Winter | Meg in the Kitchen

Category Archives: Winter

December 11, 2012 · 7:36 pm

Drunken Fig and Pear Pockets

Is this not the perfect name for a holiday appetizer?

In addition to the parties lined up over the coming weeks, I’m happily anticipating the conclusion of my final semester of graduate school. In the middle of all the chaos of finals, prepping for the clinical rotations, and holiday travel, I also just ran my first 5k race. There’s plenty to celebrate.

My first 5K was the Winter Classic in Cambridge, MA, and it was a blast. Although I run consistently for fun, I’d never tackled a road race, so I was a little nervous going in to it. At a little over 3.1 miles, I was confident I’d be able to handle the distance, but it was the mass start and the drive to constantly push myself. I finished in just over 23 minutes, which I was excited about. I’m already looking forward to signing up for more. You definitely get bitten by the bug after your first one.

So, back to the drunken pears. As someone whose name starts at the beginning of the alphabet, I always get assigned to the appetizer group for potlucks, and I sometimes struggle figuring out what to bring. I came up with this recipe a few weeks ago when I thought the November Recipe Redux challenge was for holiday appetizers. It ended up that the real challenge was for vintage appetizers (or remakes of childhood favorites), but oh well. I’m glad I made this, and I’m looking forward to the next chance to make this again.

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Lighter Potato Gratin

I make two potato dishes every year for Thanksgiving: some kind of white potato (usually mashed) and sweet potatoes (often, also mashed). Potatoes are one of (if not my all-time favorite) foods, and back home, my mother used to make scalloped potatoes for us when we were little. So, for this month’s Recipe Redux challenge (vintage side dishes), I thought I would present you with a pairing of potato sides: a potato gratin to mirror the layered dish of my childhood and the other, a potato galette, an experiment I made for my family last year at Christmas.

The first dish, the gratin pictured above (and recipe below) came on the heels of a delicious filet Mignon David cooked for me awhile back. The steak was a special treat, and it was bathed in a luscious cream and peppercorn sauce based on a recipe from Cook’s Illustrated. But at the end of the night, with the steak all gone, we were left with a hefty portion of the cream sauce leftover. So I took the extra and poured it over thinly sliced potato layers and turned it into a baked gratin.

Doesn’t that also embody the spirit of healthy home cooking? I know this has a bit of heavy cream in the ingredients list, but making the most of leftovers is something that I think helps home cooks keep cooking at home, rather than picking up some quick and easy take-out.

Then I have this potato galette with onions and caraway, which adorned our Christmas table last year. It was such a fun idea and translated well into a composed, elegant holiday dish (in case you’re still hunting for ideas for tomorrow… if not, it’s fabulous at Christmas, too).

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