Wine-Roasted Artichokes by Alison Roman

I wasn’t planning on making this recipe until the summer. Artichokes always struck me as a summer food. I just couldn’t pass up $3.99 for four artichokes. Entirely an impulse buy. 

The artichokes sat in my fridge for a while till I could figure out what to do with them. I knew I couldn’t just fix them up in a flurry. Artichokes are complicated, and they appreciate having some get-to-know-you time first, before getting down to business. I needed to dedicate time and space to build their trust. I finally made time last Saturday to learn how to prepare an artichoke. 

There’s a lot involved: stem trimming, peeling back layers of leaves, chopping off the top of the globe, snipping thorns, and scraping out the fuzzy center just above the heart. I can’t be certain I did it all correctly, but I had a lot of fun trying. 

The artichokes are cut in half lengthwise and placed cut-side down in a deep roasting pan. With them goes 1 cup of water and 1 cup of white wine, olive oil, salt, pepper, red pepper flakes, smashed garlic, and butter. Sounds like a winning combination because it is one. 

After some research, I understand that stovetop steaming is the typical way to cook artichokes. Artichokes are tough and do need time to soften, which is why Alison’s oven-roasting method spends the first 40-50 minutes with a tight layer of tin foil on top of the pan. This mimics a good steam, allowing the globes to become properly tender. Then the foil is removed for the last 15-20 minutes to give the outer layers time to get slightly crispy and let the water and wine evaporate. 

The few times I’ve eaten an artichoke at a restaurant, they were always served with a dipping sauce, usually garlic butter. A great route to take here, no doubt, but I was in the mood for something tangier. Alison has a recipe for Lemon Aioli as part of her Shrimp Cocktail section, so I decided to go for two firsts in one day. My first aioli endeavor ensued. I’ll write more about it when I get to shrimp cocktails, but for now, my primary takeaways from the experience are: 1. Be prepared for a very sore forearm, and 2. Without patience, you cannot have aioli. 

Jordan took an hour break from work (it was a Saturday) so we could have a Wine & Artichoke Hour. We sat in our living room and sipped Cabernet while dipping the buttery leaves in aioli. It was so delightful that we talked about making it a more regular weekend activity. Sometimes it’s nice to eat something decadent in the middle of the afternoon instead of waiting until meal time. It can make 3:00pm feel less pedestrian, more special. Not all days can have special 3:00pm’s, but more of them should. 

27 recipes cooked, 198 to go.

Tiny, Salty, Chocolatey Cookies by Alison Roman

It is on a rare day that I crave chocolate. Generally speaking, I’m a savory gal. If I must have something sweet, I dream of strawberry pie or tangy lemon bars. It sounds like Alison and I are in agreement on this. But every once in a while, we have a hankering for a small morsel, literally just a taste of chocolate, preferably dark chocolate. And it is for this instance that these cookies were created. 

Seldom though they are, my chocolate cravings tend to come on strongly and usually at night. One minute I’m relaxing on the couch, and the next I’m on my feet urgently searching the refrigerator’s bottom shelf for the Trader Joe's Pound Plus bar I keep in the back. These cravings don’t mess around. Which is why these cookies may be my solution. They take less than an hour to assemble and bake. 

Plus, they’re tiny, (which makes them dangerously snackable), and unintentionally gluten free. Ingredients only include cocoa powder, sugar, eggs, brown butter, and chocolate. Alison gives an option for chopped nuts, but I say no nuts, keep it simple.

One confounding aspect of this recipe is the quantity it yields. Alison tells you to “drop quarter-sized blobs of dough” onto the baking sheet. To make sure I achieved the right size, I dug out a quarter from my wallet and laid it on the counter to reference. I’ve never been great at size approximations. She says this should make 24 cookies. But using a quarter as my guide, my dough produced not 24, but 44 cookies! It took four rounds of baking to get them all in and out of the oven. I’m not complaining, more cookies is always better than less. I just kept wondering when this fishes and loaves situation would run out. 

These tiny cookies are a real treat, no matter how often you crave chocolate.

