Cold Soba with Cucumbers, Watercress, and Sesame by Alison Roman

Most of Alison’s recipes, while relatively easy to make, can’t qualify as a “quick weeknight dinners.” Right now, I have the time in my life to accommodate the ingredient shopping and recipe planning that her meals require. But a few months from now, I’ll be looking for more quick-fix options that take 30 minutes or less and can be made with what I have on hand. In other words, I’ll be looking for recipes like this cold soba dish. 

The thrust of this recipe is just cooked noodles tossed in sauce, topped with toasted sesame seeds and veggies. It can be modified with different vegetable toppings and it makes great leftovers. I thoroughly enjoyed the fresh and slightly spicy combo of Persian cucumbers with watercress, and I’d want to stick to vegetables that contribute similar strengths to the dish. 

The recipe calls for soba noodles which, Alison explains, are the best kind of noodle eaten cold. I’ve had cold soba noodles at a Japanese restaurant before and agree that they are the right texture and chewiness for cold noodle eating. However, soba noodles are made of buckwheat, which means I can’t eat them. Instead, I opted for TJ’s Brown Rice Spaghetti noodles, and had good success. A tad on the overly chewy side, but just barely so. 

Once I drained and cooled the noodles, I tossed them in a sauce made of soy sauce, sesame oil, rice vinegar, yuzu kosho paste, and finely chopped watercress and scallions. Then the noodles were ready for plating. The toasted sesame seeds sprinkled on top really brought the dish home, unifying the noodles and veggies and adding a nutty dimension to the flavors. 

If you or someone in your family is adamant about having protein with dinner, I can recommend a poached chicken breast, thinly sliced to pair with the noodles and sauce. Jordan really appreciated the combination. This is one I’ll be making regularly when my life schedule fills up, and I’m hoping to find more like it. 

102 recipes cooked, 123 to go.

Caramelized Honey with Figs and Ice Cream by Alison Roman

Caramelized figs kind of happened to me. I wasn’t planning on this dish this week, but a box of fresh figs showed up in the front-of-store display at Trader Joe’s and I knew there was no looking back. 

Here is my personal opinion about fresh figs: I want them to have more flavor than they do. They’re just sort of mildly sweet and nothing else. I want them to be tangy, part sweet and part sour. Instead, they’re just sort of... there. Which, now that I think about it, makes sense. I’ve always felt this way about fig newtons too. 

Anywho, this recipe is super simple and takes few ingredients. It does help to have a functioning dominant hand, though, which I sadly could not supply. (I recently injured my wrist at a golfing range and I don’t want to talk about it.) Good thing we made this at our friends’ home because Madeline is a phenomenal fig-slicer, as pictured. 

First step is to caramelize the honey, aka heat it over medium heat for several minutes until bubbling and a dark amber color. Then add butter, vinegar, and a pinch of salt, like you would to a normal caramel. The figs get added, cut-side down for a moment or two before removing from heat and tossing them to coat in the caramel. Scoop onto some vanilla ice cream, and you’re good to go! I chose the soy vanilla ice cream from TJ’s, and hardly noticed a difference from regular ice cream.

For the small amount of effort it took, it was quite good. However, I wanted the figs and honey to have more complex flavors. More white wine vinegar (or lemon juice) would have helped. Maybe more salt. Maybe figs will never fully do it for me, and that’s okay. If you’re a fig newton lover, then this recipe is absolutely for you. 

101 recipes cooked, 124 to go.

Rhubarb-Almond Galette by Alison Roman

Growing up in California, I had no idea of the sour power of rhubarb in desserts. I had no idea what rhubarb even looked like. But now that I know, I never want to live without it. Especially rhubarb paired with almond paste. Oh, baby. 

This was my first time purchasing rhubarb and almond paste, and I needed help finding both. Almond paste was tucked away in a tiny box in the dessert aisle next to the sweetened condensed milk. Rhubarb was tucked away in the vegetable section because, surprise!, it’s a vegetable. It looks like extra long, red celery, and I bought 2.5 pounds of it, just like Alison told me to. 

To make the galette, I first prepared the pie crust, which instead of using Alison’s The Only Piecrust, I made another disk of King Arthur’s gluten free pie crust. I was much more confident this time, thanks to coaching from Margaret for the Buttered Raspberry Hand Pies. I also gained assurance from the fact that galettes don’t need to look perfect – they can be misshapen and have craggy edges and no one will care, least of all me. 

While the pie crust chilled in the fridge, I cleaned and sliced the rhubarb into thinner 4” to 6” pieces. Two and a half pounds of rhubarb is a lot of rhubarb, so this took a bit of time. 

I rolled out the pie crust as far as I could without letting cracks form – about a 12” by 14” cir-rectangle (I made that up). Taking chunks of almond paste, I flattened them to thin disks in my hands (it got a bit sticky!) and arranged them to cover the dough with a 2” border on all sides. Then I laid out the rhubarb… about two-fifths of it actually. I have no idea how Alison can fit all that rhubarb into one galette, but I could hardly fit a pound. I’ve still got the remaining rhubarb in my fridge, which will likely become a cake soon. Or jam. 

I folded the pie crust edges over the galette and sprinkled the top with sugar. Once again, I used less than the recipe called for – a fourth cup instead of a third. 

The rhubarb galette was the perfect balance of tart and sweet. A fresher, butterier take on a sour patch kid, if you ask me. I can’t wait for next year’s rhubarb season. 

