Coconut, butter, and nuts make up this delicious shortbread-like cookie. And they're so easy to make. I made half the batter with chopped macadamia nuts and half with pistachios (salmonella-free ones). After rolling the dough out in a gallon-size zipper-lock bag, I let it rest in the refrigerator for 2 hours. Then, after cutting them out, I put them back in the refrigerator to firm up a bit before baking.

Recipe: Coconut Butter Thins

Makes: 32 cookies

Ingredients:

You can find the recipe for Coconut Butter Thins in the book Baking: From My Home to Yours (affiliate link) by Dorie Greenspan or here. To see how the rest of the TWD group fared with this week's recipe, click here and then click on each blogger! Thanks to Jayne from Barefoot Kitchen Witch who chose the recipe for this week.

Tasting Notes
These cookies melt in your mouth at first and then you're left with a bit of a chew from the coconut and nuts. I couldn't decide which version I liked better. The pistachio cookies were slightly chewier, and I love their green flecks. Either way, we'll have crumbs left in the cookie jar.

Recipe for Next Week (April 7)
Banana Cream Pie on pages 342 and 343 chosen by Amy of Sing for Your Supper.

More to Explore:

• Index of Recipes
• Visual Recipe Index

Photographing poultry is not easy. Desserts are so much prettier.
Try this:
Click here for images of chicken. Click here for images of dessert.
I rest my case.
This is the last in the series about poultry (next week is frog legs!), and the recipe calls for guinea hen (or guinea fowl). I like my white meat, and this bird is generally dark meat so I had a feeling I wouldn't like this meal.

For this dish, you will have to sauté and set aside many times, which for some reason reminded me of square dancing calls (not that I square dance, but I have watched relatives!).

Circle right.
Bacon, blanch and fry.
Set aside.
Pearl onions, peel and sauté.
Set aside.
Mushrooms, sauté.
Set aside.
Guinea hen, dry, dredge and sauté.
Set aside.
With half the wine, deglaze.
Half Sashay.
Add Bouquet Garni, lardons, pearl onions, and mushrooms.
Split Two.
Cover and bake.
Promenade.
Pan drippings, reserve.
California Twirl.
Chestnuts, sauté.
Set aside.
Arrange chestnuts, lardons, pearl onions, mushrooms, and guinea hen in casserole and bake.
Couples Circulate.
For the sauce, shallots, sauté.
Rollaway.
With the last of the wine, deglaze.
Dosado to a wave.
Pan drippings, pour in.
Weave the Ring.
Reduce.
Pass thru.
Whisk in butter and serve.
Alamo Style.
Recipe: Pintade à la Cévenole (Guinea Hen with Mushrooms and Chestnuts)

Serves 6 (picture shows half a recipe)

Ingredients:

I love a good coffee cake, and this blueberry crumb cake doesn't disappoint. First there's the crunch and spice in the topping before hitting the moist crumb of the cake. I decided to bake my "coffee cakes" in little espresso cups. After a quick spritz with cooking spray, I baked them for 25-30 minutes.

On a side note, today marks one year of TWD posts. My first was last March 24th, which was one of my favorites: Caramel-topped Flan. I've learned a lot this past year about baking and community, and I've made many friends through this group. Thanks, Laurie, for starting this amazing baking sensation!

Recipe: Blueberry Crumb Cake

Makes: 8 servings (8x8 pan)


You can find the recipe for Blueberry Crumb Cake in the book Baking: From My Home to Yours (affiliate link) by Dorie Greenspan or here. To see how the rest of the TWD group fared with this week's recipe, click here and then click on each blogger! Thanks to Sihan from Befuddlement who chose the recipe for this week.

Tasting Notes
Any cake with extra sugar and spice in each bite is a winner with me.

Recipe for Next Week (March 31)
Coconut Butter Thins on pages 145 chosen by Jayne of The Barefoot Kitchen Witch.

Other Crumb Cakes
• Nicole from Baking Bites: New York Crumb Cake
• Peabody from Culinary Concoctions by Peabody: Banana Fosters Crumb Cake
• Rebecca from Ezra Pound Cake: Pear Crumb Cake with Candied Ginger Streusel

The last meal in this series of 5 in 5 is a delicious Sun-dried Tomato Sauce that I put on chicken, but it would be just as good on pasta. There is a wonderful little Italian restaurant in Ottawa called Zola's that inspired me to go hunting for a sun-dried tomato cream sauce recipe. After having their Sun-dried Tomato Mushroom Linguini for dinner one night, I wanted to re-create it at home. One of my favorite recipe sites, Epicurious had a promising recipe for what I was looking for. After a few tweaks, it was similar enough to what I had at Zola's.

