Sheet Cake with Mascarpone and Coffee with Almost Angel Food Cake by Alison Roman

The most dreamy trip of my life was in Italy in May 2019. My husband, Jordan, and I traveled from Milan to Cinque Terre, Florence, Siena, Assisi, and then to Rome. It was our first international trip as a couple, and my first international vacation ever. Everything about Italy felt like a storybook coming to life, from the countless Tuscan red poppies dotting the countryside, to the winding cobblestone streets, to the culture of ‘one more cappuccino, please.’ The food took my breath away as many times as the ornate ceilings of cathedrals did. I ate far too much (yet still not enough) burrata, bucatini, and basil. I’m not much of a dessert person, but Italy swayed me to eat at least one serving of gelato a day. And perhaps the best dessert we had on the trip was tiramisu. 

Ah yes, tiramisu. A sponge cake doused in strong coffee, layered with creamy mascarpone, sugar, and cocoa powder. The coffee hits the taste buds at the same time as cocoa powder sticks to the roof of your mouth. It somehow embodies Italy in a way few foods can. When I saw Alison’s version in Nothing Fancy, I knew I’d have to wait for just the right time to bake and savor this dish. As this project is winding down, I chose to make this dessert for the most ardent Italy-lovers I know: my in-law’s. They’ve lived in Italy for months-long sabbaticals, and know it like a second home. The perfect dessert for their recent visit was Alison’s tiramisu. 

The dessert starts with baking Almost Angel Food Cake, which I chose to make gluten free. Similar to angel food cake, the life of the cake comes from thoroughly whipped egg whites and sugar that grow light, foamy, and highly voluminous. A mix of dry ingredients get sprinkled and folded in until mixed, doing your best not to knock the air bubbles out of the batter. I chose to swap all-purpose flour for gf all-purpose and a half teaspoon of xanthan gum per cup of flour. I noticed no negative effects of this swap. I then had to let the cake cool completely. 

Meanwhile, I whisked together Mascarpone, sugar, and egg yolks. I also sprinkled cocoa powder on the bottom of my 2 quart baking dish. I brewed some extra strong coffee and combined it with whiskey. By the time this was done, the cake was ready to go under construction. Using a measuring tape, I measured out 8 x 8“ squares of cake and used a bench scraper to cut them.

I laid the first square of cake in the baking dish, then spooned a third of the coffee and whiskey mixture over the top. The liquid quickly seeped into the cake, as if being soaked up by a sponge. I spread out half of the mascarpone mixture and repeated the entire process. After sprinkling more cocoa powder at the very top, I placed the dessert into the refrigerator to chill. Alison says it needs four hours in the refrigerator, but my crew was restless, and I let them have at it at around the three-hour mark. 

This dessert was a lot of fun to make (anytime a tape measure gets involved, you know it’s a good time). It was also just as delicious as a piece of authentic tiramisu. I have no suggestions for making this better. Just be ready to want to eat far more dessert than you probably should.

180 and 181 recipes cooked, 44 to go.

Creamy Cauliflower and Onion Gratin & Cumin-Roasted Cauliflower and Dates with Tahini and Pine Nuts by Alison Roman

I admit that cauliflower isn’t my favorite vegetable. It probably ranks #10 in my top ten. It has very little flavor and too much fiber for its own good. Cauliflower can only wow me if it’s been given a glow up by other definitive flavors. There are many ways to doctor up these bland little trees, and the two recipes mentioned here are perhaps the tastiest cauliflower recipes I’ve cooked to date. 

(Side note: I firmly believe cauliflower should not be “riced” — rice grains are rice. Don’t mess with a beautiful thing.)

The cauliflower gratin adds red pepper flakes and a whole lot of dairy to help spice things up. At first, I was intimidated by the way the cauliflower is cut — in half inch thick disks. The picture in the book shows a perfect spindly flower fitting into a 9inch cake pan, and I wondered if I could attempt the same thing. Turns out, it’s not that hard! You just need a long, sharp knife and steady hand. The cauliflower is layered with cheese and poured over with a mix of cream and melted butter. Once baked and bubbly, that’s really all there is to it. 

One miss for me is Alison‘s lack of salting directions. It’s not like her to skip telling you to add salt and pepper at pretty much every step in a recipe. Here, she didn’t add salt to the layers of cauliflower, (just to the cream and cheese) and I felt the dish was overall under salted. So feel free to add a small sprinkling of salt over each layer of cauliflower. 

I skipped the breadcrumbs in this go around, but would recommend adding them for textural contrast and added saltiness. Also, my cream mixture never solidified in any real way. I’m not sure if I didn’t keep in the oven for long enough, or if the cream should truly stay in liquid form, but beware if you plan to bake and then transport this dish to a Friendsgiving — cream WILL spill out the sides if you’re not careful. 

