I could not be more ready for the weekend. I had one too many 7am meetings this week, each one followed by long days working frantically toward a major deadline Thursday afternoon. The minute the deadline passed, I felt a wave of exhaustion wash over me. I was spent. But now the weekend has arrived and I have two full days to sleep in, not think about insurance, and enjoy the beautiful weather we’re supposed to have. We’re going to head out to the garden to check for tomatoes and squash and blueberries, try and catch a showing of Chef, and hopefully head up to Maine to look for chanterelles with Trevor’s uncle.

One thing that helped me keep my head up during this hectic week was coming home to these delicious basil panna cottas in the fridge – I won’t lie, I had a few bites every night this week. When it comes to basil, my eyes are often bigger than my stomach. I find the scent of basil truly intoxicating, and am seemingly unable to walk by a box in the store or a patch in the garden without taking some home. But its shelf life is shorter than I think, and more often than not I use up a little right away and then end up with a bunch of slimy black leaves a week later, which feels like such a terrible waste. One solution is to mix up and freeze a big batch of pesto, but after a while, as delicious as pesto is, it feels boring.

On the ride home from our garden the other day, a bag of freshly picked basil sitting in my lap, I tried to think of things other than pesto that I might make to use up leaves on their last leg. When I got to basil ice cream, I moved backwards a few steps to basil-infused heavy cream, and then jumped forward again to settle on basil panna cotta. Since I had a few overly ripe apricots in the fridge that needed to be used up as well, I decided on rosé-poached apricots as a topping. I read up on my panna cotta theory in The Best International Recipe (a great resource for knowing how and why recipes work), then changed things up a little, and the result was sublime. Not too sweet, extremely light and smooth, and with delicate, floral flavors, it tasted like a restaurant quality dessert but was extremely simple to execute. It might be my new dinner party go to. If you also have an abundance of basil and quickly ripening stone-fruit sitting on your counter (’tis the season!) I encourage you to give this recipe a go – you won’t be disappointed, and you’ll have spared yourself the sadness of wasted produce.

Have a great weekend, everyone!

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Basil Panna Cotta with Rosé-Poached Apricots

Serves 4.

• 1 1/2 c. heavy cream
• 1/2 c. basil leaves, washed and dried
• 1 c. sugar, divided
• 1/2 vanilla bean
• 1/2 c. milk
• 1 1/2 tsp gelatin
• 3/4 c. rosé wine
• 4 fresh apricots, halved and pits removed

1. Add the heavy cream, basil, and 1/4 cup of the sugar to a small saucepan. Split the vanilla bean lengthwise and scrape the seeds out into the cream with a small spoon, then add the vanilla bean pod to the cream as well. Heat the cream over medium heat, stirring gently to dissolve the sugar, until the cream just comes to a simmer. Remove from the heat and let sit for 15 minutes, then strain the cream through a fine mesh strainer into a bowl. Cover with plastic wrap and chill until cold, at least 30 minutes. Discard the basil.
2. Add the milk to a small saucepan and sprinkle the gelatin over the top of the milk. Stir gently to combine. Let the gelatin sit for 10 minutes to hydrate, then heat over medium-low heat just until the gelatin dissolves, which should take about 90 seconds to 2 minutes. Remove from the heat, whisk to combine, then pour into the chilled basil-infused cream. Whisk the mixture for 1 minute to fullly combine and to begin to chill the gelatin, then divide the mixture between four ramekins or glasses, cover each with plastic wrap, and chill until firm, at least two hours.
3. For the apricots: add the remaining 3/4 c. of sugar and the rosé to a small saucepan. Bring to a simmer, then gently place the apricot halves into the pot, submerging in the simmering liquid. Let simmer until soft, about 3-4 minutes, then remove with a slotted spoon to a bowl. Continue simmering the liquid until it is reduced by half and slightly syrupy, about 10-15 minutes. Remove from heat and pour over the apricots. Cover the apricots and syrup and chill until cold.
4. Serve each panna cotta with one or two apricot halves and a few spoonfuls of syrup poured over the top. Serve cold.

