Hard-Roasted Spiced Cauliflower by Alison Roman

I’m just not a cauliflower person. Sadly, no amount of fancy spices will change that fact. Something about the taste (or lack thereof), and the excessive amount of fiber packed into such tiny florets. I don’t love turmeric either, the taste is a little too funky and lingers a little too long. The two main ingredients in this dish are cauliflower and turmeric. If those two ingredients are your jam, then this is your dish! It just wasn’t mine.  

But if I was a cauliflower fan, here’s what I would appreciate about this recipe:

1. Alison tells you to break up the cauliflower into very small florets, “about the size of a large bean.” The tiny size of the florets makes everything feel more delicate, and therefore more fancy. Plus, you can nibble on it instead of getting a whole mouthful of cauliflower. 

2. Cauliflower alone has almost no flavor, but Alison’s combination of spices make this different from boring cauliflower. She combines fennel seeds, garlic cloves, coriander, turmeric, salt and pepper. I imagine it would go well with a Roast chicken, a curry or a homemade Indian butter chicken. 

3. This is another one of those veggies that can be served at room temp. If you’re making a large meal, you can make this one first and let it hang out while you cook everything else. 

10 recipes cooked, 215 recipes to go.

Special Beans in Tomato Broth and Slab Bacon by Alison Roman

Special Beans are a long game kind of dish. The game takes little active time, but you have to keep your eyes on the special prize if you want to win. 

What makes these beans so special? Alison says it’s the use of dried beans. Yes, dried beans. I’d purchased dried beans only once before during the early pandemic grocery frenzy because all the canned beans were gone. That bag of black beans is still sitting in my grain basket, untouched. 

There’s an entire essay and multiple recipes devoted to dried beans in Dining In, so I couldn’t avoid them forever. But I was hesitant. Dried beans demand a lot of forethought. These special beans needed 2 full days of soaking before they were ready for cooking. Dried beans also require commitment. There’s no sure way of telling if they’ll fully soften, so you have to soak and cook them, hoping for the best. 

Where I live, dried beans other than black or pinto are hard to find. When I went on my sumac hunt, I came across a Middle Eastern market that carries 2lb. bags of dried large lima beans. So two days before I wanted to eat my special beans, I began soaking 1lb. of lima beans in cold water. 

This being my first time around the dried bean block, I was mistaken about what would happen during this soaking period. I was under the impression that the beans would become totally softened to the point they resembled canned beans. So soft that you could eat them straight out of the bowl without cooking them. Instead, soaking just loosened the proteins in the beans, helping them expand to their true size. The beans were still rather hard and needed to be cooked for several hours before becoming edible. 

This recipe is meant to make flavorful beans, and while they can be eaten on their own, they’re best used in something else (Alison suggests her Best Baked Beans or soup). By the time I finished cooking these beans, it was 7:15pm (again, long game), so I wasn’t about to whip up another recipe. I also didn’t have time to use them in something else the next day; I travelled to Cincinnati the next morning to see my BFF / designer of my website logo (thanks, Rachel!). 

On cooking day, I began by heating the bacon in my Dutch oven with a good bit of olive oil. The key here is not to brown the bacon, but to heat it slowly so the fat has time to seep out. It’s the fat you’re really going for so it can infuse the beans with porky flavor. By this point, there should be a lot of oily fat at the bottom of the pot, enough to soak a bunch of tomatoes, shallots, and heads of garlic. (Here is another example of an Alison recipe that requires minimal chopping, if choppin ain’t your thang.) Add in some anchovies, a parmesan rind, fresh herbs, and water, and you’ve got a flavorful cooking liquid to soften your beans. 

The beans spent a little over 3 hours on the stove before they were softened to my liking. I served them in their cooking liquid with homemade sourdough and herbed goat cheese. The cooking liquid doesn’t have a super strong flavor, so we added some more salt, and even a bit of lemon juice to liven it up. 

I’ll make these beans again soon and plan to turn them into Alison’s Best Baked Beans. But next time, I’ll plan for an even longer long game. I bet it will be worth it. 

9 recipes cooked, 216 recipes to go.

Smashed Sweet Potatoes with Maple and Sour Cream by Alison Roman

I first heard about this recipe from my friend Margaret well over a year ago. She had borrowed nothing fancy from the library and was immediately drawn to this recipe. We share a deep love for sweet potatoes in all forms. So it’s no surprise that this was the inaugural recipe, the gateway to my journey of cooking through Alison Roman’s cookbooks. 

