I’m not actually a huge fan of popcorn. But I am a huge fan of peanut butter. Such a huge fan, in fact, that peanut butter can make me crave popcorn. This recipe, specifically. I have been making this since I was a kid, when I found the recipe in Klutz Press’s Kids Cookbook (which I still own and use, by the way). It is easy and it is tasty, and if you’re looking for a good movie watching snack, this one is perfect.

Now, you can use some plain microwave popcorn for this, if you want to, but real popcorn is so easy to make you might as well go for it. And it doesn’t stink up your kitchen the way the microwave variety can. You just need a good size saucepan with a lid and a handle you can get a good one-handed grip on. Pour about 2 tablespoons of vegetable oil in the saucepan, and add one or two popcorn kernels. Put the lid on the pan, and heat it over medium to medium-high heat. Once the kernels pop, you’re ready to add the rest: I usually use about 1/2 a cup of kernels. Pour them into the hot oil, replace the lid and cook the popcorn, shaking the pan continuously and holding the lid on. When the popcorn starts to pop vigorously, it will probably push the lid up (depending on how big your pan is). Just hold it down, and keep shaking, and don’t worry too much about a few escaping popcorn puffs. Once the popping has subsided and there are pauses of a few seconds between pops, your popcorn is ready.

I have found the best way to evenly add melted butter (or delicious peanut butter topping) is to dump all the hot popcorn into a large paper bag, pour in the topping, and shake the bag vigorously. The paper will absorb some of the extra grease, and you can shake well enough to coat all the popcorn evenly.

And the peanut butter topping? Easy.

Peanut Butter Popcorn Topping

• 3 T. butter
• 3 T. peanut butter

Yes, that’s it. Just heat the butter and peanut butter together in a small saucepan over medium-low heat, stirring continually until it’s melted and combined. Then just pour it over your popcorn and shake it up to make sure it coats every piece. Add salt to taste if you use unsalted butter or low-salt peanut butter.

If you’re looking for something new to snack on, definitely give this a try. I’ve been eating it for at least 20 years, and I never get sick of it. Even when the popcorn gets stuck in my teeth.

I know you’re all amped up for Thanksgiving and turkey and mashed potatoes (especially the mashed potatoes) but that doesn’t mean you don’t still have to cook a few non-feast meals this week. And if you have a lot of family and friends in town for the holiday, you probably want something easy and cheap. That’s where this cornbread chili bake comes in. This dish is something we used to eat a lot when I was growing up, and I can’t believe I haven’t shared it here before. It’s wonderfully warming and super simple, and can easily feed six people. Mix up a little salad on the side and you’re good to go.

Now, I’m not normally one for boxed baking mixes, but I’ve never been able to resist the cheerful box of Jiffy Cornbread mix.

If you really don’t want to go the Jiffy route, cornbread isn’t that hard to mix up from scratch. Excellent recipes abound online, and I found this one to be especially awesome (scroll down a bit for the recipe). And hey, if you’re making cornbread for stuffing on Thursday, just mix up a little extra and use it for this recipe. You don’t need very much: I actually used two boxes of Jiffy mix for the dish in the pictures, and it was too much. About 1 1/2 cups of batter should be enough for the final product.

This is too much batter. You should still have some chili peeking around the sides. Cornbread will expand and rise in the oven, and if you use too much batter, you’ll have a very cornbread heavy dish. One box of Jiffy mix is perfect.

You could also use chili from a can, if you are really pressed for time, but making up a batch of homemade chili is so easy that I’d say go for it. I have quite a few chili recipes on this site, but my favorite is this simple vegetarian chili. I usually make some kind of variation on this chili when I want something fast and relatively healthy. And my biggest chili secret? Add about half a cup of brewed coffee with the tomatoes and/or broth. It adds a wonderful, meaty, smoky flavor that can’t be beat.

Once you’ve got your chili cooked and your cornbread batter prepared, preheat the oven to 350F. Pour the chili into a 9 x 13 inch baking dish and smooth it out, then carefully pour the cornbread batter over the chili. Using a spatula, smooth it out as best you can. Top the whole shebang with some grated Monterey Jack, cheddar, or pepper jack cheese, and bake for about 20 to 25 minutes.

Let it cool for a few minutes before serving, and you have yourself an excellent all-in-one meal. You can top it with a bit of sour cream or green onions if you feel the need to make it prettier. This is winter comfort food at its best, and one of my favorite childhood meals. If you’re looking for somethings super easy for this week pre-Thanksgiving smorgasbord, you can’t go wrong with this one. Enjoy!

