Day into night at home / 18

A dose of celebration for cooking at home!

 

Where do you find inspiration for your day-to-day meals?

What are your favorite cookbooks?

 

I love hearing what inspires others and what cookbooks they return to again and again. For me trips to the farmer’s market, specially this time of year, never fail to inspire. I also use memories of delicious meals as inspiration, and I love reading cookbooks. This week’s starter, a salad with sugar snap peas, apricots, and pistachios is inspired by one of my favorite cookbooks, Six Seasons by Joshua McFadden. If you haven’t checked it out, Joshua is the king of perfect crunchy salads and the book is dreamy.

 

For our second course fregola con pollo a dish inspired by arroz con pollo, the deeply flavored rice and chicken dish that is quintessential Latin American comfort food. Each country has its own tweaks, but at its core the essence of all arroz con pollo is similar— flavor forward, and easy enough to feed a whole family.

 

In this recipe I’ve added my own tweaks. I substituted fregola, the toasted pasta from Sardinia for rice, and shallots for the typical onions. I’ve omitted the traditional bell pepper but added sliced grape tomatoes because I think they compliment the fregola. Although this dish is in no way traditional, it’s also not that far from it— I’ve kept the peas, which are a must in any Puerto Rican arroz con pollo.

 

Last but not least, dessert: a coconut oil cake served with the year’s first strawberries— quartered and tossed with rum and brown sugar. On it’s own the cake is lovely any time of day— morning, noon or night, but if you want to gild the lily serve it with a scoop of vanilla ice cream and pour some of the the strawberries and rum over it.

 

Buen provecho, Ana xx

 

notes:

This week’s meal serves 4-6

 

To prepare the whole meal you need to start 1 1/2 hours before you want to eat, or make the cake ahead of time and you will only need to be in the kitchen for about 45 minutes.

 

Here is the breakdown of all the steps:

Make the cake

Season the chicken

Prep the ingredients for the fregola

Brown the chicken

Make the fregola

Macerate the strawberries

Make the salad