Day of Cooking 01.29.10

It took us a couple of weeks but we are back to cooking from Ad Hoc at Home. Today’s dishes were:

• Fig Stuffed Pork, which became seitan (page 69)

• Green Bean, Potato, Walnut and Fig Salad (page 158)

• Mushroom Soup with Kale and Potato (page118)

We were in the mood for fig and potato. Isn’t it obvious? We met at approximately 10:30 this morning, ran to the grocery store and then started cooking. We were finished cooking and had everything cleaned by a little after 4 pm. During this time we also had lunch, drank tea, chatted and even did a little relaxing while things were simmering or baking. While we did spend a lot of time together we cooked at a very relaxing pace.

Here is our grocery and task list:

Fig Stuffed Seitan:

10 ounces gluten
Bread crumbs – at least 2 cups
Onion, garlic, seasonings
1 fennel bulb
Garlic
Shallot
1 cup fig jam (figs, balsamic)
Thyme

Green Bean Salad:

1 ½ lb green beans
1 lb potatoes fingerling
1 cup walnuts
3 radishes
¼ cup shallot
Sherry vinegarette
2 T chives
4 figs
Lemon juice

Mushroom Soup:

2 carrots
1 leek
2 cloves garlic
1 bunch kale
1 ½ lb potatoes
½ lb mushrooms
½ cup shallot
1 T thyme
8 cups mushroom stock
6 T garlic
Red wine vinegar

Cooking order:

1. fig jam for seitan
2. soup
3. seitan
4. salad

My husband and I had these dishes for dinner tonight. He decided the seitan was his favorite. Additionally he had a good idea of adding chestnuts to the stuffing. That would be good, too bad we didn’t think of it today.

I should have at least one recipe posted tomorrow. We are supposed to get snow tomorrow, so we could be spending the day inside, warm and cozy.