I’m sure most of you have your Thanksgiving menus set and grocery shopping done, but if you’re still looking for a few good sides to sit alongside the turkey this Thursday, might I offer a few suggestions?

Mr. X’s Brussels sprouts, pictured above, are a great addition to the Thanksgiving table. And they’re pretty simple. Cook some bacon in a cast iron skillet. Toss Brussels sprouts with olive oil, salt, and pepper, and sear them in the bacon fat, then put the whole dish in a 350F oven for about 20 minutes to soften and roast the sprouts. They are delicious.

Looking for a way to bring squash to the table? This Kuri Squash Gratin is perfect: light and fluffy, and full of flavor.

Trying to figure out what to do with cauliflower? Bon Appetit’s Cauliflower Broccoli Flan with Spinach Bechamel is totally worth trying out.

You can’t go wrong with a Potato Cauliflower Gratin, and this is one of the best I’ve ever had. You can try mixing it up and making a Brussels Sprout Cauliflower Gratin with this recipe, too.

And cream braised brussels sprouts? Be still my heart.

Do you like to include a soup course? I have more recipes for soup than you can shake a stick at, but this Potato Leek soup is especially stand out.

If you have vegetarians to feed, stuffed squash is a great way to do it.

And finally, if you want an unusual and impressive dessert, I highly recommend this Cranberry Upside Down Cake.

It’s gorgeous and delicious.

I’m heading down to San Diego for Thanksgiving, where I and my two brothers will attempt to share a tiny kitchen without hurting each other. I can’t wait. Have a great holiday week!

Lately I’ve had quite a thing for meals I can portion out and freeze in little individual servings. This Turkey Manicotti is exactly that. I thought it was just as delicious defrosted and carried to work in a little plastic container as it was when I first made it. In fact, I thought maybe it was even better. Maybe the flavors had more time to develop and become one, though I’m not entirely sure that can actually happen in a freezer. Either way, this is an excellent meal to make on a weekend and freeze for those evenings when you just don’t want to cook or those mornings when you can’t find anything else in the cupboard to bring for lunch.

Manicotti can be a little fussy, I’ll give you that. I attempted to use a plastic bag with a corner cut off to pipe the filling into the cooked shells, but I couldn’t really get the hang of that activity. Eventually I just used a spoon to kind of shovel the filling in. Sure, it got messy and filling ended up falling out of the shells and into the baking dish, but it all tasted really good in the end, so what does a little sloppiness really matter, huh?

I based my recipe on one from Giada De Laurentiis’s Everyday Italian, for Beef and Cheese Manicotti. I’m personally a big fan of ground turkey, I think it tastes faintly peppery, but if you’re not that into it, go ahead and use beef. And if you have leftover roasted turkey, which some of you might have in the next week or so, for whatever reason, that would probably taste pretty darn good, too.

Cheesy Turkey Manicotti
Adapted from Giada De Laurentiis

• 1/2 lb. ground turkey
• 1-2 T. olive oil
• 1/2 a small yellow onion, finely diced
• 1/4 c. pine nuts
• 1 15-ounce container of ricotta (whole milk is best, if you can find it)
• 1 1/2 c. Mozzarella cheese, shredded
• 1/2 c. Parmesan cheese, grated
• 1 tsp. dried oregano
• 2 or 3 cloves of garlic, minced
• salt and pepper
• 1 box of Manicotti shells (there are usually 12-14 tubes in a box
• 1 1/2 c. Marinara sauce (there is no shame in sauce from a jar)

Heat a medium skillet over medium-high heat. Add the ground turkey and cook, breaking it up with a wooden spoon, until it’s cooked through. You might need to add a touch of oil to the pan if the meat is very lean, but probably not much. Once the meat is cooked through, remove from the skillet and set aside in a medium mixing bowl. Add about a tablespoon of olive oil to the pan. Once it’s hot, add the onion. Saute until the onion is soft and golden, probably about five minutes. Remove to the bowl with the turkey.

While the meat and onion mixture is cooling off a bit, bring a big pot of salted water to boil to cook the manicotti. You’ll probably need to cook the pasta in batches, for about five minutes. You want the pasta soft but not cooked through all the way, and not falling apart or anything. Pour a thin, thin layer of Marinara sauce into a 9 x 13 inch baking dish, and set the cooked manicotti into this to cool and await filling.

This is also a good time to toast the pine nuts, if you want to. A toaster oven is perfect for this, but if you don’t have one, you can toast them in a 350F oven for about 2 or 3 minutes. Just keep a close eye on them—they burn fast!