I'm making 5 meals in 5 hours to avoid the "What's for dinner" question. I'll post one meal each day, in the order I made them. Here's the plan:

1. Savory Pot Roast
2. Shrimp Curry (or you could substitute chicken)
3. Chicken Stir-Fry (or you could substitute tofu)
4. Lavender and Rosemary Pork Tenderloin
5. Sun-dried Tomato Cream Sauce on Chicken or Pasta

While the Lavender and Rosemary Pork Tenderloin is roasting, you can make the Sun-dried Tomato Cream Sauce for chicken or pasta.

Recipe: Sun-dried Tomato Cream Sauce on Chicken or Pasta

adapted from Epicurious

Serves: 6

Ingredients:

Up next is another roast, but this time it's lavender and rosemary-laden pork tenderloin. This recipe comes from a famous Ottawa foodie, Chris Knight, President of Knight Enterprises, and the brainchild behind some hit food television shows, including my all-time favorite: Cook Like a Chef. He's also produced The Great Canadian Food Show, Licensed to Grill, and Junk Brothers.

I asked my Whisk Wednesdays group if they get Cook Like a Chef in the US on the Food Network, and they don't. The Food Network is missing out on the best cooking show ever, hands down. It's a half-hour show featuring one of six Canadian chefs and three to four recipes or techniques per episode. And the set is unique too, showing every move the chef makes with close-ups from the cameras that are in plain view and giving a 360˚ view of what's happening.

You can order the first season of Cook Like a Chef on DVD (available in April 2009) here: Cook Like a Chef: Season 1. (Mine is on order.) You can also buy the cookbook, Cook Like a Chef: Techniques, Tips and Secrets from the Professional Kitchen to Yours, which I own. (I also have the music CD from the show. What can I say? I'm a fan!}

I'm making 5 meals in 5 hours to avoid the "What's for dinner" question. I'll post one meal each day, in the order I made them. Here's the plan:

1. Savory Pot Roast
2. Shrimp Curry (or you could substitute chicken)
3. Chicken Stir-Fry (or you could substitute tofu)
4. Lavender and Rosemary Pork Tenderloin
5. Sun-dried Tomato Cream Sauce on Chicken or Pasta

After making the Chicken Stir-Fry, you can start chopping the ingredients for the Lavender and Rosemary Pork Tenderloin.

Recipe: Lavender and Rosemary Pork Tenderloin

from Cook Like a Chef: Techniques, Tips and Secrets from the Professional Kitchen to Yours (affiliate link)

Serves: 8-10 (based on 1 pound of pork serving 4)

To Prepare and Eat Now:

Chicken stir-fry is comfort food for me. I remember eating a lot of stir-fries when I was growing up and watching Wok with Yan on TV (not to be confused with Martin Yan's Yan Can Cook). Stephen Yan's Chinese cooking show was produced in Vancouver, Canada by the CBC from 1980 to 1982. I clearly remember his amazing knife skills and his apron, which always had a pun with the word "wok". Here's a segment of Stephen Yan with David Letterman:


This stir-fry recipe is from one of my favorite restaurants in Ottawa, The Green Door, a vegetarian buffet place where they weigh your plate to determine the price. I always filled up on their tofu stir-fry and was happy when they published it in their cookbook, although I've crossed the vegetarian line and replaced the tofu with chicken.

I'm making 5 meals in 5 hours to avoid the "What's for dinner" question. I'll post one meal each day, in the order I made them. Here's the plan:

1. Savory Pot Roast
2. Shrimp Curry (or you could substitute chicken)
3. Chicken Stir-fry (or you could substitute tofu)
4. Lavender and Rosemary Pork Tenderloin
5. Sun-dried Tomato Cream Sauce on Chicken or Pasta

After making the Shrimp Curry, you can start chopping the ingredients for the Chicken Stir-Fry.

Recipe: Chicken Stir-Fry

adapted from the Green Door restaurant, Ottawa

Serves: 8-10

Ingredients:

To Prepare and Eat Now:
Mix all sauce ingredients in a jar or bowl and set aside. Dissolve glaze ingredients and set aside.