Above all, the cumin-roasted cauliflower recipe truly wins the contest (yep, it’s a contest now). I made it as our vegetable side dish for Thanksgiving, and much to my surprise, Jordan said it was his favorite part of the entire meal. We had Alison’s stuffing, a turkey, two kinds of potatoes, and still, he liked the cauliflower the most. Believe me when I say, that’s a powerful statement coming from him. 

What made the cumin roasted cauliflower so great was the variety of flavors and textures used. Cauliflower gets broken down into tiny florets and roasted with cumin seeds until crispy and charred in some places. Part way through, dates are added to the roasting sheet, bringing a sweetness that nicely contrasts with the acid from the white wine vinegar and creaminess of the tahini. Cilantro makes this dish sing. I admit to skipping mint and pine nuts due to cost, but in no way did I feel like this dish lacked anything. Mint and pine nuts would have only elevated it further. 

178 and 179 recipes cooked, 46 to go.

Little Gems and Cabbage with Pickled Turnips and Lemony-Tahini Dressing by Alison Roman

What takes a salad from good to excellent? I have the same theory about excellent salads as I do about excellent granola: it’s all about an X-factor. An unexpected element that stops you mid-chew to say, “oo what’s that?” 

This salad has two X-factors: 

1. Pickled Turnips. I admit to making pickled turnips for this salad, twice. The first time was in June. I thought I’d make this salad *at some point* this summer. And every time I thought about making it, I only had half of the veggies needed to complete the recipe on hand. By the time August rolled around, it was time to pack up our apartment to move to Chicago. When I cleaned out the fridge and unearthed my oft forgotten turnips, I realized I’d need to try this one again. (Note to self: don’t buy/prep ingredients for something if you don’t have a date on the calendar to make it.)

   The first time I pickled turnips, I made two mistakes. I pickled three of them, AND I chose to quarter them before pickling. That’s frankly too many turnips in too bulky of shapes. Last week, I bought only one medium-sized turnip and thinly sliced it before pickling. Why not slice it into its final form before pickling to make things easier? 

   Pickled turnips are kinda funky, and I don’t want them on everything I eat. But I do love their earthy, vinegary, pop of unexpected flavor in a salad like this. 

2. Lemony-Tahini Dressing. There’s nothing very new or extraordinarily innovative about this dressing; it’s just reliably good. Lemon juice, salt, tahini, olive oil, garlic and water. Tangy, nutty, and smooth. Everything you need to unify a verifiable mini garden of vegetables (little gems/romaine, cabbage, cucumbers, scallions, parsley, preserved lemon, and turnips).

My in-laws were over for dinner that night, and they finished off the entire plate of salad. I got as many compliments on it as I did Alison’s Low and Slow Rib Roast with Rosemary and Anchovy - which is saying something! 

Here marks another successful All-Out-Alison Meal: 

1. Little Gems and Cabbage with Pickled Turnips and Lemony Tahini Dressing

2. Leftover Thanksgiving mashed potatoes

3. Low and Slow Rib Roast with Rosemary and Anchovy 

4. Sheet Cake with Mascarpone and Coffee 

One of my favorite combinations to date. 

177 recipes cooked, 48 to go.

Low and Slow Rib Roast with Rosemary and Anchovy by Alison Roman

I’ll just come right out and say that this 4.7 lb. hunk of beef is one of my greatest achievements in the kitchen to date. Attaining the perfect internal temperature and color of a large piece of meat has never been a strong suit of mine. Whether it’s an oven that’s unpredictable or my own issues with patience or judgment of done-ness, I’ve tended to overcook meat. 

This year, I committed myself to growing my meat skills. An obvious step one? Buy a reliable digital meat thermometer. Yes, I’ve been rightly accused of slicing open a chicken breast multiple times before it’s done to look for “pinkness.” My meat thermometer has saved me many premature hackings of quality protein. Second step, buy an oven thermometer. Ovens, especially old ones, lie. I’ve yet to live in an apartment where the oven temperature is exactly as listed. 

Third step, trial and error. Though I haven’t failed spectacularly, I’ve been willing to. It’s the willingness that makes all the difference. Alison isn’t afraid of big cuts of meat, and her recipes have given me the chance to stretch my wings. Of them all, two recipes seemed most daunting to me, this rib roast, and her yogurt-marinated leg of lamb which supposedly feeds 8-10 people (that will happen soon). So you could say I was nervous.

A rib roast is intimidating, first of all, because it’s expensive. The cost of failure was a third of my entire grocery bill. Second, though active involvement is quite low, the recipe requires a lot of choices to be made by the cook, which feels risky. So I asked myself, when’s the last time you did something you’re proud of that didn’t require risk? *crickets*.....  Let’s dive in. 