Once your pasta is cooked, the turkey is cooled down, and the pine nuts are toasted, go ahead and mix up the filling: Stir together the turkey, onions, pine nuts, ricotta cheese, about a cup of the mozzarella, the oregano, garlic, and salt and pepper. Now you can use a spoon or a pastry bag (if you’re more dexterous than I) to fill the manicotti with the filling. Arrange the filled manicotti in a single layer in the baking dish, pour the remaining marinara over the top, and spring the rest of the Mozzarella and the Parmesan over the top.

If your oven isn’t already preheated from the pine nuts, do that now: Preheat to 350F. Bake the manicotti for about 35 minutes, until the sauce is bubbling and the cheese is browned. Let it cool off for about five minutes before serving so everything doesn’t fall apart as soon as you dish it out.

If you’re using leftover roasted turkey, I’d recommend dicing it as finely as you can, so it’s easier to spoon into the manicotti. If you really like to make and freeze meals, you can even freeze the whole assembled dish, un-baked. When you’re ready to make it, defrost and bake at 350F for probably closer to 45 minutes. Me, I just put the extra servings in small Tupperware containers and microwave them when I need a quick meal.

The only problem with my love of freezing meals is that I also love to cook dinner every night, and I almost always have leftovers. Needless to say, my freezer is filling up fast. But I really don’t feel there’s anything wrong with that. Not a single thing at all.

Crazy, but true: I have been writing this here blog for three years today. A lot has happened in three years, and not just in the kitchen. I know I’ve said it many times before, but it’s true: When I first started writing here, I really didn’t know much about cooking at all. I’d always enjoyed doing it, but my technique left much to be desired. My favorite meal was rice and beans from a box, and I was so freaked out about raw shrimp I didn’t look closely enough to see that they weren’t de-veined before cooking them. I thought baking bread from scratch was Little House on the Prairie stuff, and I didn’t have the first clue that broccoli has a season.

In celebration of three years of cooking and writing and taking pictures of food, and learning my way around an oven, I decided to splurge this week and bake this lovely Greek Celebration Bread, from Reinhardt’s The Bread Baker’s Apprentice, as my weekly breakfast loaf. And it does feel like a splurge from my usual plain, whole wheat loaf. This bread is fragrant and tender and rich and really freaking fabulous.

The list of ingredients looks long, and the fact that it requires a pre-ferment might seem intimidating, but this bread is actually quite easy. I did the whole thing in one afternoon, but if you think ahead, you might want to make the pre-ferment ahead of time and let it rest overnight in the refrigerator. If you don’t want to think ahead, though, don’t worry about it. Just pick a quiet weekend afternoon for baking and you’re good to go. As the weather gets cooler and the skies get grayer, doesn’t the idea of sitting at home baking bread sound appealing, after all?

This photograph is deceptive, by the way. This loaf is almost as big as my head. Maybe even bigger, I didn’t exactly measure. I was worried that it was going to burn, because when I checked it halfway through the suggested baking time it was already golden brown, but it didn’t burn. Instead, it turned this rich chestnut color, and the crust is soft, but just a little bit shatter-y when toasted. I suspect these would make terrific rolls; if you choose to make rolls, you can probably halve the baking time.

The only not so great thing I have to say about this bread is that it isn’t really spectacular toasting bread. Because it’s so soft and light, it doesn’t stand up that well to the kind of natural peanut butter I eat, unless I soften the peanut butter in the microwave before spreading. It certainly tastes terrific with peanut butter, even if it does start to tear apart a little.

Greek Celebration Bread
Adapted from The Bread Baker’s Apprentice

• 1 c. poolish (recipe below)
• 2 1/2 c. (16 ounces) bread flour
• 1 tsp. (1/4 ounce) salt
• 1 1/2 tsp. instant yeast
• 1 tsp. ground cinnamon
• 1/4 tsp. ground nutmet
• 1/4 tsp. ground ginger
• 1 tsp. orange extract
• 1 tsp. hazelnut or almond extract
• 2 large eggs, slightly beaten
• 1/4 c. olive oil
• 1/4 c. honey
• 3/4 c. whole milk

Poolish

• 3 3/4 ounces flour (about 1/2 cup)
• 4 ounces of water (a 3/4 cup)
• 1/12 teaspoon of yeast (just use a pinch)

Start by making the poolish, at least three hours or the day before you want to bake the bread. Just mix the flour, water, and yeast together well, cover with plastic wrap, and set aside. After three or four hours, it’s ready to use, or you can set it in the refrigerator overnight. Just remove it from the refrigerator an hour before you want to bake the bread so it has time to come to room temperature and wake up a bit.