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I’m so thrilled to be back on Cup of Jo today. When Joanna and her team first reached out to me last year about contributing a recipe, I had heard of her blog but only glanced at it once or twice. Since then, I’ve become a loyal reader – and I mean I actually read all her posts, not just skim through the pictures like I do with so many blogs. It’s almost always the first blog I click on when I open up my reader, and reading her posts makes me feel like I’m chatting with a slightly older, slightly wiser, really sweet girlfriend. Making strangers feel like that over the internet takes a whole lot of talent. But enough with the fangirling – on to the food! Last year I shared my favorite recipe for guacamole with Joanna and her readers, and I’m flattered to be returning with a super simple, three ingredient pasta dish that’s perfect for summer eating.

July is really the perfect time for quick dinners – less time in the kitchen means more time outside soaking up the sunshine, or laying on the floor in your underwear as close to your AC unit as you can get, depending on where you live. Of course, I took my three ingredients – smoked salmon, creme fraiche, and capers – and decided that I should make two of the three from scratch, defeating the simplicity point a little bit. Creme fraiche is super easy to make at home – all you need to do is add a few tablespoons of buttermilk to a cup of heavy cream, stir it up, cover it, and let it sit on the counter until thick, usually about 24 hours. Smoking your own salmon takes a bit more effort, but it’s a fun project and totally doable. Trevor did most of the hard work, stoking and tending the fire and keeping the temperature just right as the fish smoked, so I can’t take too much credit here, but the end result was really delicious. The pasta gets well coated with the tangy creme fraiche, the salmon is incredibly rich and slightly sweet from a maple syrup brine, and the capers add some much-needed piquancy. Even with all store-bought ingredients, this recipe is a winner for summer nights. Head over to get the full recipe on Cup of Jo.

Thanks to both Joanna and Caroline for featuring this recipe!

Note: we used the following three sources for info on hot-smoking salmon at home. We’re still perfecting our technique, but once we do, maybe we’ll have our own recipe to share.

Alton Brown
Hunter Angler Gardner Cook
Epicurious 

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Don’t worry, I’m going to write about the book.  Especially after I left you hanging last month.  But I can’t tell you about it yet.

Because I have to tell you about this mac and cheese, first.

This mac and cheese is amazing.  AMAZING.  It has oomph – lots of rich, smoky, garlicky, spicy oomph.  I ate it for 3 out of 4 meals this weekend.  (What, you eat lunch on the weekend?  Hasn’t anyone introduced you to brunch??)  Then I brought it for lunch on Monday.  And I still wanted more.  But I have an affinity for weighing less than my boyfriend, so I froze the rest and hid it from myself and made broccoli and edamame soup to distract myself.  Which is currently working, but probably won’t for long.

Alright, let me break it down for you.

First, there’s the homemade breadcrumbs.  Made from soft french bread drenched in a red-pepper garlic butter, then toasted and blitzed with freshly crisped bacon to make the world’s most incredible bread crumbs.

Yes, I said bacon.

Then, there’s the cheese sauce, which starts with whole milk, gets infused slightly with onion, thickened into a roux, and then mixed with havarti, cheddar, and smoked gouda.

Not too shabby.

Add to the cheese sauce lightly browned sopressatta, granny smith apples, and the requisite macaroni, top with the afore-mentioned incredible bread crumbs, and bake.

Did I mention you cook the cheese sauce in the bacon pan?  Well, I should have.  Because the slight smoky hint throughout the whole dish puts this baby over the top.

Moving on to praise the woman responsible for this incredible, decadent recipe, Stephanie Izard – author of Girl in the Kitchen – knows food.  I’ve never been to her Chicago restaurant, Girl and The Goat, but next time I’m in town, I’m absolutely going, especially after testing out some of her recipes in my own kitchen (usually I estimate that what I can reproduce is about 60-80% as good as if the author of the recipe/original chef were making it, so recipes that turn out really well in my kitchen must be pretty amazing in a restaurant).  I also made (and loved) this Asparagus and Arugula Pasta with Almond-Parmesan Breadcrumbs recipe (she really works those breadcrumbs) from Girl in the Kitchen, as well as a nice spring salad with pickled rhubarb, goat cheese, and roasted asparagus.