Heat a wok over medium-high heat and then add the oil. When the oil is hot, sauté chicken until browned and cooked through, about 10-15 minutes. Add carrots and cook, about 3-5 minutes. Add broccoli and cook, about 3-5 minutes.

Pour in the sauce ingredients and cook until broccoli is bright green but still firm. Add remaining vegetables and cook, about 3-5 minutes. Stir the glaze ingredients and pour it in. Stir until thick.

To Freeze:
Undercook the vegetables so that when you re-heat them, they aren't overcooked. Recommended freezing time: 4-6 months.

To Prepare After Freezing:
Thaw overnight in the refrigerator. Heat and serve.

Tips:
To save time, use bottled minced garlic and ginger. To save money, mince your own garlic and ginger. To save time, buy a bag of ready-chopped vegetables for a stir-fry.

. . . . . . . . . .

Cost: $26.64 ($3.33 per serving)

. . . . . . . . . .

Other Stir-Fry Recipes
• Ashley from Delish: Spicy Chicken Stir-fry
• Karina from Karina's Kitchen: Chicken Stir-Fry in Peanut Sauce
• Lori from Recipe Girl: Garlic Chicken Stir-Fry

I've made this curry recipe several times, but usually with chicken. It was just as delicious with shrimp and a nice change. I first found this recipe in the local newspaper and cut it out, and it's been my favorite curry recipe since then.

Although there are a lot of ingredients in this recipe, there isn't a lot of chopping (just the onion and tomatoes, if you're using fresh tomatoes) and there's only one pan. Just make a trip to your local spice shop beforehand, and you're all set.

I'm making 5 meals in 5 hours to avoid the "What's for dinner" question. I'll post one meal each day, in the order I made them. Here's the plan:

1. Savory Pot Roast
2. Shrimp Curry (or you could substitute chicken)
3. Chicken Stir-Fry (or you could substitute tofu)
4. Lavender and Rosemary Pork Tenderloin
5. Sun-dried Tomato Cream Sauce on Chicken or Pasta

So while the pot roast is cooking, start chopping up the vegetables for the curry.

Recipe: Shrimp Curry

adapted from Ishina Distinguished Indian Cuisine

Serves: 6

To Prepare and Eat Now:
Clean shrimp.

Heat oil in a heavy saucepan. Add cinnamon, cloves and cardamom. Stir-fry for 30 seconds, and then add onion and sauté until golden brown about 10-15 minutes. Reduce heat and add ginger and garlic. Continue cooking 2 or 3 minutes, stirring constantly.

Add turmeric, paprika, cumin powder, and red chili powder. Mix well. Add puréed tomatoes and stir. Cook until oil separates from the spice mix, about 5-10 minutes. Add 2 cups of water and scrape up any bits that have stuck to the pan. Bring to a boil. (If you prefer, you could purée the sauce, but leave some chunks for texture.) Add shrimp and cook until the shrimp is done, about 10 minutes.

Remove cinnamon stick, whole cloves and cardamom before serving.

Sprinkle with garam masala and garnish with chopped cilantro. Serve hot with rice or naan.

To Freeze:
Make the sauce but omit the shrimp. Recommended freezing time: 4-6 months.

To Prepare After Freezing:
Thaw overnight in the refrigerator. Heat and serve with cooked shrimp.

Tips:
To save time, use bottled minced garlic and ginger. To save money, mince your own garlic and ginger.

Tasting Notes
There's a complexity to this dish from all the spices. It gives the sauce a distinctive taste that is delicious with shrimp, chicken, or probably tofu.

. . . . . . . . . .

Cost: $18.60 ($3.10 per serving)

. . . . . . . . . .

Other Curry Recipes
• Rasa Malaysia: Chicken Curry
• Heidi from 101 Cookbooks: Cashew Curry Recipe
• Meeta from What's For Lunch, Honey: Chicken Curry

A while ago, I tried making five meals in five hours in an attempt to avoid the daily "What's for Dinner" question. I scoured my favorite recipes and found five meals that I could make in an afternoon. Some I could freeze for later, as well.

In Ottawa, there is a business called Dinner Essentials where you can go and make several meals at once. They do the shopping, prepping and clean-up. You do the assembly at their store and the cooking at home. Although I haven't tried this, it sounds appealing. The goal is the same: to have some prepared meals ready to go after a busy day.

