Weekend Cooking

Weekends are my favorite times to cook and bake. I had a burst of productivity and cranked out all sorts of dishes.  

A friend came over for dinner on Friday night, and relied on making a menu that relied on ingredients on hand (pantry items, ground beef in the freezer and veggies in the crisper): North African-inspired meatballs, cinnamon-scented tomato sauce, roast broccoli/okra/radish and toasted basmati rice.  We started off with some fresh tortilla chips and tomatillo-chipotle salsa and ended with rasberry and apricot rugelach. My husband made it official with a menu.

Friday Dinner Menu

Of course I forgot to take pictures of most of this but I did made so much rugelach that I got a snap.

Rasberry and Apricot Rugelach

I have become a fan of cold-rise pizza dough so I made a ball early Friday morning  to get ahead for either Saturday dinner or Sunday lunch.

I was able to make a run to 8 Hands, a local farm and market, and picked up some freshly baked sourdough boule, eggs and I picked up a few links of chipotle sausage which I thought would be tasty on one of the pizzas.  The market was pretty active for a Saturday morning which gave me time to browse through all the prepared soups. I ended up grabbing a quart of lentil and root vegetable soup as well.

We awoke on Saturday to a light dusting of snow on the ground so I thought a warming soup would be ideal for lunch. I had various root vegetables on hand and ended up making a carrot-daikon soup sprinkled with chipotle chilis (for a bit of kick).

Carrot-Daikon Soup with Chipotle Chili Flakes
Pizza sauce using crushed tomatoes, garlic, as well as garlic and onion powders and a spoon of sugar
Crumbled Chipotle Sausage, Red Onion and Olive Pizza
White Pizza with Caramelized Onions, Garlic and Herbs

Sunday was a day of rest and leftovers!