Orange Food and Herbs - What a Weekend

If you’ve been following my posts, you know I love Sundays…the NY Times & coffee in bed, the leisurely breakfasts, and weekend blogging events. In fact, last week was so focused on editing and preliminary testing recipes for my book (I’m almost done) and responding to new volunteer recipe testers (and a special thanks to all of you!!!) that I didn’t even get time to read my favorite blogs, let alone write any posts.

This week however, there are two events that I want to be a part of –

Kalyn’s Kitchen’s Weekend Herb Blogging Event – two recipes – one with mint and one with thyme. That way I don’t feel so guilty about missing out last week; and Alicat & Sara of the Weekend Cookbook Challenge’s cooking up food that is orange in color from unused cookbooks.

Well every cookbook I own has been unused for the last too many months, given that I'm testing my own recipes, so that part was easy. Naturally I couldn’t just choose one dish or one book, for that matter, so during the course of the week, our meals included the following:


Roasted Carrots with Orange, Garlic & Thyme from Jamie Oliver’s jamie's dinners, the essential family cookbook. Now I love watching Jamie Oliver on TV. He really gets me excited, but I must admit that I’m not the biggest fan of this book. I can never really follow his directions. And this time was no different. I started to make the boiled carrot and orange version and it didn’t look very appetizing, so I went on to option two – roasted version. They did taste great, but because I didn’t understand the directions, (I peeled the oranges and boiled them) and naturally, the orange pulp just looked gross. I actually picked the pulp out of the carrots before serving them. Next time, I’ll know better and leave the peel on and remember NOT to boil them. All I really had to do was look at the picture to realize my mistake. Oh well….

I served the carrots with the Steak au Poivre my Honey requested when we were watching an NCIS episode the night before - that’s what they were eating on the show). You’ll have to wait for the book for that recipe. It’s easy and sooooo delicious, you’ll really impress your dinner guests.


On Friday night I did a take on Butternut Squash from Ina Garten’s Barefoot Contessa Family Style. The carrots looked (and tasted so delicious after roasting, I never bothered with the rest of the recipe, but I did include it for you). I served this with stuffed veal brisket (another recipe from Every Kitchen Tells Its Stories) and roasted asparagus. The squash tasted just like candy. I’m not sure I’ll ever make squash any other way again!


I actually served this Tropical Fruit Salsa from Ming Tsai’s Simply Mingfor dessert that night. It really was a sweet meal! Ming, in his book, suggests serving it over waffles or ice cream and even gives a savory version for topping grilled fish. I definitely want to try that out.


and even though it’s not technically a cookbook, I couldn’t resist sharing this Orange Endive Salad with Maple Chipotle Vinaigrette from the March 2006 issue of Gourmet Magazine with a tribute to Montreal, my home town and truly the best eating city I’ve ever been to! Talk about finger lickin’ good!!!! I mean the salad, but then, maybe it applies to Montreal as well.

So without further ado……check out the recipes.

Recipes

Roasted Carrots with Oranges, Garlic & Thyme

Roasted Butternut Squash with Brown Sugar

Tropical Fruit Salsa with Mint

Orange & Endive Salad with Maple Chipotle Vinaigrette

Related links: Food and Drink recipes vegetables weekend cookbook challenge weekend herb blogging