When you’re ready to bake, mix together the flour, salt, yeast, cinnamon, nutmeg, and ginger in a large mixing bowl. Stir in the poolish, the orange and nut extracts, eggs, honey, oil, and milk. If you have a stand mixer, you’re in luck! This will be way easier for you. Use the paddle attachment to mix the dough until it comes together, then switch to the dough hook and mix for about ten minutes. If you don’t have a stand mixer, use a wooden spoon, spatula, or a dough whisk to mix the dough, and when it’s started to form a ball, turn it out on a floured counter and knead for about ten minutes. This is the trickiest part: This dough is wetter and stickier than any dough I’ve worked with previously, so it was kind of hard to knead. I had to add probably another half cup of flour throughout the kneading process to keep it from sticking to everything in sight. But once you have a smooth, supple loaf, you can set it aside to rise.

Put the dough in a lightly oiled mixing bowl, cover with a towel, and set in a warm-ish spot to rise for about an hour and a half. It should double in size.

Once it’s doubled, remove it from the bowl and shape it into a ball (or boule). You want to kind of stretch the surface of the dough like you’re wrapping it around itself. (If you can, I highly recommend getting your hands on a copy of Reinhardt’s book; he explains the process and reasons for all of these steps much better than I ever could.)

Set the boule on a parchment-lined baking sheet to proof for another hour. You want it to double in size again. Then preheat the oven to 350F. Bake the loaf for about 20 minutes, then turn the baking sheet and bake for another 20 or 25 minutes. Once it’s rich brown and hollow sounding when tapped on the bottom, it’s ready. Set it aside to cool on a wire rack before cutting it.

As you can see, I burned my slices a little bit this morning at breakfast. And you know, they still tasted really darn good. I definitely encourage you to bake this bread this holiday season, even if you’re kind of afraid of yeast. Especially if you’re kind of afraid of yeast. After all, if there’s one thing I’ve learned over the last three years, it’s that you’ll never learn to cook if you don’t get in the kitchen.

As I near the three year anniversary of this here bloggity blog, I’ve been reading back over old posts. And I’m kind of embarrassed to admit how frequently I wrote things like, “This recipe wasn’t perfect, but I will definitely try to improve on it and let you know how that goes.” I’m embarrassed because I almost never actually tried to improve those recipes. When I first started learning how to cook, I had a real aversion to repeating recipes, and if something wasn’t memorably awesome the first time around, the chances of it getting another go were pretty slim.

Well, now that I know a little more in the ways of the kitchen, I’m starting to get more curious about those initially not-so-exciting recipes, and I think I’m finally ready to try to improve on them. I’ve decided that it’s finally time to start making good on all those promises, and I’ve started with this: Pierogi with Browned Onion, Tomatoes, and Dill.

The first time around, this recipe was not really what I had been envisioning. It was too onion-y, and the separate ingredients in the sauce just didn’t really cohere into something spectacular. It was basically like eating pierogi topped with caramelized onions, tomatoes, and dill. Something was missing, and that something was cream.

This time around, I set out to make a sauce, not a topping. I briefly contemplated making my own pierogi, but I wanted to focus on getting this sauce right, and making pierogi would only have been a distraction. I went with the supermarket staple, Mrs. T’s, and they were as good as I remembered. You have three options for cooking the pierogi: You can boil them, bake them, or pan fry them. I decided to try baking, as boiling had previously proved disappointing, and I thought baking would be a little less fat intensive. I must admit, however, that while baking is easier and marginally healthier, pierogi really are best when they’re pan fried.

The sauce, though, makes a great accompaniment, no matter how those piergoi are cooked. It is piquant and just a little bit sweet, and provides a nice acidic counterpart to the doughy, starchy piergoi.

Pierogi with Tomato Dill Sauce
Adapted from Gourmet

• 2 T. olive oil or butter
• 1/2 a small yellow onion, sliced
• 1 14-ounce can of crushed tomatoes or tomato puree(the smoother the better)
• 1 bay leaf
• 1/2 c. chicken or vegetable broth
• 1 tsp. sugar
• 1/3 c. heavy cream
• 1/4 c. chopped fresh dill
• salt and pepper
• 1 package of frozen pierogi

Heat the oil or butter in a medium skillet over medium heat. When it’s hot, lower the heat and add the onions. Spread them out in a single layer in the pan, and leave them to brown and caramelize for about 20 minutes, stirring only once, if they seem to be browning unevenly.

