Baked Summer Squash with Cream and Parmesan Bread Crumbs by Alison Roman

Wait... Annie. I thought you were cow’s dairy free? Why did you make this dish with heavy cream and parmesan cheese? 

Thanks for that thoughtful question. I made it and ate it because there are some things worth breaking the rules for. And for me, that list includes creamy baked squash with sourdough, parmesan bread crumbs. A girl’s gotta have standards. This is one of mine. 

First, I prepared the sourdough breadcrumbs. I had the stale ends to an old loaf I’d made a few weeks prior and pulsed them in a food processor until they were not too small, but not too big. (It’s all about precision for me.) Then I combined the crumbs with salt, pepper, aleppo pepper, freshly grated garlic, and a half cup of parmesan cheese. I set this aside. 

The recipe calls for about a pound of summer squash, which for me came down to 2 large-ish zucchinis. The quartered them and laid them in a 2-qt. dish. I poured a cup of heavy cream, some dried oregano (sorry, I didn’t have the bandwidth to buy fresh), and some olive oil. Then I sprinkled the bread crumbs over the top of the zucchini. As the dish bakes, the creamy gets bubbly, the parmesan melts, and the sourdough bread crumbs turn a golden brown. It was worth every bite. 

While squash is especially in season during the summer, it’s also around in the fall. I think this would be a lovely side dish on a night when the weather starts to chill and the leaves start to turn. A marriage of seasons in a baking dish. Or a sign of transition between them. (And a delicious sign at that!)

87 recipes cooked, 138 to go.

Upside-Down Apricot Tart by Alison Roman

I love when a dessert makes me look a more skilled baker than I really am. Puff pastry will do that for you. It’s a store-bought, frozen sheet of thinly layered pastry dough. Painstakingly simple to use, but boy, does it look sophisticated. Puff pastry covers the bottom of this tart. The other side is half-cut apricots covering the bottom of a cake pan filled with a simple honey caramel. Looks like a mosaic, but requires far less finesse. 

I started by prepping the apricots, cutting them in half length-wise, so they were ready to place in the caramel as soon as it was ready. Alison says to use “1lb. apricots (5-6 apricots),” but I ended up needing about 1.15 lbs (10-12 apricots) to fill my cake pan. Alison must have access to really big apricots. 

The caramel made me a little nervous. I don’t have a ton of experience making it, so I’m not the best judge of color and viscosity. Thankfully, I was on the phone with my pal Margaret while I made it, and she coached me on what to look for. My caramel was taking longer than Alison’s instructions, but Margaret assured me that working towards the dark amber color is more important than the amount of time it takes to get there. Once the caramel seemed thick enough and gave off an amber hue, I poured it to cover the bottom of a 10-inch cake pan. You can use a 9-inch pan, too. 

I quickly placed the apricots, cut-side down, over the caramel. Then I loosely covered them in the puff pastry sheet. I trimmed the edges so it came up about an inch on the inside of the pan. According to Margaret, the key here is a loose draping of the pastry, as if it were a blanket and you were tucking the apricots in for a nap. Let the blanket lightly rest over the fruit. Tucking them in too tight will only make ‘em uncomfortable and want to burst out of bed. 

The pan bakes for about an hour total at two different temps – the higher one to bake the pastry, the lower one to bake the fruit. I made this tart a few hours ahead of serving so the caramel hardened in the pan before I could flip it over. To remedy, I stuck the pan back in the oven at 375 for 5 minutes. The caramel loosened and the tart became easy to flip onto a plate. I covered the top with toasted, chopped pistachios and served it on its own. Ice cream or whip cream would have done nicely, but I didn’t have the energy. Plus, the tart on its own is perfectly wonderful. 

Just a friendly reminder that June is apricot season. Trader Joe’s sells them by the pound for $3.29! If you’re planning to make this recipe too, may I suggest you make it in the next two weeks? 

Oh, and feel free to call me if you want to chat about the color of your caramel! 

86 recipes cooked, 139 to go.

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Spicy Marinated Anchovies with Potato Chips by Alison Roman

little buddies

Anchovies are wildly misunderstood. Something about tinned fish makes a large percentage of people get squirmy. And I understand! Sometimes I’m still one of them. But the more I cook Alison’s way, the more I can attest to the distinctly salty power of an anchovy. Anchovies elevate. They transform tomato sauce, chicken, lamb, white beans, and yes, potato chips! 

At the beginning of this project, I put this recipe into the not-looking-forward-to-it category. But it’s slowly migrated to the alright-yea-alison-knows-what-she’s-doing category. Not full on literally-drooling-can’t-wait category, but getting there. Which is why I made about a fourth of the recipe portion – I wasn’t sure how this would be received. 

I opened a tin of anchovies and reserved a few for this appetizer (the others went to the Tomato Dressed in Toasted Fennel and Anchovy recipe – post forthcoming). I covered the little guys in distilled white vinegar and very thinly sliced serrano pepper. The recipe calls for calabrian chiles, but I could not find that pepper variety for the life of me. The anchovies marinated for about an hour before Jordan and my in-laws all dared to try one with me. 

