James Beard's Chicken with 40 Cloves of Garlic- 1997

I love things that are braised, and Chicken with 40 cloves of garlic certainly fits the bill for warm, comforting, braised dishes.  

You start by separating out 40 cloves of garlic, slicing celery thin, and layering it in the bottom of a dutch oven, then you add celery, parsley,garlic, and then chicken, until the pot is full and you're out of chicken.  Then, you pour over some vermouth, and set in the oven, while it cooks and becomes tender, and melds together, and creates a garlicky, but mellow sauce.  This was part of my Thanksgiving weekend dinner party, and was served with plenty of crusty bread to mop up the sauce.

It was quite wonderful, and something that I would definitely make again.

Butternut Squash Cider Soup- 1993

This recipe is fantastic. light, and just creamy enough, with excellent butternut squash flavor and a real flavor of apples which was surprising to me, I think I assumed that the squash would bowl over the cider spices, but it's not true at all. You can really taste the apple in the soup.

 

You start by sweating shallot and garlic in a saucepan, and then steaming the butternut squash with some chicken stock, blending (I used my immersion blender)  then blending in sour cream, and apple cider.  you serve finely diced granny smith apple on top, and it provides a really nice texture contrast with a bit of tartness.

 

This recipe has been making the rounds as a starter for Thanksgiving, and if my family was the kind that deviated from our traditional meal at all,

 

I made the soup and it was a little thick- I should have thinned it out some- but this recipe, like a bunch of the ones I've made before, is one I want to make again and again (this is not helpful, seeing as I still have over a thousand recipes still left. in the cookbook.

 

(I still have some butternut squash leftover, so I'm making it tonight as a starter for dinner)

English Tea Cart Wafers-1992

I got my cookie mojo back with these tea cookies, but they require a little trial and error.  In the headnote of the recipe, Amanda (is it weird to say Amanda? Amanda Hesser seems very formal.) says that this recipe takes a few times to get the proportions of cookie right.  The recipe also calls for a cookie press, which I don't have, but says that you can substitute a pastry bag with a tip.

I mixed together the ingredients, and put half the dough into the piping bag, and began to pipe out what I assumed to be three inch sections (still needed for the project: a ruler)  and once I had piped them out, put them in the oven to bake.  They were pretty big, significantly bigger than the suggestion of making them finger sized,  so when they came out of the oven, I piped the next batch out, and then sliced them in half.  That, proportionally seemed to work a lot better than the whole logs.

Once the cookies came out of the oven and cooled, I put together the chocolate glaze (using Ghiradelli chips- which I recommend!)  and dipped half of the cookies in the glaze and set to dry.  I  spread the other cookies with homemade raspberry jam that my mom made , and then sandwiched the cookies together.  I think if I make these again, I would take the extra step to put the jam in a piping bag and pipe it  on, because the  spreading method caused the jam to come out of the sides of the cookies a little too much.

They are really, really delicious. I love raspberry and chocolate combination, and the shortbread style cookie was really good as well.  Of the two cookies I made yesterday, they were the hands down winners.