Winter Lunches

Butternut and navy bean lasagna - I made this with canned pumpkin and beans, and ricotta instead of the cottage cheese. Delicious. Next time I'll make sure to spread the ricotta out a little thinner though. It's very dense and filling, so freeze half of it immediately or you'll end up wasting it.

Mushroom and fennel bread pudding - This one turned out pretty good but it needs some tweaking. The custard is pretty bland on its own; next time I'll mix the S&P into the custard rather then just sprinkling it over the top. I'd also try a more potent cheese next time since I couldn't really taste the pecorino at all. I did sprinkle the top with parmesan just before baking, which gave it a nice flavorful crispy crust.

I made chili this weekend, with some inspiration from the Homesick Texan. Unlike her, I do put beans and tomatoes in my chili so I didn't follow her recipe exactly but I did follow the steps for cooking, soaking, and blending dried chilis for flavoring in place of the more usual chili powder. What a difference! The dried chilis gave the final product a much more complex, smoky flavor than the powdered stuff. It's not as simple as shaking flavoring out of a can, but so worth the extra effort.

This week we tested out this recipe for salted caramel pots de creme. It's VERY salty. Next time I'd either cut the salt out of the custard entirely and top with finishing salt or halve the salt in the custard and top with bruléed sugar. I might prefer the latter as I really do love that crunch when you stick a spoon into crème brulée.