Once the onions are browned to your liking, add the tomatoes and bay leaf, and stir well. Then stir in the broth and the sugar. Let the sauce cook for at least 10 minutes while you prepare the pierogi to your liking. When the pierogi is ready and the sauce is cooked through, stir the heavy cream into the sauce. Stir until combined, then add the dill and salt and pepper to taste. Cook for just another minute or two, then serve the sauce over the piergoi. Be judicious with the sauce: You don’t want too much or it will overwhelm the lovely potato awesomeness of the pierogi.

If you’re feeling especially indulgent, you can top it with a small dollop of sour cream or plain yogurt, and a sprinkling of parsley or dill.

This is one recipe I’m glad I unearthed and improved. And next time, I might even have the gumption to make my own pierogi.

For someone who bakes her own bread pretty regularly, I haven’t experimented too much with different types of bread. I usually only eat bread once a day, for breakfast, with peanut butter, so I tended to think that my options were limited to plain sourdough or wheat. But I recently read a book by Joyce Carol Oates in which the main character begins learning how to bake bread. And she bakes all kinds of different loaves, full of fruits and nuts and flavors, and I was smitten. I decided it was time to branch out, to move away from sourdough and try something new. And I just happened to open one of my bread cookbooks to a recipe for Rustic Walnut Bread, and my decision was made.

Of course, I started pretty small, as far as wild variety goes. This bread is subtle enough that it’s very versatile: It’s great with peanut butter because the two nut flavors play off each other nicely. And it’s terrific with apple butter, a huge batch of which I just made recently. And man, it is terrific with a nice, nutty gruyere, with sharp cheddar, with brie. I’m willing to bet it would be terrific with any cheese. Make some small toast points out of this bread and they will fit perfectly onto an antipasto platter, or with an artichoke or spinach dip. And it will make great rolls for a holiday dinner. Thanksgiving, anyone?

Even better? It’s easy, and doesn’t require any special nut flours or anything. I actually left out fennel seeds, which the original recipe calls for, because I didn’t have them, and am not always a great fan of fennel seeds. I also updated the recipe to use instant yeast instead of fresh.

Rustic Walnut Bread
Adapted from Ursula Ferrigno’s The New Bread Book

• 1 lb. 5 oz (or 4 1/5 c.) bread flour (or you can use all-purpose, or you can use half bread flour and half whole wheat)
• 1 tsp. salt (I use fine sea salt for baking)
• 2 T. unsalted butter, cut into small pieces
• 1 c. finely chopped walnuts
• 2 1/2 tsp. instant yeast
• 1 1/2 c. warm water

Sift the flour and salt into a large mixing bowl. Cut the butter into the bread like you would butter for a pie crust: Use your fingers to rub the butter pieces into the flour until it is broken down into a coarse, sandy texture, without too many large lumps of butter left. Stir in the walnuts.

Mix together the yeast and about two tablespoons of the water. Add this to the flour mixture and stir, then slowly add the rest of the water, stirring, until you have a smooth, slightly sticky ball of dough. I have found that a hand mixer with dough hook attachments works really well for the middle mixing stages of making bread. I use a spatula to begin mixing the liquid into the flour, and once it’s started to come together, I switch to my hand mixer. I use the mixer until it’s almost entirely incorporated into one large ball of dough, then I turn the dough out on a floured surface to knead for about five to seven minutes, or until I have a nice, smooth ball. The walnuts made kneading this one a little tricky, because they kept popping out and flying to the ground, but if you’re not too vigorous, they should mostly stay in the dough.

Once the dough is smooth, put it back in the mixing bowl, cover with a towel, and set in a warm-ish place to rise for about an hour and a half. Sometimes I rinse the bowl out and spray it with spray oil, and sometimes I am just too lazy for that.

Once the dough has doubled in size, preheat the oven to 425F.

You have a few different options for shaping and baking.

