With the weather warming up I find that I make more salads. This 7 layer salad is great for bbq parties or summer pot-luck parties as it feeds a lot of people. It can also be assembled the day before (but not necessary) if you want.

I like the fact that the recipe uses both Boston lettuce and baby spinach-two of my favorite “salad” items. They hold up really well with all of the other ingredients.

The recipe comes from my mother and I am not sure where she found it originally. It is rather brand specific leading me to believe it came from a magazine. (The ones that provide recipes for whatever it is they are advertising and want you to buy.) I’ve kept the brands in the recipe as I saw no reason not too.

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I am so glad that I am not afraid of trying dishes from other cultures. If I were then I would have never come across this wonderful Filipino dish.

It is a very simple dish made with chicken or pork, slow cooked in a mixture of soy sauce, vinegar, garlic, bay leaf, and pepper.

The chicken came out moist and had a wonderful color to it. Matt took it to work the next day for lunch and came back telling me that it was even better the next day for having been able to soak in more of the sauce.

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So tonight we decided to make some Thai food. I don’t use the wok often so this was going to be a bit of an adventure for me.

Unfortunately when I went shopping for the ingredients this weekend I picked up rice noodles instead of glass noodles. It was a simple mistake on my part as I didn’t recall that glass noodles are actually made of bean threads and not rice. Even with the incorrect noodles I figured I should still give the recipe a go.

I made the Young Thailand Hot Sauce this morning to give it some time to rest. All I have to say is that if you aren’t used to heat, use this sparingly.

Overall I think the recipe was very easy to follow, even for a novice with the wok such as me. The key to it was definitely timing and being able to control the heat properly. Even with the change in noodles I think that the dish worked really well. I didn’t bother with the black fungus as I didn’t have the time to go to the local Asian market. I forgot to garnish with the red pepper at the end so it looked a little bland even with the green onion. It still tasted wonderful, and the the Young Thailand Hot Sauce gave it just enough kick.

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On Sunday evening I extended an invitation to some friends to come over for dinner. I had two options for the meal. After a quick discussion it was decided that I would make Turkey and Roasted Red Pepper Meat Loaf. This was a new recipe for me. I’ve tried several meatloaf recipes in the past and most of them didn’t turn out well.

I find it rather interesting that a dish a simple as meatloaf can go horribly wrong. Thankfully this was not the case with this recipe. I was afraid that it would turn out dry but it turned out really moist.

There were a few suggestions from my…test subjects. It was suggested that I chop the onions smaller as it seemed to be a bit much. I pointed out that I was short about a 1/4 pound of meat. So even though I did use a small onion it made a difference. The flavors worked well together though.

The dressing for the side salad was a little strong on the mustard, but it was passable.

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I made the Bavarian Pork Roast this week. I didn’t use the exact cut of pork that it called for, but it didn’t really seem to matter much. This has got to be one of the better recipes I have tried for a pork roast. It was amazingly moist and tender. It fell apart simply using a fork. I made mashed potatoes as a side dish to go with it.

The sour cream sauce was decent enough, though I have made better. I don’t think that I will make it the next time. Instead I will use one of the more traditional sauces that I know how to make.

I’m constantly looking for recipes to use my Crockpot with and this is definitely one that I am going to keep.

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Lamb Ragu was the first dish I tried to make when I went on my lamb kick a few months ago that didn’t involve leftovers from Outback.

This was a surprisingly easy recipe to follow, and I always appreciate that. I didn’t use the mint as I am not a fan of the mint/lamb combination.
I was quite surprised to find that lamb is a relatively lean meat. It has a very distinct flavor and was very tasty in this dish.

I invited Carly and her husband over for dinner to be guinea pigs (meant kindly) and as far as I can tell the dish garnered enough approval to be added to my repertoire.

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I’m not sure this is the case with every Kitchen Goddess, would-be or fully realized, but it seems to me that there are certain foods/recipes that simply make us feel at peace. Fettuccine with Bolognese Sauce is one of those recipes for me.

