Friday Food Finds
Edition 16
Well hello there! It’s good to be back at this writing thing and sharing food with you. This week was all about restocking our refrigerator — which, as my husband noted, had never been so empty — and getting re-accustomed to a cooking routine. It feels like I’ve been shopping every day and doing a dismal job of planning ahead, but somehow I’ve managed to keep up with the three-meal-plus-snacks demand.
Since I’m a big fan of the dessert first approach to life (I’ve considered renaming these “Friday Food Finds” emails to “Dessert First”, what do you think?), let’s start there this week.
In Dieppe last Friday, I bought a chocolate chip, flax seed cookie from an organic bakery called Aux Pains Populaires. I haven’t been able to stop thinking about that cookie since, so now I’m on a mission to recreate it at home (it may just be a forthcoming recipe).
Given its tender, buttery nature, I suspect the base of the cookie was a sablé (shortbread) dough. It was not as sweet as American cookies tend to be and had perceivable grain flavor to it. Thus, I opted to try a French sablé recipe from the first food blogger I ever started following back in the early 2000s, a French woman named Clotilde Dusoulier. In the archives of her old blog, Chocolate & Zucchini, I came up with this recipe for Yves Camdeborde’s Sablés.
These cookies are everything a sablé should be: tender, crispy, and buttery in flavor. Instead of vanilla beans, I substituted homemade vanilla sugar for the granulated sugar and added 1 teaspoon of vanilla extract. In an effort to replicate the aforementioned cookie, to the dough I also added 2 tablespoons of golden flax seeds and a chopped up 2.8-ounce bar of dark chocolate. Plus, I used stone-milled all-purpose flour for that hint of extra graininess.
All told, this was a very satisfactory first attempt at replicating that tasty sablé. The cookie from the bakery was a bit softer, but I certainly don’t object to a little extra crunch, especially in the form of caramelized edges. I would have liked more salt — I got fill this time by adding flakey sea salt to the top of the cookies before they baked — so next time I’ll add more to the dough (there will be a next time, and hopefully you will see it in the form of a new recipe coming soon!).
This next recipe is also somewhat inspired by our travels. I brought home a box of Normandie lentils that I picked up at a small farmers market in Dieppe. I didn’t intend to cook them so quickly, but I wanted to use up the last of the winter/spring root vegetables before restocking the fridge. So here we are with this Miso Lentil Salad with Roasted Root Vegetables from Jessica at Garden Fresh Foodie.
This is one of those recipes that makes me question why you would use so many dishes, but the salad does prove to be worth it. If it were me — or I were to make it again — I think I’d probably skip sautéing the kale and simply massage it with some oil instead before adding it to the lentils and roasted vegetables (you can see I added some extra kale treated in this fashion to my lunch above). I would also probably try to roast the vegetables all together, which I think I could get away with by cutting the beets into smaller pieces.
So clearly this is a recipe that you can adapt to suit your tastes; the ginger miso dressing accommodates many flavors. I added a little Gouda to my salad above, but I think a blue or goat cheese would likely work best. A handful of chopped walnuts would also be nice. You can choose your own adventure here!
Easily one of my favorite dinners this week was this Indonesian Coconut Rice with Chicken and Zucchini from Food & Wine. It was exactly what our family needed on a rainy Tuesday. I did have to modify the recipe a bit by adding fresh peas (since I had them and not enough zucchini), and by cooking it longer and adding more liquid because I used brown rice instead of white.
I just loved how the coconut infused the rice and chicken and the freshness from the al dente vegetables. The garlic and onion provided the right savory undertones in contrast to the coconut, and the coriander and cumin were just noticeable enough to add intrigue to every bite. I would absolutely try this again (with white rice), but in the meantime we have another meal to enjoy from the leftovers.
My final recipe for the week is one that I hope might inspire you for the 4th of July weekend ahead. Maybe you’re thinking of making some baked beans for the occasion, but can I convince you to try this ham hock and bean dish instead?
I am a big fan of ham hocks. They’re super flavorful, and the cooked-to-fork-tender meat can be used in everything from salads, to soups, to pasta dishes, to eggs at breakfast. A pressure cooker makes extremely light work of cooking them, but you could (almost) just as easily braise or boil them too.
I’ve had this particular ham hock in the freezer for far too long, and initially I pulled it out to try to make a jambon persillé (or ham terrine). I lost the motivation for that this week though, so this soup recipe was the alternative I found. I’m quite happy I switched gears.
I did not use pinto beans as called for in the recipe, but the cannellini beans were a nice substitute. My ham hock was only about a pound and a half, so I shortened the pressure cooking time to 45 minutes and probably could have gone to 40. The recipe does not say to soak your beans (just a rinse), but I would recommend doing so. My beans took another 8-minute spin at high pressure until they were the velvety texture I was looking to achieve. That may just be because I used the wrong kind of beans though.
I’m looking forward to enjoying this dish over the weekend along with some grilled accompaniments. What are your food plans?
I’m also curious to know if there are recipes you’ve had either in traveling or from your past that you would love to be able to cook or bake yourself? If so, maybe we could try to crack the code together!
Regardless, I hope you’ve found some inspiration here and have some enjoyably satisfying meals ahead.
Best,
Charlotte