Cooking For Jeffrey

Asparagus & Fennel Soup, Roasted Italian Meatballs, Rigatoni with Sausage & Fennel, Parmesan Roasted Zucchini, Creamy Parmesan Polenta, Roasted Broccolini

Hello There!

Writing in real time now! It was hard to want to cook after returning home from a long trip abroad, and not really knowing which time zone I was in, but Ina makes it easy, as always.

A lot of the books in my collection are there because I think they are beautiful, unique, interesting, and feature a culture or cuisine of somewhere I’ve traveled (or somewhere I want to travel), and then the other half are practical cookbooks. Sometimes practicality & beauty intersect, like in Cooking for Jeffrey, but I just have to say that Ina Garten really knows how to write a book full of practical, approachable, and delicious recipes for the modern busy-person who wants to cook their own meals!

In addition to what we ended up making from this book this time around, we’ve cooked a lot from this book since it’s publication in 2016. I am constantly making the Maple-Roasted Carrot Salad, it is perfect for bringing to a party or potluck. There are a couple of roast chicken recipes in here, and Ina really takes away any “fear” one might have about roasting a whole chicken. Her method for Spaghetti Squash is the only one I will use to make Spaghetti Squash and it comes from this book (it’s actually this method and recipe that convinced me Spaghetti Squash was worth all the effort)!

You can tell that these recipes come from a place of love and comfort, because they are all so comforting and so full of love. The Rigatoni with Sausage and Fennel is one of those incredible balanced pasta bakes that ends up tasting like every bite was made with care. We used chicken sausage instead of pork, but otherwise stuck to the recipe as written. I think this could be a really special pasta dish to make for a dinner party that doesn’t have you sweating in the kitchen all day. If you’re a vegetarian, it’s easy enough to leave the sausage out and make the recipe with just the veggies & cheese!

It’s a saucy pasta dish, but we are going to bake the remainder to get a nice crispy top!

After traveling, I felt like I came back on a soup kick… but after reviewing what I cooked before I left, I feel like I was already on a soup kick! Regardless, Asparagus is just coming in to its season and the Asparagus and Fennel Soup sounded too good to pass up. I knew we had some random slices of bread in the freezer that would make for a great soup Crostini, and thus a fantastic and comforting dinner. The soup came together easily, the hardest part was chopping the vegetables, but once everything was in the pot and simmering, I felt the hard work was done. I blended it all together at the end - the interesting thing about this recipe is you use a bit of rice in the soup as your thickening agent instead of potatoes (what I assume would normally be used). The nice thing about rice is it doesn’t really change the consistency of the soup once you’ve blended it in. This was a nice touch, and one I may have to remember for creamy soups in the future.

We had just purchased all of our ingredients fresh on Sunday, and this soup calls for a bit of half and half at the end, I started to measure it out and poured a tiny bit into the soup and then I realized it was spoiled. I was so upset! This was a brand new half and half!!! The amount of soup we had in the pot vs. the amount of half and half I had added made me feel like we could probably eat it and not die… and spoiled milk is basically cheese, right? OK sorry if this is gross. Anyway we ate the soup. It was delicious! We didn’t die. We didn’t get sick (thank goodness), and I am never buying half and half from the store I bought it from again! I will definitely have to make the soup again, preferably without spoiled dairy added at the end.

Well, you know me and meatballs, and Ina has some secret trick to hers. Although this recipe is slightly different from another meatball recipe she has that makes some of the best meatballs I’ve ever had… it’s still a great recipe. The Roasted Italian Meatballs calls for red wine mixed right into the meat mix. It’s really an interesting addition. If you aren’t a wine fan, you may skip the wine and add more water or some milk instead, as the wine flavor is really present even in the finished cooked product. We froze half of the meatballs and are going to save them for a rainy day. The recipe says to toss them with a jar of tomato sauce, but since I technically shouldn’t be eating tomatoes, I do try to avoid them as I can. I decided to make a leek & mushroom gravy for the meatballs. Not the prettiest picture, but it was very delicious and a nice change-up from the traditional red sauce.

The book suggests you serve the meatballs with the Creamy Parmesan Polenta, I happened to have a bag of polenta in my pantry, so I thought “no time like the present” and since we were already having the pasta bake we didn’t need pasta on top of pasta. I used to make Polenta at one of my restaurant jobs, and it was always so stressful, if you leave it for too long it starts to burn, if you don’t cook it long enough, it tastes bitter, and even if you have it on the lowest of low temps, it will still bubble up and spurt out hot corn bits to burn your forearms. There must be some secret to making it just right (I assume pot-size has a lot to do with all of these factors), and I think pre-boiling your liquid and then adding the cornmeal/polenta slowly does help. We enjoyed it with the meatballs, but made far too much polenta… I had some this morning for breakfast with an egg, but it just didn’t fit my normal rice for breakfast craving. So if you have any suggestions for polenta… send them my way. Next time? Half recipe.

With the Meatballs and Polenta we decided to have the Parmesan Roasted Zucchini. When I worked as a chef I cannot tell you how many times clients told me they hate zucchini. Even still to this day I have people telling me how much they hate zucchini. Well Zucchini is a magical, beautiful.. blank canvas! It has so much potential in the world of vegetables! It can be grilled, broiled, roasted, pan-fried, sautéed, steamed, and even eaten raw! I love to make a zucchini soup in the summer, I love to shave it onto a pizza… I really love zucchini. I thought this would be a fun recipe to try zucchini in a new way. I guess the main issue people have with zucchini is that it releases a lot of water and therefore gets soggy, well I think Ina’s cracked that here. By removing some of the seeds from the interior, you are getting rid of a lot of what holds the moisture in the vegetable, and end up with a less soggy result! You scrape out some of the seeds to make a little bowl for your filling (later) roast them, cut-side down, which also helps draw out some of the water, flip them and then fill them, roast until that topping is crispy and zucchini is tender! It was a really delicious combination, the zucchini melted in our mouths, but the crispy topping kept the bite interesting and delicious. I would definitely make this again, but not for anyone who says they hate zucchini.

Lastly we prepared the Roasted Broccolini. I had purchased some broccoli/broccolini tops at the farmer’s market and decided this would be sufficient. I have a lot of methods/recipes for preparing broccolini, some of which I stole from other chefs, and some of which I invented myself, so it’s always nice to try another one when it comes my way. We thought this would be a great side dish to the pasta, and also it was very hands off! Once you pop the broccolini in the oven you don’t really have to think about it until the timer goes off. This was a great side dish that had a ton of flavor (roasting always makes veggies taste more complex) and went well with the pasta as we thought it would.

Without contest, Ina holds the crown for approachable and delicious recipes in one of her many cookbooks. I’m always happy to make her recipes and share them with others, and this book is a great book for a cook at any level.

Love & Happy Spatulas,

Alyssa

PS: We will likely be skipping the next book, Pasta by Hand by Jenn Louis simply because we don’t have the time to make pasta from scratch by hand this coming week. However, this is one of the first books Michael and I ever cooked from together when we first started dating. We made Buckwheat & Ricotta Gnocchi from this book early on in our relationship - for our first Valentine’s Day. So the fact that we are still together almost 10 years later must mean something!