I look forward to the prep work that is involved with anticipation the moment I decide that I am going to make it. From buying all the ingredients to the actual chopping. I’m not why this is. But it really does make me happy. My spirits rise and I usually end up bopping about the kitchen singing some random happy tune. And this is just during the prep stage which really only takes as long as chopping vegetables and the pancetta.

Then there is the smell that fills the kitchen when I actually start to cook. It’s absolutely heavenly. It comforts me. The moment I smell the combination of celery, carrots, onion and pancetta there can be no wrong in the world. Everything just seems right. It’s an amazing feeling.

I try to make this every other month or so. It makes so much that if I make it just for the two of us there will be enough leftovers to last at least three meals so I freeze a lot of it. Even if I just pull it out of the freezer and thaw it I am still filled with a sense of well being.

I can only hope that when others share this meal with me that they get the same sense of comfort that I do when I make it.

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Recently I went on a lamb ‘kick’. I don’t recall why it started, most probably because I saw something on the telly. When I go on these ‘kicks’ I tend to talk about them a lot; so it wasn’t surprising when I asked my mother for suggestions for her birthday dinner that she said lamb.

After much deliberation I settled upon a recipe that I felt she would like. So off to Whole Foods I went to purchase the lamb chops. The meat counter at Whole Foods is one of my favorite places to shop for meat. It reminds me of the butcher shops in Germany and there is something about bringing home meat wrapped in butcher paper. Unfortunately, on the day that I went they didn’t have any rack of lamb left so I ended up substituting shoulder lamb chops.

The broiled lamb chops went excellently with the caramelized fennel and pancetta salad that I made. The balsamic vinegar reduction tied everything together with its sweet/tart flavor.

The only change I would make the next time I make it is reducing the balsamic reduction. For the amount of lamb there simply was too much of it and seemed rather wasteful. Especially since you don’t want to drown the meat in it but simply drizzle it.

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For my Mother’s birthday this year I decided to cook a meal for her. This was one of the first recipes I thought of when I started forming a menu. The first time I heard of it was while watching Giada De Laurentiis on the Food Channel. I tend to collect recipes from food shows and this one looked and sounded so good that I stored it in my recipe note book to make as soon as I could. So naturally when I came across it again I decided that my mother’s birthday would be a wonderful time to make it.

Fennel: Florence fennel, also called finocchio, is cultivated throughout the Mediterranean and in the United States. It has a broad, bulbous base that’s treated like a vegetable. Both the base and stems can be eaten raw in salads or cooked in a variety of methods such as braising, sautéing or in soups. The fragrant, graceful greenery can be used as a garnish or snipped like dill and used for a last-minute flavor enhancer. –Copyright (c) 1995 by Barron’s Educational Series, from The New Food Lover’s Companion, Second Edition, by Sharon Tyler Herbst

Never having actually cooked with Fennel (discounting Fennel Seeds of course), I had a hard time finding it in the grocery store I shop at on a regular basis. This called for a trip to Whole Foods. If we could not find it there then I would have to make a trip to Central Market. Thankfully, it did not come to that.

One of the first things I noticed while working with Fennel was the strong licorice scent. As Licorice is one of the few flavors that I am not overly fond of I was afraid that it might be overpowering in the salad. I needn’t have worried. I believe the roasting process and the brown sugar served to cut the strong licorice flavor. At the end of dinner we actually picked through the salad to eat the remaining fennel.

There were very few things I would do differently when it comes to the preparation of this salad. I recommend roasting the fennel on its own for the first 10 minutes then adding the pancetta towards the end. This would be to ensure a nice caramelized coloring of the pancetta instead of a something that looks burned (though it tasted just as good as the rest) especially if the slices of pancetta you are working with are fairly thin.

Timing is everything for this salad. You want to be able to serve the salad while the pancetta and fennel are still warm (though it tastes wonderful cooled as well) which makes things tricky when you have other dishes to finish and want to serve it well before the main course.

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