26 recipes cooked, 199 to go.

Caramelized Winter Squash with Toasted Coconut Gremolata by Alison Roman

“What in the world is gremolata?” I asked myself. I asked the Internet. “Gremolata is an Italian green sauce made of chopped parsley, lemon zest, and garlic.” Oh, okay. Simple enough. 

Now that we’ve got that looming question out of the way, let’s talk about squash! For the very first time in my 27 years, I purchased an acorn squash. I felt very sophisticated as I searched the 6'x6' cardboard box of squashes at the grocery store. I found one in the right weight range and that had some fun orange coloring at the top and called it a day. 

Slicing the squash into equally thick, ½” rings was another matter entirely. If you don’t have a reliable chef’s knife, then tread cautiously. I struggled to hold onto the rolly squash and maintain a straight line as I sawed through its ridges. 

It was here that I missed an opportunity. Alison tells you that you can either scoop out the squash’s center, filled with pulp and seeds, or you can leave it all in and let the seeds toast on the pan with everything else. (Acorn squash seeds are slightly smaller and rounder than pumpkin seeds). I should have listened to her recommendation. I chose to scoop my squash out and discard the center, but one lone seed made it onto my baking sheet in the process. It was oven roasted along with the squash rings. When it was all done, I decided to try it and see what I had missed… of course, Alison was right. The seed was perfectly golden and crunchy and would have made for the best snack. Let’s just say, I will not make this mistake again. 

I roasted the squash rings in coconut oil, flipping them halfway through. They became soft and slightly sweet after 30 minutes in the oven. And the gremolata brought it all together: toasted coconut chips, finely chopped chives and cilantro, lemon zest, salt, and Aleppo pepper. This dish is very unlike any vegetable dish I’ve made before, both visually and in flavor. It was so delightful and could be served alongside a number of other things. I made mine with Buttermilk-Brined Chicken, but it would do just as well with something bolder. 

25 recipes cooked, 200 to go.

A Very Good Lasagna by Alison Roman

I’ve already met my favorite lasagna, and her name is A Nice Lasagna (by Julia Turshen in Small Victories). We became acquainted one evening in a cabin in the North Woods of Wisconsin as snow fell quietly outside. Sounds romantic, doesn’t it? We’ve learned each other’s love languages and speak them whenever opportunity strikes. She gives me gifts and acts of service. I shower her with words of affirmation and offer her the loving touch of a fork. We both share quality time, particularly with three of my dearest friends involved. For a short sweet season, these friends and I lived in Chicago. But in July 2017, we scattered to the four corners of the country. Now we come together once a year in October to stay up late and chat over red wine, pie, and of course, A Nice Lasagna. 

When I turned to nothing fancy’s pasta section and saw A Very Good Lasagna, I was skeptical. Could A Very Good Lasagna even approach the perfection of A Nice Lasagna? Only one way to find out. 

Allow me to evaluate A Very Good Lasagna through the only lens available to me -- a comparison to A Nice Lasagna. I’ll evaluate them on several key criterion. 

1. Sauce - It’s the best part of a lasagna and both sauces are truly excellent. Truly! And I’m quite particular about my tomato sauce! 

   1. Very Good - This sauce recipe calls for both crushed and whole peeled tomatoes. The whole tomatoes are squashed by hand, which creates a nice combination of small-medium sized tomatoes and some casual tomato juice. In true Alison fashion, anchovies add some salty umami. Finely chopped garlic and onion complete this well balanced sauce. One more benefit of this recipe is there’s no need to wait for the sauce to cool before assembling the lasagna because the noodles are parboiled (which I’ll get to, not a fan). 

   2. Nice - Only whole peeled tomatoes allowed here, crushed by hand in a large bowl. (If you’ve never had the pleasure of crushing tomatoes by hand, then I suggest trying it soon! Just be sure to wear something you don’t mind getting squirted with tomato juice.) Then there’s garlic, salt, and the X factor ingredient: creme fraiche. I think adding a tangy, creamy cheese to the sauce itself is actually another level of genius. Sadly, this sauce does need to fully cool before use so that it doesn’t make the noodles soggy. Which adds another hour of preparation time. 

