Recipe: Lamb Larb

We turned this into a salad

Lamb Larb
Bon Appetit Magazine, Feb 2017, p. 97
4.5 stars

This was a fast and healthy dish to make with a lot of complexity in flavor -- and yet with not many complex ingredients to prep.

Ingredients:  ground lamb, white rice, Bibb lettuce leaves, cucumber, mint, shallot, cilantro, garlic, red Thai chiles, lime juice, fish sauce, demerara sugar or dark brown sugar, lemongrass stalk, salted roasted peanuts, vegetable oil

Tips:

• Add red pepper to the lemongrass mix
• I'm not a huge fan of peanuts in dishes so didn't top mine with peanuts
• Add basil
• Make extra fish sauce to top the dish
• Add sriracha on top
• Didn't have large enough leaves to make lettuce cups, so turned this into a salad!

Recipe: Chocolate Torta Soffice

Right out of the oven without the powdered
sugar and mascarpone whipped topping

Chocolate Torta Soffice
Food and Wine Magazine, May 2017, p. 107
3 stars as a regular chocolate cake;  4 stars as a chocolate tea cake

This is a chocolate tea cake, not very sweet and not suitable for a celebratory dessert.  However, as a tea cake or a non-so-sweet chocolate cake, it's good.

We had some ganache from another recipe I made;  topping the cake with the ganache, mascarpone whipped topping and a little ice cream was delicious.  We did not top it with the pistachios.

Ingredients:  flour, unsweetened cocoa, salted butter, baking powder, eggs, granulated sugar, whole milk, mascarpone, heavy cream, confectioners' sugar, chopped roasted unsalted pistachios

Recipe: Toasted Orecchiette with Veal Meatballs

Toasted Orecchiette with Veal Meatballs
Bon Appetit Magazine, Jan 2016, p. 11
4 stars

This recipe would be GREAT with some changes.

Tips/Changes:

• Definitely need to cook the bacon first to render off the fat!
• The meatballs were not done after 20 min of cooking in the broth.  We ended up sauteing them in a pan.
• Double the amount of kale next time.
• There wasn't a need to fry the orecchiette -- I mean, it might have been good, but it wasn't necessary (saved the calories here).
• Used ground beef instead of ground veal.
• Used baby bellas instad of maitake mushrooms.
• The recipe called for 8 garlic cloves.  We used 6 (afraid that it would be too garlicky which it wasn't), so will use all 8 next time.  

Ingredients:  smoked bacon, ground veal, ground pork, garlic cloves, onion, breadcrumbs, milk, broth, orecchiette, olive oil, maitake mushrooms, kale, Parmesan, ground coriander, red pepper flakes, allspice, hot smoked Spanish paprika, kosher salt, black pepper