Weekend Cooking: What We’ve Been Up To in the Kitchen This Week

As some of you know, I recently persuaded my husband, Ward, to start blogging at the food blog we’d set up together, Muse in the Kitchen. I was having the most dreadful time keeping Muse in the Kitchen up-to-date with recent posts because, frankly, what I love is eating, not cooking, and I just didn’t feel very passionate about writing up all the delicious recipes he was trying out.

It made far more sense to have him blogging there, because he’s the one doing the hands-on work; he’s also the one who gets excited over discovering a new ingredient, or finding a challenging recipe. In other words, he’s the one with the passion for cooking, and passion is what makes a blog work.

So now we’re a team – he writes up the posts, I format them and do some light editing, crop the pictures, and add my two cents to the end of each post (because you all probably know, I can’t resist adding my two cents wherever and whenever possible!).

Here’s what we’ve been up to in the kitchen this week:

Steve Kubien’s Salt and Pepper Mills: Steve is one of Ward’s students, and a fabulous woodworker. If you’ve got a foodie on your shopping list this holiday season, check out Steve’s work on Etsy. He’s got some gorgeous pieces available, plus he does custom work!

Risotto with Bolognese Sauce: This is one of Ward’s recent creations. One of his Italian friends, Mary, suggested he mix his leftever Bolognese sauce with risotto, so when he made Spaghetti with Bolognese Sauce last week, he decided to give this a try the next day, and the result was really, really delicious. (The Bolognese sauce Ward makes is also very good – I love it, and I don’t even like spaghetti dishes normally!)

A Mediterranean Menu for Our Open House Dinner: Every second Saturday of the month, Ward and I hold an open house dinner for all our friends and for all their friends, too – it’s a great way to meet new people. Basically, if we know you, you’re invited! This month’s dinner is tomorrow, and this is a look at what we’re serving. Ward’s been busy cooking up a storm all day today and the house smells lovely already!

Fava Bean Stew: This is a wonderfully savory bean stew that is responsible for my current love affair with beans. The first time Ward made this stew, I couldn’t believe it was meatless. We’ll be serving this up tomorrow, and I hope everyone will enjoy it as much as we do!

Strip Steak with Tequila-Avocado Sauce: This is definitely a good recipe. I know this, because the steaks we had were on the thinner side, and because Ward followed the cooking times in the recipe, we ended up with medium-well instead of our preferred medium-rare/rare – and the steak was still good! The Tequila-Avocado Sauce was incredibly flavorful, too.

Roasted Chayote Squash: Chayote squash is my new favorite vegetable. This recipe is so simple I could make it (and I probably will). We never have any leftovers, mainly because I have been known to remain sitting at the dining room table until the last piece has been polished off.

Quinoa Salad: Incredibly tasty and very, very good for you. This was a lovely dish, even though Ward forgot to add the dressing! (He does that sometimes, and then after dinner will look at a cup or bowl full of some ingredient and exclaim, “Oh! I think I forgot to add …!” And yet, his dishes are almost always so very, very good.)

Four Spice and Ginger Cake: Ward had trouble with this one – it took him almost twice as long to bake as the recipe suggested – but the pieces he served were moist, peppery, slightly gingery and oh, so very tasty.

So that’s been our cooking week at Muse in the Kitchen – for more delightful cooking stuff, make sure to check out all the links at the Weekend Cooking post at Beth Fish Reads!

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Related posts:

1. Weekend Cooking: The Best Roast Chicken
2. Weekend Cooking: Food Art!
3. Messing About in My Husband’s Kitchen
4. Weekend Cooking: Vegan Cookies Invade Your Cookie Jar
5. Kitchen Mishaps, Kitchen Wisdom

Tagged as: Weekend Cooking