• You can use a rectangular bread pan: Punch down the dough (or gently deflate, if you’re not feeling violent. Spray the pan with spray oil or butter it. Shape the bread into a slightly rectangular shape and fit it into the bread pan. Cover with a towel and let rise for another 20 minutes or so. Then slash the top of the bread a few times with a knife or lame, so air can release. Bake the bread for 10 minutes at 425, then for another 30 minutes at 375F. If you want, you can add a small dish of water to the oven to create steam, which helps make crispier crusts. Once the bread is browned, remove from the oven, pull the loaf out of the pan, and let cool on a wire rack.
• You can bake the bread on a pizza stone: Preheat the stone with the oven. Punch down the dough, and gently shape into a round or a baquette. Cover with a towel and let rise for another 20 minutes or so. Then slash the top of the bread a few times with a knife or lame, so air can release. Bake the bread for 10 minutes at 425F, then for another 30 minutes at 375F. If you want, you can add a small dish of water to the oven to create steam, which helps makes crispier crusts. Once the bread is browned, and sounds hollow when you tap the bottom, remove from the oven and let cool on a wire rack.
• You can bake the bread in a dutch oven: Preheat the oven with the dish part (not the lid) of the dutch oven in the oven. Punch down the dough, and shape into a round. Cover with a towel and let rise for another 20 minutes or so. Then slash the top of the bread a few times with a knife or lame, so air can release. Carefully place the dough into the hot dutch oven, and cover with the lid. Bake for 10 minutes at 425F, and another 30 minutes at 375F. The lid on the pot helps create steam, which makes for crispier crusts. Once the bread is golden brown, remove from the oven, pull the loaf out of the dutch oven, and let cool on a wire rack.

The bread has a wonderful, earthy flavor and I am loving it. I’ve already started to contemplate how it might taste made with pecans or even hazelnuts, perhaps with a little bit of cocoa added for a treat. But of course, I have three or four different bread cookbooks full of an amazing variety of breads, and I should probably give those a chance, too, now that I’ve finally broken out of my boring bread rut.

Yes, my friends, it is soup season again. I adore soup season, as you can probably tell from a quick glance through the archives of this site. Soup recipes abound. Soup is one of the easiest things to cook, and to experiment with—you can make delicious soup of of nearly anything. Most of the soup I make is vegetarian, if not vegan, so this particular soup is a bit different for me. I originally flagged it in the October 2007 issue of Bon Appetit, but just got around to make it a few weeks ago, on a chilly October day, when Mr. X was visiting. I figured he would appreciate a hearty, flavorful soup made with chorizo. And he did.

This soup is a total winner: spicy and thick with potatoes, dotted with silky bits of spinach, and easy peasy. I used a Mexican-style chorizo, rather than the linguica in the original recipe. And for the first time ever I saw yams and sweet potatoes side by side in the supermarket and truly realized what a big difference there is. The sweet potatoes I used in this soup were firmer than yams, and paler in color. I suspect yams would work just fine if it’s all you can get your hands on, but I recommend sweet potatoes.

I also added a tiny bit of cinnamon, because I was curious how it would taste, and it tasted great. The cinnamon flavor was definitely noticeable, though, so if you’re not sure about it, feel free to leave it out, or substitute for a bit of cumin, perhaps.

Sweet Potato and Sausage Soup
Adapted from Bon Appetit

• about 2 T. olive oil
• about 9 oz. Mexican chorizo (crumbly, not cured)
• 1 medium white onion, diced
• 3 cloves of garlic, minced
• 1/4 tsp. cinnamon
• salt and pepper to taste
• 1 or 2 large sweet potatoes, peeled and cut into 1-inch cubes
• 2 large russet potatoes, peeled and cut into 1-inch cubes
• 1 32-oz. container of chicken stock
• 3 c. fresh spinach, cleaned and chopped into small pieces

Heat the olive oil in a large soup pot over medium heat. Once it’s hot, add the chorizo to the pot, and use a wooden spoon to break it up into small pieces. Cook, stirring occasionally, for about five minutes, or until the sausage is mostly cooked through. Stir in the onions and cook until they’re soft and translucent, about five more minutes. Then add the garlic and cinnamon, and cook for about 30 seconds. Stir in the potatoes until they’re well coated in oil and cook for just a few minutes before adding the stock.

Stir well, bring the stock to a boil, and then lower the heat so the soup is simmering. Let it cook for at least 20 minutes, or until the potatoes are tender. Then stir in the spinach just until it’s wilted. Season to taste with salt and pepper, and serve.

I was never a big fan of winter when I lived in Boston, and I’m not going to pretend that I’m not a little disappointed that I haven’t managed to escape places where it snows quite yet. But big pots of soup, hot apple cider, and cozy sweaters do make me a little grateful for cold weather. And now that I live in a smaller, newer house with gas heating, as opposed to the huge, drafty house with expensive oil heating, I think winter will be just that much more pleasant. Heating and soup will get me through this one just fine, I think.

Man, I love pasta. I eat pasta at least three times a week, and not just with red sauce. I can take anything in my refrigerator and make some kind of pasta-based dinner around it. And recently, while flipping through Giada De Laurentiis’s Everyday Italian, I decided that nearly all of the recipes in this book would be more interesting if they were turned into pasta dishes. So I decided to start with Chicken Piccata.