The serrano peppers packed quite the heat, but boy was it an exciting bite. I served the fish with toothpicks and TJ’s potato chips. If it weren’t for this project, I’d never have tried something like it. But once again, I’m so glad I did.

85 recipes cooked, 140 to go.

Smashed Cucumbers and Scallions over Garlicky Yogurt by Alison Roman

There are a handful of Alison’s recipes that I’m just not looking forward to eating. I don’t mind making them, but eating them is another story. It’s either the flavor combinations that don’t sound appealing or some kind of stew involving lots of different seafoods (she has more than one recipe like this!). I’ve said before that I am committed to trusting Alison. I’m committed to making the recipes I doubt. But just because I make them, doesn’t mean I have to like them. 

I doubted this recipe – hardcore. I did not like the sound of savory yogurt and cucumbers with a salty granola for breakfast. If I’m going to eat a savory breakfast, it absolutely must have eggs. It’s a personal principle. So I made this for lunch – a great decision! 

The recipe contains 3 core elements: 

1. Plain yogurt mixed with raw grated garlic, lemon juice, and salt and pepper. The ratio of garlic and lemon to yogurt kept this from tasting too much like a dip. 

2. Cucumbers, smashed with scallions and more lemon juice. I didn’t have scallions so I substituted them with chives. I put my cut cucumbers, chives and lemon juice in a ziploc and pounded them with the bottom of a skillet. By the fifth or sixth hammer, the bag split open and the cucumber pieces spread out over the counter. That was my signal to quit annoying my neighbors. 

3. Decidedly Not-Sweet Granola - Read all about it in that link. 

I have to say, I was pleasantly surprised. I genuinely enjoyed this meal! The cucumbers bathed in lemon juices and chopped chive were a really nice crunchy counterpoint to the toasted granola. And mixed altogether with the savory yogurt, it was both filling and flavorful. It was a great post-workout meal, one that I’ll make again. 

84 recipes cooked, 141 to go.

Sticky Chili Chicken with Hot-and-Sour Pineapple by Alison Roman

hey bud

Themed birthday parties were my childhood idea of “BEST BIRTHDAY EVER.” I would spend days and days dreaming up the theme, possible decorations, any necessary costumes, the games we would play, invitation design, etc. Thankfully, my parents were totally on board, costumes and all. I had several themed birthday parties, at least two of which were “Hawaiian Luau’s.” Both parties had tiki torches lit in the backyard, fake flower leis doled out at the door, plastic flamingos and grass skirts, the whole sha-bang. 

I recently thought about how fun it would be to throw another luau party, but make it more “adult.” There would still be tiki torches, lei’s and a plastic flamingo. There would also be some sort of delicious spiked punch and a pineapple juice, rum cocktail. And instead of serving hawaiian pizza (which no one actually likes), I’d serve this sticky chili chicken. 3 large platters of it, with extra pineapple spears on the side. 

Here’s the process for making this fabulous pineapple chicken. First, marinate the bird! I used a 4lb. organic chicken from TJ’s. I patted it dry, and seasoned it with salt and pepper before placing it in a gallon-sized Ziploc. Then I assembled the marinade – the most labor-intensive step (which is hardly labor-intensive at all). The marinade includes: brown sugar, chili paste (Alison suggest sambal, but I used harissa), fish sauce, lime juice, red pepper flakes, garlic, and rice wine vinegar. 

I cannot, for the life of me, find rice wine vinegar anywhere. I own rice vinegar, wine vinegar, and mirin (sweet rice cooking wine), but the specific rice wine vinegar combination is nowhere to be found. Alison uses this mythical substance in multiple recipes, so it must exist. But alas, I got creative with this recipe. To replace ¼ cup rice wine vinegar, I used ⅛ cup rice vinegar, 1 tablespoon white wine vinegar, and 1 tablespoon of mirin. It seemed to work great! 

I let the chicken marinate for about 4 hours. In the meantime, I peeled and cored a small pineapple, and cut it into spears. The spears joined the chicken and all of the marinade on a sheet pan to cook at 425 for an hour. My chicken took longer than usual to cook, I think because we left another sheet pan in the oven underneath the chicken, and that blocked some of the heat. (Why did we do that? I’m not sure. I wasn’t thinking.) The bird was ready in an hour and 20 minutes. While roasting, the pineapple released its sweet juices, which bubbled and thickened perfectly with the hot and sour marinade. A bite of roast chicken with a piece of spicy pineapple? It brought me right back to my luau. 

I served this dish as part of, what I am now going to call, an “ALL-OUT-ALISON” meal: 

• Appetizer: Crispy Haloumi with Honey and Pistachio

• Side Dish: Perfect Asparagus with Garlic and Salted Olive Oil 

• Main Dish: this chicken!

• Dessert: Blueberry Cake with Almond and Cinnamon

If you made it to the end of this post, consider yourself warmly invited to my next luau.

83 recipes cooked, 142 to go.