I'll post one meal each day, in the order I made them. Here's the plan:

1. Savory Pot Roast
2. Shrimp Curry (or you could substitute chicken)
3. Chicken Stir-Fry (or you could substitute tofu)
4. Lavender and Rosemary Pork Tenderloin
5. Sun-dried Tomato Cream Sauce on Chicken or Pasta

First up is a Savory Pot Roast from Light Cooking for Two. This is my favorite pot roast recipe that my parents hooked me up with after I gave them this cookbook.

A pot roast is a brown braise, where meat is browned first (seared) and then dark ingredients, such as red wine or tomato sauce, are added. The goal is to take a tough piece of meat and tenderize it by roasting it slowly in some flavorful liquid. The heat melts the connective tissue in the meat slowly, making the meat fork-tender. While this is roasting, you can prepare the next meal (coming up tomorrow).

Recipe: Savory Pot Roast

adapted from Light Cooking for Two (affiliate link)

Serves: 10

Ingredients:

To Prepare and Eat Now:
In a roasting pan, heat the butter and oil on medium-high heat. Sear roast on each side. Add beef broth, garlic, lemon juice, pepper, tomato sauce and bay leaves. Ensure the liquid covers 1/3 of the meat (adding water if necessary). Cover and simmer for 1 hour 45 minutes.

Add carrots, celery and onion and cook for 45 minutes, or until meat is tender and cooked to the desired temperature. Remove and discard bay leaves. Discard vegetables.

To Freeze:
Roast to a temperature just a bit less than done so that when you reheat it, the meat will be perfect. Slice the beef and wrap between layers of wax paper. Recommended freezing time: 6-12 months.

To Prepare After Freezing:
Thaw overnight in the refrigerator. Heat the slices and sauce in the microwave.

Tips:
To save time, use bottled minced garlic and bottled lemon juice. To save money, mince your own garlic and squeeze your own lemon.

Although I used homemade beef stock in my version, I will use store-bought next time. The extra salt was missing in my au naturel version.

Tasting Notes
This is a favorite meal at our house. And the smell while it's roasting is pure comfort.

. . . . . . . . . .

Cost: $11.29 ($1.13 per serving)

. . . . . . . . . .

Other Pot Roast Recipes
• Elise from Simply Recipes: Pot Roast
• Alton Brown on Food Network: Pot Roast
• "A chuck for a chuck" video by Alton Brown

Here is a challenging recipe. First, you need to find quail. [Plus you need to forget how tiny and cute they are.] Then, you need to have veal stock in your freezer or make some, which means finding veal bones that are just as difficult to source as quail. [Plus you must get over your guilt about veal.] Next, you need to find fatback, or "pork back fat" as my butcher called it. If you can, you must find crème fraîche, or make it yourself the day before, which I forgot to do. Finally, you have to find Calvados, an apple brandy from Normandy in France. I'm sure all these ingredients are much easier to find in the heart of France and not in the Canadian Shield of Ontario.

Luckily, Ottawa has a wonderful butcher (Glebe Meat Market) where I was able to buy "jumbo quail". [They still look tiny to me.] Plus I have veal stock in the freezer that I made recently. A different butcher (The Butchery) always carries fat back, so I bought more than I needed the last time I was there. As for the Calvados, on one of my foodie field trips last week, I was in Quebec and stopped in at a wine store. Just as I was about to purchase a large bottle of Calvados, I saw they had minis! The only thing I can't buy locally is crème fraîche, and I should have made my own. I used heavy cream instead, and my sauce wasn't thick enough.

After you have all the ingredients, making this dish isn't hard and only requires a baking pan for the apples and toast and a roasting pan for the quail.

Recipe: Cailles à la Normande (Quail with Cream and Apples)

Serves: 6 (picture shows half a recipe)

Ingredients:

You can find the recipe for Cailles à la Normande (Quail with Cream and Apples) in the book Le Cordon Bleu at Home. To see how the rest of the Whisk Wednesdays group fared with their recipe, click here (or check out the sidebar) and then click on each blogger!

Tasting Notes
Quail are tiny. This sauce needs crème fraîche. The best part was the Calvados. I'm glad I bought more than one mini of Calvados so that I can enjoy Le Trou Normand with the remaining bottles and pretend I'm in the heart of Normandy.

Next Class
• Pintade à la Cévenole (Guinea Hen with Mushrooms and Chestnuts) pages 187-188 {You can substitute Duck breast if you like.}

. . . . . . . . . .

