wisely) to break it up into stages, making the meringue ahead of time, the buttercream, and then finally the cake and assembly.
The [...]

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What are the chances that you’ll have whole milk, heavy-cream and buttermilk all in the fridge at once ? Happens to  you ? It happened to me – on a lazy sunday morning in September ( yes I’m catching up). Most of the time – I meticulously plan what I’m going to cook – this [...]

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I’m not a big melon person but I thought the granita from the August issue sounded interesting ( unfortunately Bon Appetit has chosen to not publish this recipe on-line…  so no link). The honeydew in the grocery was fantastic, and this was super easy to make.
The result – a cool light refreshing desert that’s a bit different [...]

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April’s Gourmet cover – was a Strawberry Mascarpone Tart. It looked great – unfortunately my wife is allergic to strawberrries. Instead I went with a Kiwi & Raspberry combination.
This was a fun dessert – and it wasn’t very difficult. The pastry looked like fun – but I’m religious about keeping things simple – so I went with [...]

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This recipe continues the saga of reuse of two roasted chickens. A leek and pea risotto ? Sounds like fun. The stock was great to make – just 2 hours of boiling and delicious smells. And I now have extra stock left in my freezer.
There wasn’t much  to this recipe – make the vinagrette, fry [...]

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March’s Gourmet magazine had a great section – “Birds in Hand” about how to cook four meals with two chickens. I thought it looked like fun so I gave it a whirl.
The first step was to roast the chickens. Rather than their recipe that called for a lot of basting – I just went with [...]

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Time for Round II ! This is inevitable right ? You’d expect that the “champion” – Spaghetti & Meatballs would just *crush* last month’s carbonarra. Or at least so it seemed at first.
This entire recipe was a lot of work. The meatballs were fun to make, Sebastian had great fun helping me roll them into little [...]

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