I’ve mentioned before how much fun it’s been around here lately. I read something that sounds utterly delicious, either in a book or a magazine, and next thing you know, I’m actually eating it! Ward has been absolutely fabulous about trying out recipes for me; needless to say, I’ve been eating extremely well lately.

Which brings me to these gougères:

Don’t they look absolutely delicious? Our journey to these luscious, cheesy baked delights began last month when I was reading Ruth Reichl’s Garlic and Sapphires. The book is a wonderful read, detailing Reichl’s stint as the New York Times restaurant critic, before she became the editor of Gourmet. Reichl is smart and funny and insightful - I loved every moment of that book.

The book is mostly about her life as a restaurant critic, but there are a handful of recipes sprinkled through it. As soon as I set eyes on her recipe for gougères, I wanted to try them. Just the ingredients themselves screamed out, “Make us, make us - we taste divine, we promise!”

In the past, I would have sighed, closed the book, and then gone to bed and dreamed of what gougères might possibly taste like. Would they be as cheesy as they sounded like they would be? Would they actually taste as good as I imagined?

Not any more. I casually mentioned to Ward that this recipe looked good (well, okay, maybe not quite that casually. I might have said something like, “I really really want to try these! Can you make them, please, please, please?” Maybe.). He said, “Photocopy it for me, and I’ll give them a try.”

I’m a huge procrastinator, but I photocopied the recipe about two seconds later and gave it to him.

About ten days later, Ward tried out the recipe. (No, I didn’t ask him every day if he was planning to make gougères that day. Not every day. More like every other day. Except maybe once or twice I might have asked him a few times a day, a few days in a row. I don’t know. I can’t remember.)

That first batch was incredibly good. He made it as an after-dinner snack, and the kids and I devoured them before they had a chance to cool off. He’s since made them a few more times, and each time they are just as good as I remembered. They look a bit like biscuits, but they don’t have the crumbly, dry consistency of biscuits. Instead, they’re more like savory pastries, beautifully cheesy and tender. Very good warm. (Although I’m not sure what they taste like when they’ve cooled down a bit. We haven’t had any survive for long enough to cool down.)

Gougères

From Ruth Reichl’s Garlic and Sapphires (page 171). Ward’s comments are in italics.

1 cup water
1/4 pound (8 tbsps) unsalted butter
1-1/2 teaspoons salt
1-1/2 cups all-purpose flour
5 eggs
1 cup diced Gruyère cheese
Pepper to taste
1/2 cup grated Gruyère cheese

1. Preheat oven to 375 F. (Wait until oven is really hot - don’t rush.)

2. Combine the water, butter and a teapoon of the salt in a saucepan and bring to a boil, stirring until butter melts. Remove the pan from the heat, let cool slightly, stir in the flour, and mix well. Return the pan to the heat and stir with a wooden spoon over high heat until the mixture comes away from the sides of the pan. Remove from the heat.

3. Stir in the eggs, one at a time until well combined. Add the diced cheese, the remaining 1/2 teaspoon salt, and pepper, stirring well.

4. Drop the dough by rounded tablespoons onto a well-buttered baking pan. Smooth the top and sides of each gougère with a knife (As you can see from our pictures, we didn’t do that. Ward just plopped them onto the pan with a spoon, and they turned out quite well.). Sprinkle with grated cheese.

5. Bake in batches for 25 minutes, or until puffed and golden. Serve immediately.

You will definitely not have any problems with leftovers - we never have any left over, which is good, because they are superb right out of the oven. The best thing is, they’re very easy to whip up.

Ward and I have been talking lately about planting a kitchen garden this spring. We’ve been finding that fresh herbs make an incredible difference when it comes to cooking, so a kitchen garden this summer makes sense.

Luckily, we have a fair bit of land, and about a quarter of it is in full sun, so we have a lot of options.

We’re envisioning a raised garden just outside our kitchen:

Unfortunately, while this spot gets a lot of afternoon sun, it’s mostly shaded in the morning. Still, I’ve grown various herbs in containers on this deck in previous summers, and it’s nice to have herbs within easy clipping reach.

In our front garden, which has been in “landscape-stage” for a few years now, we’ll be able to grow quite a lot of herbs.

It’s been great fun sitting down with the gardening catalogues, dreaming about our new garden and picking out plants. We’ll be ordering most of our plants from Richters Herbs; they offer a wide variety, and many of their herbs are available as small plants or plugs.

So far, we’ve picked out the following herbs:

Basil: Genovese basil, Greek bush basil, and Thai basil
Chives
Garlic Chives
Mint: English Mint, Peppermint mint, and Spearmint mint
Rosemary

We already grow thyme, lemon thyme, oregano and sage in our front garden. They’re perennials, and make for a divine-smelling walkway in the summer. We’ll be uprooting our existing front garden this summer, though - but of course we’ll find a place for these herbs!

