chilled avocado soup with chile-lime pepitas
i have very few kitchen secrets. i salt and taste as i go, i add a little lemon zest for brightness, i use a multi-channel timer (i wish you could program these with ring tones. it would amuse me to no end if the banana bread's completion was signaled by nelly's "hot in herre"). my biggest secret is this: i use fine cooking. i welcome each issue the way a woman welcomes peonies and dark chocolate. on a recent night i made four dishes from its issues, including the chilled avocado soup above, and each one sang.
pan roasted chicken with olives and lemon
polenta stuffed heirloom tomatoes
i like fine cooking for the elegance and execute-ability of the recipes. they don't try to be different, they try to be good. of the hundreds of fine cooking dishes i've attempted, i've only experienced one or two flops, so minor i can't even bring them to mind as i write this. i dog-ear every issue and cook my way through most of them. to be honest, it's how learned to cook. i add my own twists to each. a few handfuls of sliced fennel rounded out the chicken with olives and lemon. this dish alone would make a perfect one-pan weeknight supper--so simple and quick. the same goes for fragrant heirloom tomatoes brimming with creamy polenta. i love any combination of corn and tomatoes. it speaks to me of summer.
rustic fig & raspberry mini crostatas
when i receive gushing praise over a particular dish, chances are it originated somewhere in fine cooking. i will absolutely make the mini fig and raspberry crostatas again. they make me smile the way a pair of baby booties inevitably does. still, these tiny pies are so grown-up. the crust calls for a bit of whole wheat flour, resulting in a rustic, unexpected texture. another surprise: the filling is laced with honey and thyme.
there you have it. i've spilled my beans. fine cooking magazine, friends.
notes
i made slight variations to each of the recipes above (the recipes can be accessed by clicking the titles below the pics):
* chilled avocado soup: i substituted vegetable stock for chicken stock, exchanged slightly spicier guajillo's for poblanos, and topped each serving with a dollop of yogurt.
* chicken with lemon and olives: as noted, i added a handful of sliced fennel and used whole chicken legs as opposed to a whole chicken cut into pieces.
* polenta stuffed heirloom tomatoes: no changes, but next time i would add 1 cup of fresh corn kernels to the polenta before filling the tomatoes.
* mini fig & raspberry crostatas: i cut the sugar called for in the filling in half as my raspberries and figs were ripe and sweet on their own. they were served with hazelnut gelato because what isn't made better by gelato? few things, really.