The entire recipe concept is basically found in the name. A baked sweet potato, smashed and fried in oil and butter until the skin is dark and crispy, then smothered in fresh herbs, sweet maple syrup, and tangy sour cream & lemon juice, with a sprinkle of flaky sea salt. It has all of the textural and flavor variance you could want in one dish: sweet, salty, sour, creamy, soft, crispy, crunchy. 

This recipe doesn’t need any selling, so I’ll just provide a few anecdotes about the ingredients used. 

Alison lets you know that small sweet potatoes are best, and she is quite right. Not only do they bake and cool faster, they also fit more easily into one pan for the crisping process and make for a better serving portion. Look for potatoes that are maybe just a tad larger than your palm. I also recommend baking all of the sweet potatoes at once, and storing any extras you know will become leftovers in the refrigerator before crisping in the pan and adding the fixings. That way you can cook them in the butter and oil just before eating, preserving the integrity of the crunchy skin. (Shoutout to Kearci, my nothing fancy benefactor and best friend, for that tip!)

Sour cream alternatives: If you’re like me and can’t have cow’s dairy (sad face), don’t be dismayed - you have options! I subbed the sour cream with Goat’s milk yogurt, which can be found at Trader Joes. Though the yogurt’s consistency is much thinner, it still achieved the creamy sour balance point to the maple syrup that Alison is going for. If cow’s milk doesn’t bother you, but you don’t have sour cream, then plain Greek yogurt will be a fine substitute. 

The recipe does call for some toasted buckwheat groats to be sprinkled over the finished potatoes, adding an extra crunch. I’ve never had these before, and didn’t plan well enough ahead to buy them. If you make this with the groats, please tell me all about it! I want to know if they add anything beyond texture.

Finally, a short PSA about flaky sea salt. Until a few short months ago, I was misinformed, and frankly downright naive about the difference between coarse Kosher salt and flaky sea salt. That is to say that I thought they were the same thing. I was gravely mistaken. Unlike coarse Kosher salt, flaky sea salt comes in actual flake (not grain) form, and maintains its structure even after being added to a dish. It provides tiny, delightful, salty bursts that punctuate bites and often linger in the mouth. They are visually lovely too and can make anything you cook appear fancier. It’s a small thing that I take great delight in. (This is the kind I use.) 

4 recipes cooked, 221 recipes to go.

Garlicky Broccoli and Greens with Hazelnut and Coriander by Alison Roman

Here we have another simple-to-make side that goes well with pretty much any main dish you can think of. Its ingredients are few and flexible, and it’s bursting with flavor and texture. This recipe comes from nothing fancy. 

The tenets of this dish are the greens - broccoli and kale, olive oil, garlic, lemon, a crunchy nut, and chopped coriander seed. Alison tells you that both grilling and roasting the greens are viable options. I’m confident that grilling would be delightful - I’d love to have taste some char marks on the broccoli stems. But alas, I don’t own a grill. Oven roasting it is. 

The torn kale and heads of broccoli are quartered - stem included! - tossed with oil, and roasted until slightly crispy. The inclusion of the stem was a relatively new choice for me - I usually get rid of it because it can be tough to chew and lacks flavor. Because of this dish, I’m no longer afraid of serving broccoli stems. When quartered, roasted and seasoned, they are a filling, tender bite of green that doesn’t overwhelm you with the fact that it’s a hunk of broccoli stem. Cutting them into quarters is really the right call here. 

Quartered broccoli & kale before they get crispy in the oven

While the greens are roasting, the garlic, hazelnuts, olive oil and coriander seeds get mixed together to prepare a seasoning bath into which the greens will eventually dive and relax. A few comments on the titular ingredients, hazelnuts and coriander seeds. 

I just don’t like hazelnuts. Their taste is revolting to me. I think I’ve always disliked them, but I didn’t consciously realize it until last year. I was travelling for work and had an hour to get lunch in the airport before my flight. Since the company was paying, I chose a sit-down restaurant. I ordered a beet and arugula salad with goat cheese and hazelnuts. After the first few bites, I noticed my mouth was scowling. Something in this salad tasted funky. I tried each ingredient separately to deduce the issue, and lo and behold, the hazelnuts were infecting the whole dish. It’s difficult to describe exactly what’s so off-putting to me. The only word that comes to mind is musty? Now that I know about my hazelnut aversion, I understand why I thought Nutella was gross as a kid. 