This dessert accompanied other Alison recipes for another All-Out Alison meal: 

• Grilled Artichokes with Preserved Lemon Yogurt (Side)

• Grilled Branzino with Lemons All of the Ways (Entrée)

• Rhubarb Almond Galette (Dessert) 

• Served with a side salad and roasted potatoes

100 recipes cooked, 125 to go.

Grilled Artichokes with Preserved Lemon Yogurt by Alison Roman

I love a good artichoke. I love the activity of eating one almost as much as the taste of it, too. I first made artichokes with Alison’s Wine-Roasted Artichokes recipe, which taught me all about how to cut and prep them – it’s sort of an art form. These grilled artichokes required slightly less preparation (no stripping the outer layer of leaves), but they did require more time by way of steaming. For more tender artichokes, Alison asks you to steam them before grilling, which adds about an hour to the ordeal. 

To steam the artichokes, first cut the stem to a little less than an inch, and remove the top 1.5-2 inches of the bulb. Fill a medium pot with 2 inches of water, and place the artichokes stem-side down, with the bulbs poking well out of the water, so as not to water-log them. I highly recommend using 4 smaller artichokes as opposed to 2 large ones so that they stand more securely in the pot. Bring the water to a boil and then simmer for 50 to 60 minutes for large artichokes. For smaller artichokes, I found they were ready within 45 minutes, which you can test by seeing how easily an outer leaf comes off when tugging. 

The book does not specify whether the pot should be covered. However, the only way to create effective steam is to cover a pot to trap the moisture. The picture in her book shows a lid being lifted from the pot, so I took that as my confirmation to utilize a lid. 

While the artichokes steamed, I made the preserved lemon yogurt, which was just a combination of finely chopped preserved lemon, salt, pepper, and goat’s milk yogurt (or greek yogurt, sour cream or labne – you decide your destiny.) The yogurt serves as the artichoke dipping sauce. It also made a delicious sauce for dipping the roasted potatoes we had as an additional side at dinner. 

I steamed the artichokes just before packing up my meal ingredients and heading to my in-law’s home where they own a grill. Prior to grilling, the artichokes should be halved lengthwise and slathered with olive oil, salt, and pepper. They start cut-side down over medium-high heat. After 4 minutes (we waited until 6 minutes), flip them over to get equal charring on the back side for another 4 minutes. Bon appetit, they’re ready to serve! 

I must say, steaming the artichokes first made a giant difference in the tenderness of the leaves. They were easy to pull and eat, but not so soft that they fell limp when holding them. 

I served this dish with Alison’s Grilled Branzino with Lemons All of the Ways – an excellent pairing if you ask me. 

99 recipes cooked, 126 to go.

Grilled Branzino with Lemons All of the Ways by Alison Roman

Does the idea of cooking a whole fish intimidate you? Maybe gross you out a bit? It certainly did both for me. It’s those dead eyes staring at me from the seafood counter, like they know something. I didn’t grow up in a culture that ate much fish, let alone whole fish. Save for the once a year camping trips with amateur fishing attempts led by my more experienced uncles. If we ever caught anything notable, the prep and cooking was up to them. I wouldn’t get near my catch. 

This project has grown and stretched me in countless ways. This project asked me to cook a whole fish – and I’m so much the better for it. 

I started the journey at Whole Foods, where I purchased two pounds of branzino’s. I asked the man at the counter if the fish were “gutted and scaled,” just like Alison told me to. What those terms meant, I wasn’t totally sure. He picked up a fish and showed me how it had been cut open and gutted already, but then said it hadn’t been scaled. I asked him if he could do it for me, to which he replied with a reluctant nod. It took him about 4 minutes to scale both fish. He shaved the scales on either side with a small, sharp knife, and the scales flew everywhere. While watching him, I thanked my lucky stars that I didn’t have to do this in my kitchen and face the clean-up afterward.  

That afternoon, I prepped the preserved lemon relish by finely chopping a full preserved lemon (I had a jar of homemade ones that I preserved about three months ago). If you don’t have any preserved lemon on hand, you can find jars of them in the grocery store. To the relish I added grated garlic, olive oil, and white wine vinegar. And lots of pepper with a dash of salt. This relish was fantastic to pair with the salty, tender white fish. It absolutely completed the dish. 

Later that evening, I journeyed to my in-laws for more meal prep and dinner. They own a grill, so I’m making all of Alison’s grill recipes there this summer. Prepping the fish there was so simple. The fish were already cut from the gutting, so I simply placed a few thin lemon slices in each, then sprayed the outside of the fish with canola oil and sprinkled with salt and pepper. 

With the grill on medium-high heat, we placed the fish horizontally over the grate, with the backbone facing us. After 9 minutes, the skin was charred, crisped, and puffy. We were ready to flip it over. 8 more minutes and the fish was ready to serve! Alison asks you to grill a lemon for 5 minutes. We did this, but it didn’t add much more than aesthetic appeal, especially with the relish already on the side. 

The fish was perfectly moist, flaky and tender, and honestly barely tasted like actual fish. Jordan said this is his favorite “unexpected” meal of the project so far. Cooking a whole fish was SO much easier than it looked. So much more delicious than I anticipated. This dish made me feel like I can do anything! And you can too. 

98 recipes cooked, 127 to go.