Richters also has a, smaller, vegetable selection, and we’ve been putting together a list from these, too. Our main criteria? It must be available as a plant or a plug! Given our short growing season, it doesn’t make sense to plant outdoors from seed, and we just don’t have the space to propagate seeds indoors (I wish we did!)

Our list of vegetables for our kitchen garden, so far:

Calabrese broccoli
Japanese eggplant
Gai Lohn
Kale
Leek
Walla Walla onion
Pak-Choi
Sweet Chocolate Pepper
Golden Cal Wonder Pepper
Cayenne Chile pepper
Jalapeno chile pepper
Thai Chile pepper

We haven’t decided on a tomato yet; there are a couple of heirloom varieties that look interesting.

And the exceptions we’ll make to planting seeds are carrots, lettuces, and of course, cilantro. There are many varieties of each that have a shorter growing season. And I’ve never been able to resist growing my own cilantro!

In the middle of a cold winter day, planning out a kitchen garden is a wonderful dream activity. Whether we’ll actually get all those plants planted out by spring, I don’t know; truth is, we’ve had as much fun out of all of this as if they were already planted and ready to be harvested!

Now that Ward’s been cooking, I’ve gotten really used to home-cooked meals all the time. He wasn’t able to make us dinner tonight, because he had to go to a special Aikido seminar downtown - so I decided to whip up an old standby: Chicken Pot Pie.

The recipe that I use is from Art Smith’s KitchenLife. I’ve found KitchenLife to be a great cookbook as far as the kids are concerned; nearly everything I’ve tried out from the book has been a big hit with everyone.

I’ve always liked the idea of chicken pot pie - there’s something about the savory nature of this dish that’s very appealing. But before I tried the KitchenLife recipe, I had never eaten a Chicken Pot Pie that tasted as good as it smelled.

The Chicken Pot Pie recipe in KitchenLife, however, is a clear winner. It fills your entire house with that delicious scent of chicken pie, and when you dig into the dish itself, it doesn’t fail to please. Even though you’re baking chicken breast meat for 25 to 30 minutes, the morsels of chicken remain tender and moist and extremely flavorful. (Since we all prefer dark meat, I now prepare the pot pie with boneless chicken thighs rather than breasts, but you’ll have no problem with chicken breasts, which is what the recipe calls for.)

Rather than playing around with a crust, the recipe uses biscuit mix to top the pie, which makes the whole thing amazingly easy. I also vary things sometimes, such as adding mushrooms, which my kids love.

My house is filled right now with the scent of the best chicken pot pie ever right now. The pot pie is still in the oven, but I thought I’d just write up this post now, since I can’t take a picture (Ward took the camera to his seminar).

Chicken Pot Pie with Biscuit Crust, from Art Smith’s KitchenLife (I’ve added my comments in italics):

2 tbsp vegetable oil
Three 6- to 7-ounce boneless and skinless chicken breasts, cut into 1-inch pieces*
Salt and freshly ground pepper to taste
3 tbsp unsalted butter
1 small onion, chopped
1 celery rib, finely chopped
1/3 cup plus 2 tbsp all-purpose flour
One 10-ounce box frozen mixed vegetables (with corn, carrots, and green beans), thawed**
3 cups reduced-sodium chicken broth ***
1 cup regular or nonfat half-and-half
1 tbsp chopped fresh parsley
2 cups instant baking mix, such as Bisquick
2/3 cup buttermilk****

* If you prefer dark meat, you can use six to seven boneless, skinless chicken thighs, cut into 1-inch pieces
** I like to stuff as much vegetables as I can into this, so I’ve used two cups plus of frozen mixed vegetables, with no problems. Also, I never seem to be organized enough to have the vegetables thawed ahead of time, so I’ve used them almost completely frozen, again with no problem - I cook them a bit longer in the sauce to compensate.
*** I don’t like to use reduced sodium chicken broth - I use organic, free range chicken broth instead
**** You can also make the biscuit topping with just regular milk (skim or otherwise)

1. Position a rack in the center of the oven and preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.

2. Heat the oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat. Season the chicken with salt and pepper. Add the chicken to the skillet and cook, stirring often, just until it turns opaque and loses its raw look, about 8 minutes. Transfer the chicken to a plate.

3. Add the butter to the skillet and reduce the heat to medium. Add the onion and celery and cook, stirring often, until the vegetables soften, about 3 minutes. Sprinkle the flour over the mixed vegetables and mix well. Add the broth and half-and-half, and bring to a boil, stirring up the browned bits in the pan with a wooden spatula. Cook until the sauce is slightly thickened, about 2 minutes. Stir in the reserved chicken, thawed mixed vegetables, and parsley. Season with salt and pepper. Pour into an ungreased 2-1/2 to 3-quart round casserole.

4. Mix the baking mix and buttermilk to make a soft, sticky dough. Drop six large spoonfuls of the dough over the chicken mixture. Bake until the biscuits are golden brown, about 25 minutes. (Note: My biscuit topping seems to take at least ten more minutes to bake to a golden brown, but this has never hurt the pot pie, even when I use chicken breast meat.)