unabashed foodie post →[More:]
In which we share recipes, courtesy of the feast I made on Saturday, which I just have to brag about (sorry!).

NOTE: One caution I've found to be true with nearly all Epicurious recipes: DO NOT ADD SALT!!!

I cooked a Valentine's feast on Saturday for myself and the mister that turned out full of win and awesome. I rarely attempt French cooking because it's too fiddly and complex for my attention span. However, I have to say the effort in this case was totally worth it, so I wanted to share.

Wild Rice and Wild Mushroom Pilaf: I had the ingredients for this recipe, so I made up the rice and mushrooms the night before (pro tip). I used low-sodium chicken broth both to soak the mushrooms (dried morels from the local supermarket, ON SALE even!!!) and prep the rice. I added a little shallot, a handful of slivered almonds, and several shakes of cumin to the minced pilaf veg in the final step. Tremendous.

Roast Game Hens with Lemon Herb Butter: Poussins are just young chickens, and what we USians often use are Cornish Game Hens - found in the poultry section at any supermarket. Yes, they're fiddly and messy and high-maintenance -- you have to check for pinfeathers, truss them, brine them and butter baste them, but omg so, so worth it!! Our supermarket had them 2/$6 so I couldn't resist. I brined them for about 8 hours prior to roasting. Now, I can't truss a bird to save my ass, so I just (har har) winged it with some cotton string I had lying around, and despite the complete lack of elegance, they turned out fine. Also: I DID NOT grill mine, just roasted them at 475°F for ~55 minutes (high altitude, yo). Oh, yeah, and herb butter without garlic is like an insult to the gods or something, so I added 3 good sized cloves of garlic for 2 birds (linked recipe is for six).

Sauteed Asparagus with lemon-dill butter and capers: Er, no hotlinky cos that one's actually my own demented concoction. Asparagus was a dollar a bunch at the store. I had lemon leftover from the birds. There's a jar of capers in the fridge. I have dill-in-a-tube that I use for tuna fish. So I whacked a crapload of butter and about a half tablespoon of minced shallot into a saute pan, added the juice from the lemon, the asparagus, squeezed a line of dill from the tube over the lot, dropped in a spoonful of (drained) capers and sauteed it. Pulled out the spears when they got bright green and bendy, deglazed the pan with a splash of the sauv. blanc we were drinking and et voila! Man was that tasty. I'm gonna make that asparagus again tonight, actually because it takes about ten minutes.

So, please feel free to fill up this thread with whatever sort of recipes you like. Failing that, feel free to bring your knock-knock jokes, dirty limericks, performance art, lolcats or any-damned-thing-you-want, kthxbye!