2. Cheese 

   1. Very Good - Fresh ricotta, fresh mozzarella, and shredded parmesan make a tasty, but wet and clumpy combination. It was hard to evenly distribute the wet clumps of cheese across the pan, not to mention messy. 

   2. Nice - The cheeses used here are much easier to handle and distribute - just shredded mozzarella and parmesan. The third cheese is the creme fraiche in the sauce. This recipe also calls for lots of torn basil leaves, which I missed in Very Good. 

3. Noodles - I went Gluten Free in August, and this was my first GF lasagna. I was very pleased with the GF noodles I found--I barely noticed they weren’t regular noodles. These long noodles are made with brown rice, and didn’t leave me feeling bloated afterward. Here they are for reference. 

   1. Very Good - Okay, here was my main sticking point with this recipe. Parboiling the lasagna noodles. The noodles did cook nicely because of the parboil, but it’s a pain to keep them from sticking and adds yet another step to the assembly. 

   2. Nice - No boil, no fuss, still cooks great. (Julia tells you how to make your own noodles, but I don’t have the time or patience for that.)

4. Layers

   1. Very Good - He has 4 layers, which is a beautiful thing! 

   2. Nice - Julia just tells you to keep building layers till you run out of room. But since the sauce is a bit chunkier, I’m usually only able to fit 3 layers in my pan. 

5. Leftovers - I don’t appreciate how noodles continue to absorb sauce as they keep in the fridge. Since I love sauce so much, I like to have extra to spoon over my leftovers. 

   1. Very Good - Uses every last drop of sauce in the lasagna. I appreciate the math here, but I wouldn’t be mad about more sauce. 

   2. Nice - There’s usually a cup of sauce left over to use however you see fit. 

The Final Verdict: A Nice Lasagna still takes the cake, but I’ll give it to Alison. Her’s was a very good lasagna. 

24 recipes cooked, 201 to go.

Buttermilk-Brined Chicken with Fresh Za'atar by Alison Roman

A buttermilk brined chicken is the first kind of whole chicken I ever cooked. Samin Nosrat’s famous buttermilk-brined chicken to be exact. Alison’s chicken asks you to be slightly more extra and throw some smashed garlic and shallots into the brine, but other than that, the recipes are nearly the same in concept. 

Brining a chicken requires no skill, only forethought. The effort is always worth it. Salty brines create a tenderized, juicier meat that stands squarely in opposition to every dry chicken breast I ate in the past. It’s because of buttermilk brined chicken that I’ve committed to always brining birds that I plan to roast, even if the recipe doesn’t suggest it. 

This chicken was pleasant, a good chicken. The flavor is subtle and nothing extraordinary, which means it’s versatile. Throw it on a salad, a sandwich, on noodles! Or eat it with some fresh Za’atar. I discovered early on in this project the magic of Za’atar, when I first made Alison’s butter-tossed radishes. Fresh Za’atar gives a delightful, salty-sour attitude to this bird, helping it really sing. I served this chicken with Caramelized Winter Squash, which I’ll write about soon. 

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A personal anecdote about buttermilk. For a long time, the very idea of buttermilk made me squeamish. My mother used to tell stories of being forced to eat unappetizing foods as a child. Her parents grew up in the Netherlands during World War II, a time when food was very scarce. So I understand why, out of principle, they made their children clean their plates. But I couldn’t get the picture out of my head of my mother, freckled with a bright blonde bob, sobbing at the table as she tried to swallow another brussel sprout. For this reason, my siblings and I were never fed the foods that so traumatized her. These included brussel sprouts, cabbage, lentils, and warm buttermilk. Yes, my mom was told to drink warm buttermilk. Apparently to my grandparents, this was a delicacy, and they couldn’t imagine anyone not craving it. But it made my mom’s stomach turn. For this reason, I shuttered at the very idea of buttermilk until I was 26--the age when I first made buttermilk-brined chicken. 

23 recipes cooked, 202 to go.