Giada’s Chicken Piccata recipe is in the chapter on Cutlets. I’m assuming it’s meant to be served as a big slab of meat, maybe with a side of polenta and some kind of vegetable. But as you can probably tell if you’ve been following this blog for any length of time, I’m not really a big-slab-of-meat kind of girl. I tend to prefer meals in which all of the important food components can be mixed together and served in a bowl, which is probably why pasta is such a favorite. So I decided to add some zucchini to the mix and turn this big-slab-of-meat meal into a quick, easy, and tasty pasta dinner.

Chicken Piccata is traditionally served as a pan-cooked piece of chicken with a lemon and caper sauce. It didn’t take much work to cut the chicken into small pieces and saute it instead of cooking it whole, and the sauce is very simply made of three ingredients: chicken stock, lemon juice, and capers. Dredging the chicken pieces in flour is a key step, and helps make the sauce silky and thick. And throwing a little sauteed zucchini and onion in makes this a well-rounded meal. I just don’t feel right if I don’t have a vegetable at every meal.

I also added a little something that perhaps makes this less Italian and more Mediterranean:

I recently ordered a few herbs and spices from Penzey’s and was very pleasantly surprised when they sent a free sample of their Greek Seasoning blend. And the free sample was, as you can see, very generous. It completely justified the cost of shipping, and I was pretty stoked with the other things I ordered, too. And no, no one paid me to wax rhapsodic about Penzey’s. But if you’re living in an isolated place like I am, with fairly limited spice selections in your local supermarket, navigating Penzey’s admittedly annoying website and paying about $5 for shipping is more than worth it.

Anyway, I added a hefty pinch or two of this seasoning mix to the flour before dredging the chicken, and it added just a little something extra to the final dish. If you don’t have Greek seasoning, you can mix in a small pinch of oregano, garlic powder, and marjoram. Or you can leave it out entirely and the dish will not suffer.

I also had the sauteed zucchini leftover from a previous dinner, which leads me to a helpful hint for those of you out there cooking for one: If you don’t want an entire zucchini for dinner, go ahead and cook up the whole thing. Store half of the cooked zucchini in the refrigerator and use it in another dish later in the week. I find half a zucchini tends to keep a little better if it’s cooked than if it’s just wilting away in the crisper, and the olive oil-y onion-y flavors just get more delicious over time.

This recipe made for a big dinner for one person. You could serve it with a salad and a lovely baguette it would be a light dinner for two.

Chicken Piccata Pasta
Adapted from Giada’s Everyday Italian

• 1 large boneless, skinless chicken breast
• about 1/4 c. flour
• salt and pepper
• a big pinch of Greek seasoning, or smaller pinches of dried oregano, garlic powder, and marjoram
• 2 T. olive oil, divided
• 1/2 zucchini, sliced
• 1/2 a small white onion, diced
• 1/2 T. butter
• 1/2 c. chicken stock
• juice from half a lemon
• 2 T. capers, with a little liquid from the jar
• a small handful of chopped fresh parsley
• about a cup of uncooked gemilli pasta (or farfalle or shells or any other small pasta shape you like)

Cut the chicken into 1-inch pieces. Mix together the flour, salt, pepper, and seasonings, and toss the chicken pieces with the flour mixture so each piece is lightly coated. Put a large pot of salted water on to boil for the pasta.

Heat a tablespoon of olive oil in a medium skillet over medium heat. When it’s hot, add the onion and saute until it’s soft and slightly translucent, about two or three minutes. Add the zucchini slices, and a bit of salt and pepper. Saute the zucchini and onion until the zucchini is soft and golden, then remove from the skillet and set aside.

Add the pasta to the boiling water—The pasta will take about as long to cook as the chicken.

Heat the remaining olive oil and the butter in the same skillet you used for the zucchini. Once it’s hot, add the flour coated chicken pieces. Saute, stirring occasionally, for about five minutes, or until they are browned and almost entirely cooked through. Then stir in the chicken stock and bring to a boil. Let the chicken pieces and stock cook together, stirring occasionally, until the stock is almost entirely reduced and has created a slightly thick, silky sauce.

Drain the pasta and stir it and the zucchini mixture in with the chicken in the skillet. Add the lemon juice and capers and cook for another minute or two. Salt to taste, and serve garnished with parsley (which I believe I completely forgot in my hunger).