Anywho, if you too think hazelnuts taste musty, then I say swap those puppies for another nut like chopped almonds or pistachios, and call it a good day. 

If you’ve never purchased coriander seeds (found often at Whole Foods or in the bulk spice section of a place like Sprouts), now is the time. The crunchy texture of these tiny chopped seeds are the X factor in this dish, making it not your ordinary vegetable side. Coriander seeds don’t have to be one of those spices that you bought for one particular recipe and then languish on your shelf for the next 5 years, untouched. Once I discovered coriander seeds a few years ago, I’ve found myself reaching for them frequently. You just have to try them to fall in love. 

Alison tells us one more lovely thing about this side dish: it is still delicious when served at room temp. If you’re like me and you find it stressful to time your cooking so that all parts of your meal are simultaneously piping hot, then put your mind at ease, and make this dish first. It can sit on the table well ahead of mealtime, watching you prep its fellow delicious partners. 

3 recipes cooked, 222 recipes to go.

Butter-Tossed Radishes with Fresh Za'atar by Alison Roman

This was one of those recipes that I could easily flip past. Why? A) I never considered myself a radish person, and B) what is Za’atar? What caught my attention on Page 58 of Dining In was a note from Alison that reads, 

“I don’t have anything else important to say about this dish, only that it is probably my favorite one in the whole book.” 

Alright, I’m intrigued. The ingredients are simple. Mainly radishes, garlic, oil, butter, vinegar, and Za’atar. I’d never heard of za’atar, but it was clear from my first peruse through Alison’s work that she absolutely loves it. It’s a Middle Eastern spice blend that’s everywhere in her recipes. At the beginning of each cookbook is a pantry list of her essential kitchen items and ingredients that she always has in stock, and za’atar made it on the list. 

Side note: I love when chefs do this because it teaches me about what they think is essential to everyday cooking success, and what isn’t. 

Alison’s za’atar description lets you know that you can buy a za’atar spice blend at the grocery store, but of course it’s even better when you make your own fresh version. The only ingredients are toasted sesame seeds, thyme, sumac, and salt. The most exciting part of her ode to this spice is her description of the salt and sumac combination: “a sort of salty/sour dream team.” I am SO there. 

On my weekly Trader Joes run, I noticed they carry a za’atar spice blend. I was tempted to buy that instead, but sumac was missing from the ingredients list. If Alison is telling me that the best za’atar is made of only four ingredients, and one of those isn’t in this spice blend, then I guess I’m out. Thyme, sesame seeds and salt I have, but sumac? I went to Trader Joes, Whole Foods, and Cub, and couldn’t find it. My mother-in-law heard about my sumac woes and called a number of middle eastern grocery stores in the Minneapolis-St.Paul area. One of them carried it - Holy Land on Central Ave. For $4 I purchased enough sumac to hopefully last me the entire cookbook, and then some. (In case you’re also wondering, sumac is a dark red colored spice made from dried and ground berries that grow on sumac flowers. It’s known for its acidic, sour quality. Some blogs say you can substitute it with lemon zest.) 

The assembly of this dish takes no time at all. It just calls for sauteing the radishes and garlic in oil until the outsides of the radishes are nice and tender (the insides stay harder and retain some of their notorious kick). Once they’re tender, swirl in the butter until melted, pour in a dash of white vinegar and top with the za’atar and more salt. Because I’m a sucker for an extra crunch, I threw in some toasted thinly sliced almonds as well. 

The buttery, salty, sour flavors pair really well with the softened radishes and make for a stellar side dish. Beyond the flavors, the color of the dish is appealing too, and the ingredients are unexpected, making this a crowd pleaser. Have you ever been served a bowl of radishes at a dinner party before? You will if you come over to my apartment for dinner, because this quick-to-make, unexpected and simple side dish is now in my regular rotation for hosting. It should be in yours, too.

2 recipes cooked, 223 recipes to go.

Butter-Tossed Radishes with Fresh Za’atar and One-Pot Chicken with Lemon, Shallots and Dates by Alison Roman.