I salted the roast, then made my first big decision to let it sit at room temperature for two and a half hours (instead of in the fridge for far longer). I guess that wasn’t so hard? Meanwhile, I prepped the marinade: chopped anchovy, rosemary, and grated garlic with salt and olive oil. Here, I’d recommend the more marinade the better. With such a large roast, it’s hard to overdo it with flavor. 

With a good bit of oven temperature monitoring, the roast cooked for two hours and five minutes at 250 degrees. Alison gives a range of time here, so I chose to check it on the early side - and what do you know, it was ready to go! The internal temp you’re looking for is 110 degrees, and Alison says it should rise to 125 by the time you’re ready to sear/or flash-roast it (my term for roasting briefly at a high temp). Again, much to my delight, the meat rose to 125 degrees exactly while I heated the oven to 500 degrees. (Is it weird that I’m delighted by instructions coming true? It so rarely seems to work out this well.)

I made my third and fourth choices -- due to the time of day, I chose not to let the roast sit at room temperature for up to four hours, but only for twenty minutes as the oven temp rose. Then I chose to brown the fat by flash-roasting, instead of searing. Why? Clean up. Imagine the fatty oil splattering every surface of my kitchen if I seared the meat in a skillet. Nope. Not today. 

After just 10 minutes, the fat was properly browned and the anchovy bits appeared well-crisped. (And my floor remained without oil spills.) I sliced the meat with bated breath… 

And it looked perfect. It even tasted perfect - melt-in-your-mouth tender. As I said, this rib roast is one of my crowning achievements in this project, due to a convergence of careful attention, following instructions, and definitely luck. I served it with leftover Thanksgiving mashed potatoes and Alison’s Little Gems and Cabbage salad (also phenomenal, post to come). 

Friends, if this recipe also intimidated you when reading through nothing fancy, let this be your encouragement to give it a go. If you pay attention, follow her advice, and maybe say a few quick prayers, this recipe could become one of your proudest meals, too. 

176 recipes cooked, 49 to go.

Luckiest Biscuits in America by Alison Roman

These biscuits mark a really lucky moment in Alison’s life. A moment that changed everything. A moment made by the convergence of hard work, years of training and preparation, courageous risk taking, and a bowl of lucky biscuit dough. A moment you can hope for, prepare for, but never plan. 

These biscuits got me thinking about my own lucky moments, where my hard work paid off in an unexpected way. Though I can’t think of any one significant biscuit moment, I can remember many smaller instances where my work paid off in a way I didn’t foresee. Like the time I decided to order a few extra bottles of product for a photoshoot, just in case, and we ended up needing them because the original product got damaged. Or that time I decided to make two batches of chili instead of one in case more people showed up, and what do you know, they did. 

One lucky moment happened this week that had nothing to do with me. Just two nights ago on Thanksgiving, my mom got up from the couch where my dad and brother were sitting and went into her bedroom. After a bit of time, my brother had the lucky instinct to go check on her. He found her in extreme pain, lying in fetal position on her bed. She wasn’t sure what to make of the pain, and was waiting to see what would happen next. As the pain quickly spread from her chest to her right arm, they decided to drive her to the ER. They had the lucky hunch that this wasn’t indigestion. She was having a mild heart attack. 

It’s lucky that they went in when they did. The doctor said if they had waited another hour, things could have ended up much worse. She’s in the hospital now, waiting for various enzymes and chemicals to go back down. But luckily there seems to be no permanent damage done to her heart. No plaque or clogged arteries. We’re lucky it wasn’t something more. We feel like the luckiest family in America. 

With my family far away in California, and myself living in Chicago, there’s nothing I can do but pray and answer the phone when someone calls. It’s in these “useless” moments when I’m most thankful for cooking. Something to do with my hands that feels nurturing and productive. This morning, I didn’t know what else to do but make lucky biscuits. 

Though I’ve only made biscuits a handful of times, the process is largely similar to pie crust, and therefore quite familiar to me now. I used gluten-free flour and xanthan gum, but regular butter and buttermilk. I broke down the cold butter between my thumbs and forefingers, like rubbing a dog’s ear (thanks for the tips, Margaret). I drizzled the buttermilk in and kneaded the dough a few times, then patted it into a square to be cut. The squares sat on a parchment-lined baking sheet as I drizzled more buttermilk and flaky sea salt on top. They spent a total of 27 minutes in the oven, rotating once halfway through. 

These biscuits were fluffy, buttery, layered, with crispy edges - just as Alison promised. And given all that’s happening today, these biscuits sure felt lucky to me. 

175 recipes cooked, 50 to go.