I already wrote a little bit about the aesthetics of the book here, but I’ll recap briefly.  This book is fun.  It’s got beautiful, bright photographs, drink pairings for every recipe, ingredient spotlights and tips, and great recipes.  I even like the typeface (dork alert).  The recipes are unique, creative, and delicious.  However, these are “Sunday recipes,” as in they’re not something you can easily whip up on a work night when you have 20 minutes to eat and clean up before you crash.  Many of them take planning ahead, have multiple components, and take several hours.  It’s also not a particularly healthful book.  There are certainly very healthy and light recipes included, but there are also recipes like this one that could ruin any diet.  The effort to make these dishes (and calories to consume them) seems to pay off, but this is most likely a cookbook I’ll turn to more for special events and weekend dinners rather than my weekly menu planning.

Oh, and there’s no dessert section in this book, which I just feel like is something you should know.  But I kind of appreciate her sticking to the area she considers her strength, rather than rolling everything into one book.

And now let’s get you back to that mac and cheese.

Make this.  Soon.  Don’t think about the ingredients while you eat it.  Just enjoy it.

Macaroni and Cheese with Apples and Bacon

Adapted from Girl in the Kitchen.  Serves 8-10.

I’ve rearranged the steps of Stephanie’s original recipe to make it such that you only need 1 sauce pot and 1 9×13 baking pan, because I hate using multiple dishes, but if you’re pressed for time (or happen to have a resident dishwasher), feel free to do multiple steps simultaneously (like cook the pasta, warm the milk, toast the breadcrumbs and fry the bacon) in different pans.  Also, I only used about 3/4 of the sauce this made because I was worried it would overflow, but I left the proportions in the recipe below close to the originals.  If you have extra sauce, freeze and use at a later date as a pasta topping.

• 1 stick salted butter, divided
• 4 garlic cloves, minced
• 1/2 tsp red pepper flakes
• 4 c. cubed fresh french bread
• 6 c. whole milk
• 1 small onion, halved
• 4 oz. bacon
• 3 Granny Smith apples, cored and diced
• 2 TBS apple cider vinegar
• 8 oz. sopressatta or other dried Italian sausage, preferably spicy
• 1 lb. orecchiette or other shell pasta
• 1/3 c. flour
• 8 oz. havarti, grated
• 4 oz. cheddar, grated
• 4 oz. smoked gouda, grated

1. Preheat oven to 375°F.  In a large pot, melt the stick of butter over low heat.  Add garlic and red pepper flakes, and cook over low heat for 1-2 minutes, until garlic is fragrant.  Pour into a small bowl.  Spoon 1/4 c. of the garlic butter (about half) into a 9×13 in. pan and add the bread cubes, tossing to coat with the butter.  Toast in the oven for 15 minutes, or until very crisp.  Set aside.
2. In the large pot, combine milk and onion and heat over medium heat.  Bring just to a simmer, then continue to cook at a gentle simmer, stirring frequently, for 15 minutes.  Pour hot milk into a large bowl and set aside.
3. In the large pot, fry bacon until crispy.  Remove and place with bread cubes.  Place bread cubes and bacon in a blender or food processor and pulse several times to make breadcrumbs.  Reserve breadcrumbs.
4. In the same pot, still with the bacon grease, cook sopressatta for 1 – 2 minutes over medium heat, until slightly crispy, then remove with a slotted spoon and add to 9×13 pan.  Add apples to pan (still with bacon drippings) and cook for 2 minutes, until just beginning to soften, then add to 9×13 pan.  Add the vinegar and toss to coat.
5. In the same pot, melt the remaining garlic-red-pepper butter.  Add flour, and stir until flour becomes nutty and brown.  Slowly add hot milk, 1/2 c. at a time, whisking in between to make sure there are no lumps (this process is called making a roux).  Once all the milk has been added to the flour-butter mixture, bring just to a boil, stirring frequnetly, then reduce heat to a simmer and cook until sauce thickens enough to coat the back of a wooden spoon.  Remove from heat, stir in all the cheeses except for 1/2 c. of the havarti, and let melt.  Pour cheese sauce into 9×13 pan with apples and sopressatta.
6. Rinse out the pot, then fill with water, and salt heavily.  Bring salted water to a boil, then cook pasta according to package directions.  Drain pasta, then add to the 9×13 pan with the cheese sauce, apples, and sopressatta.  Sprinkle breadcrumbs over the top as well as remaining 1/2 c. havarti, then bake for 5 minutes at 375.  Change oven setting to broil, and broil for 5 minutes.  Remove and serve while hot.

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