Austin Food Journal

This fell together well. Pan roasted chicken with a warm salad of apples and goat cheese mixed with a mustard vinaigrette.

Turn on the reading lamp. Once again, Barbara Bush’s book show is coming to town. We had a great time last year grabbing some cookbooks and read them on the grass in front of the Capital (in the best weather you can hope for this time of year). On Saturday this year, Paula Disbrowe and Robb Walsh are ‘cooking off’ with cast iron at noon. On Sunday at 2:00, our first lady of cheese, Paula Lambert will be speaking about her perfect mozzarella.

This bread looks like it is about to sprout. But, it actually tastes pretty good. We decided to try and see if we could find a bread without high-fructose corn syrup. It was a lot harder than we thought. You would think flour, water and yeast would be a little more discriminate

It’s nice having supplies on hand. This soup started with a quart of frozen chicken stock that I made a few weeks ago. Having the chicken stock ready to go made this too easy. I added potatoes, carrots, celery, thyme and a rue to thicken it up. An hour later we were eating scratch built goodness.

At the moment, it is safe to say, I am nuts for leeks. Not sure where they were hiding during the last few decades, but they have surfaced with a vengeance.

Over the years Julia had me use them in soups and stocks, but Suzanne Goin’s preparation, in her book Sunday Suppers at Lucques, made me a believer. I paired them with roasted chicken, mashed potatoes and a white wine pan sauce.