One of my favorite things about my new life in Walla Walla is that I have plenty of time for elaborate cooking projects. I have long, lazy Saturdays and Sundays with no one to see and not very much to do, and I spend most of that time in the kitchen (or on the couch learning to crochet and watching Buffy). On weekend evenings I like to pick a recipe from one of the many cooking magazines that are taking over my house, something that looks elaborate and involves many steps, and spend a good two or three hours in the kitchen, kneading dough and roasting things and assembling and baking and then, happily, eating.

This particular piece of deliciousness, from La Cucina Italiana, took about three hours, although most of that time was spent watching a movie while I waited for dough to rise. And it was well worth the wait. The dough is easy and rolls out smoothly (though it could do with a teensy bit more flavor, which could be achieved by letting it sit in the refrigerator overnight, I suspect). Roasting peppers in my oven was an adventure, and the end product was excellent: yeasty and warm and full of flavor. Anytime you combine bread, vegetables, and cheese, I suspect it’s impossible to end up with something bad.

Lately I’ve been having great luck with yeast breads, which is a relief after my early mishaps in Walla Walla. I am far from being an excellent bread baker, but I’m getting there. And this recipe is a great one to start with if you’re not a big bread baker because it’s easy and the shaping aspect is very forgiving. I could not get the dough to stretch out quite enough to reach all the edges of my baking pan, but it was easy to fold the top layer and bottom layer together, so it all worked out just fine in the end.

This is almost like a deep dish pizza, without the tomato sauce. It’s stuffed with mozzarella and sauteed escarole, and topped with sliced tomato and roasted pepper, and turns out wonderfully crusty. It would be a perfect accompaniment to a small salad or lentil soup. And if you can’t find good tomatoes this time of year, I suspect this would be equally delicious with a thin layer of tomato sauce or canned, diced tomatoes on top.

Focaccia Mediterranea
Adapted from La Cucina Italiana

For the dough:

• 2 1/4 c. bread flour
• 1 1/2 tsp. instant yeast
• 1 tsp. sea salt
• 1/8 tsp. sugar
• 3/4 c. warm water

For the filling and topping:

• 1 bell pepper (I used green, but any color would work)
• 1/2 small onion, diced
• approx. 3-4 T. olive oil, divided
• about 4 c. chopped escarole
• 3 T. parsley, finely chopped
• about 3/4 c. grated mozzarella or provolone
• 1 medium tomato, thinly sliced, or about 1/3 c. tomato sauce
• 1 tsp. dried oregano

In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, yeast, salt, and sugar. Add the water, and stir until the dough starts to come together. When most of the flour is incorporated, turn it out onto a floured surface and knead until the dough is smooth and slightly sticky. Return it to the bowl (I usually clean out the bowl and spray a light layer of olive oil inside, but I don’t think you need to). Cover the bowl with a cloth and let sit in a warm-ish room to rise. The dough should double in size, which usually takes about an hour.

Meanwhile, roast the pepper over a gas burner or under a broiler, for about four or five minutes on each side. Once it’s blackened, let it sit to cool for about 15 minutes, then peel the blackened skin off, chop and de-seed. (You could totally buy roasted peppers in a jar and I wouldn’t tell anyone).

Heat about two tablespoons of olive oil in a large skillet over medium heat. When it’s nice and hot, add the onion and cook for a few minutes, until the onion is soft and slightly translucent. Stir in the escarole a handful at a time, until it wilts, then stir in the parsley and a sprinkle of salt. Remove from the heat and let cool.

When the dough is risen, oil a 9-inch square baking pan. Divide the dough, taking about 2/3 of it for the bottom layer and the remaining 1/3 for the top. Roll the larger piece into a 10 inch by 10 inch square, and press it into the baking pan, making sure to press it into the corners. It doesn’t need to reach all the way to the top of each side.

Spread the sauteed escarole mixture over the layer of dough in the pan, and top with the grated cheese. Then roll out the remaining dough and use it to cover the escarole filling. Pinch the edges together to close it up.

Mix together about a tablespoon of oil with 1 tsp of water and a pinch of salt, and brush the mixture over the dough. Arrange the tomato and the roasted pepper on top and sprinkle with dried oregano. Now cover it with a dishtowel and let rise again, for about another hour.

Heat the oven to 450F. Bake the focaccia for about 30 minutes. When the crust is golden brown, remove it from the oven. Use a spatula to gently lift the focaccia out of the pan, and let it cool on a wire rack for at least five minutes, if you can. I’m not sure I did wait, honestly, it smelled so incredible. And it made for excellent leftovers, as it reheats easily in a toaster oven in just a few minutes.

This was such an excellent weekend cooking project, I can’t wait to try it again, and to experiment with different fillings and different toppings. I’d love to hear your suggestions in the comments! What kinds of fillings would you try?