Episode 208: Risotto, Smitten Kitchen Everyday, and Our JoC Potluck

A few of the delicious treats listeners brought to the potuck

Bad news for conscientious home cooking. Hey, Whole Foods shoppers: That free range chicken may be anything but. Ugh, we have bought so much of this chicken. Perhaps it’s time to buy more of our birds from Primal Supply.

In our What’s for Dinner segment, we sing the praises of homemade risottos. This is Marisa’s favorite recipe. Joy loves Cook’s Illustrated’s butternut squash risotto recipe but it’s behind the paywall. Also recommended: The risotto method/recipe described in Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone.

We’re totally smitten with a new cookbook: Deb Pearlman’s Smitten Kitchen Everyday. It has us running to the kitchen. Joy has already cooked this recipe twice with plans to make it a third time this week. It’s true that there are hundreds of terrific recipes on the Smitten Kitchen blog, but we are just fools for beautiful cookbooks and this one is pleasure to read for entertainment and info as well as to just plain cook straight out of.

So, we held our second Joy of Cooking potluck and guess what? It was even more fun than our first. A group of you listeners joined us to dig into so many delicious recipes from the book we probably wouldn’t have found on our on. Dishes included chicken cacciatore, savory leek pie, lentils with sausage, roasted cauliflower with golden raisins, curried rice with fruit and nuts, hacked tempeh, and kale with roasted delicata and pomegranate seeds.

We’re doing it again in January, and if you want in, tell us in the comments below to get on the invite list.

This week, we sing a love song to the soda stream. This one tool makes a big difference when it comes to have delicious nonalcoholic drinks at your finger tips.

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Episode 207: Bean Soups, Hardena, Cooking Ahead

Mmmmm …. Muesli

Did you guys know that Oliver Garden does a crazy promotion this time of year? Joy and Marisa discuss the relative merits of the chain restaurant’s “Unlimited Pasta Pass.”

In our What’s for Dinner segment, we’re talking about simple bean soups.

Joy and Marisa have lunch together at the recently refreshed Hardena, a classic Indonesian restaurant in South Philly.

We talk strategies for that all important home cooking habit: Cooking once and eating two or three times.

What we’re loving this week? Muesli.

Bonus link: Funny song parody “My Wife’s on a Healthy Diet.”

Episode 206: One-pot Pasta, When to Splurge, Here Come the Holidays

Marisa’s tomato jam is a treasure.

 

This week in food news, an unsettling new study. Only 10% of Americans like to cook.

In our What’s for Dinner segment–the allure of one-pot pastas. (Joy thinks this was the recipe that started the craze.)

So let’s say you are trying to beat your cholesterol into submission by passing on saturated fats. How do you decide when to splurge? This is a hard question.

Yes, it’s still hot outside. But no it is not too soon to start planning for the holiday seasons. In fact, there are things you could start making ahead … right now.

What are we loving this week? Marisa’s marvelous tomato jam.

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Episode 205: Slow Cooking Season, Eating on Repeat, Breaking Bread Breaking Barriers at RTM

In food news this week: The Baffling Rise of Goop.

What’s for dinner this week? Anything we cook in the slow cooker.

Eating on repeat: Is variety the spice of life or can you eat the same food again and again?

Joy recently wrote about the Breaking Bread, Breaking Barriers dinner series that was held for the past year at Reading Terminal Market.

What we’re loving this week? Edamame.

If you like what you hear, make sure to subscribe! Bonus points if you rate us or leave a review. Follow us on twitter @localmouthful and help us spread the word about the show.