Violet Sky

New Recipes

Chimichurri – At our local farmers market, there’s a lady who shows up approximately twice a month and sells some really delicious fresh chimichurri. Unfortunately, since her attendance is so sporadic, we often run out of chimchurri in the interim. This past month, we went on a quest to reproduce her chimichurri as closely as possible, and landed on this recipe. We do halve the olive oil and increase the red wine vinegar, as the initial version had too much olive oil for our tastes. We used this on chimichurri steak with grilled squash with sourdough.

Rigatoni with peas, sausage, ricotta – In a thrilling turn of events, our local Safeway has started carrying Galbani lactose-free ricotta! I immediately went looking for a savory dish to make with it that wasn’t lasagna, and found this recipe. It was delicious, though next time we will halve the red pepper flakes as we found it overwhelmed the subtlety of the fennel cooking in the sauce for so long.

Double chocolate sourdough – Continuing the farmers market-inspired theme of this month, I’ve been wanting to make double chocolate sourdough for a while – there’s a stand we sometimes buy from that makes an incredible chocolate sourdough. This was not as good as their loaves, but still tasty enough to keep.

Revisited Recipes

Cochinita pibil – I always try to keep banana, plantain, or similar leaves in the outside freezer, specifically for this recipe. Rather than using a slow cooker, I wrap the marinated pork shoulder in the leaves and bake it in the oven all day. This does some really nice things to the fat in the meat, and imparts the flavor of the leaves along with the achiote marinade.

Chicken pulao – A discovery from last year, this takes about two hours to make but then makes a ton of leftovers, so it’s still a good value of time versus output. It also reheats really well and develops more flavor over time, thanks to all the spices (some of them whole) that go into it.

Brown butter sage butternut squash gnocchi – This is one that I haven’t made in a long time, and is also the only time I ever make gnocchi, despite pasta-making being on my short list of things to conquer. I always add prosciutto for protein and also because it complements the sage and gnocchi well.