Running total: $1,142.78 + $9.49 (quail) + $9.09 (other ingredients) = $1,161.36
($3.10 per serving)

Butter used so far: 9 pounds, 30 tablespoons

. . . . . . . . . .

While I was baking Wacky cakes as a child, French children were learning to bake this elegant cake! According to Clothilde, from Chocolate & Zucchini, this is the first cake a French child learns to bake. Most of the measuring uses the handy yogurt tub (which is approximately ½ cup), and you can see a rendition of this cake with this type of measuring on Clothilde's blog. Look! I Can Bake!
The first cookbook I owned was called Look! I Can Cook! (affiliate link) I still have it on my shelf. The binding is coming apart and there are some scribbles on the Lemon Meringue Pie page, but the most memorable thing I remember from this book is this quote: I don't know why this stuck in my head, but I've even heard myself telling my children the same thing. I think it's a desperate plea not to be the one left to clean up all the flour and sugar spills that are inevitable after baking with children, and now that I'm a mom I'm glad Angela Burdick included this sage piece of advice.

I decided it was time my children learned to make French Yogurt Cake to complement their Wacky Cake and Chocolate Chip Cookie repertoire. So they each took a turn preparing a part of this recipe. And we tried using the one-yogurt-tub form of measurement too.

Helper #1:
1. Yogurt
2. Eggs
3. Vanilla
4. Whisk

Helper #2:
1. Sugar
2. Lemon zest
3. Blend with fingers

Helper #3:
1. Flour
2. Ground Almonds
3. Pinch of salt
4. Baking Powder

Helper #3 again:
1. Blend everything
2. Oil
3. Blend again
Yogurt
Yogurt is more abundant in France. David Lebovitz did a post in 2005 about the yogurt at his local grocery store. Heck, leave the yogurt out of it…I want one of those beautiful containers. Carol Gillott from Paris Breakfasts painted the yogurt container and uses them to hold water for her watercolors.

Oil

This cake relies on the flavor of the oil. In fact, you should taste the oil before using it in this cake (if only to make sure it hasn't gone rancid).

I tried using both Extra-Virgin Olive Oil (EVO) and vegetable oil. Although the olive oil is fruity and nice to use in cooking, we didn't like it in this cake. Its flavor was too prominent and overshadowed the delicate lemon flavor. We loved the vegetable oil version much better. However, don't let me stop you from trying it yourself. Here's a link to Dorie's version on Serious Eats that uses EVO.

Marmalade
As for the marmalade drizzle, you can read all about my Seville Orange Marmalade in my previous post.

Posters
After a bit of digging, I found an adorable visual to help make this cake.

Recipe: French Yogurt Cake with Marmalade Glaze

Makes: 8 servings (8½ x 4½ inch loaf pan)

Ingredients:

I first heard about Seville oranges after buying a local cookbook called A Year at Les Fougères, an award-winning book about the four seasons in the life of a local restaurant. Les Fougères is a French restaurant tucked into the woodland landscape of the Gatineau hills across the river from Ottawa in a little village called Chelsea. I dined there for my birthday last year and besides the delicious meal, I was taken with the gourmet shop. It was filled with fun culinary items, and I enjoyed reading every label and playing out in my mind all the things I could do with white truffle oil, aged balsamic vinegar, or Seville Orange Marmalade.

Last week, I took a little foodie field trip back to Les Fougères and their gourmet shop to buy some of their Seville Orange Marmalade since I didn't expect to have the time to make marmalade, and I wanted some for the next Tuesdays with Dorie cake (coming tomorrow). It was a bright, crisp day as I headed over the river to Quebec and into the hills in search of their famous marmalade.

I loved poking around their store again this Spring afternoon and purchased a couple of things, including their marmalade. After visiting Les Fougères, I felt inspired to cook up my own batch having never tried making it before.

For my first try at making marmalade, I used some citrus I had in the refrigerator from last week's baking adventures. This batch didn't gel. I even boiled it twice hoping it would congeal a bit more. However, I think the citrus I used didn't have enough natural pectin in it. After this attempt, I focused my efforts on finding Seville oranges.

These oh-so-bitter oranges from Spain are only available for a short time, and I was lucky to find the last bin of them at the grocery store. (Actually, it was thanks to the help of another local food blogger, Jeffery from Nose to Tail in Ottawa, who knew which grocery stores still had them for sale in our city.) The selection was slim, but I didn't want to wait another year before giving this marmalade a try.

Recipe: Seville Orange Marmalade

Makes: 9 cups