A Few Dories

I'm trying to kick my Dorie make-ups into high gear. News that Dorie is publishing a new book in the next year, and the realization that we only have a year's-worth of recipes from Around My French Table yet to cook has spurred me on to catch up to the group. I really want to "finish" the book, since that's the whole reason for the club.

I cooked three recipes this week, but didn't get my post written until now.

I'll start with the recipe that was slated for this week: Sausage-stuffed Cornish Hens. Honestly? I was indifferent to this. My hens took A LONG time to cook. Much longer than specified, and even when the thermometer read the correct temperature (which I had to look up in How to Cook Everything, because Dorie doesn't supply one), and the thighs ran clear when stabbed, they still weren't cooked through. Grrr.

I also found my sausage-to-bread ratio to be off, with the emphasis on sausage. Maybe if I had made the pan sauce, it would have married the chicken and sausage flavors. As it stands, the stuffing and the hen seemed like two totally unrelated entities. I was starving by the time the damn things were finished cooking, and had no patience for making sauce, though. Whaaatever.

Most of the recipes I have yet to complete are desserts. Fortunately for my waistline, my friend recently decided to start a book club, so my plan is to always bring a Dorie dessert to book club. Have I mentioned lately how much I hate tart dough? Ugh. So many tarts to do. Anyway, this month I chose the easiest possible baked good that I'm behind on: Financiers.

These were perfect for a morning book club. A friend described them as "exactly the right amount of sweet," and I agree. Charlie ate two in the morning, and the two I saved for him as soon as he got home from school. He was furious when he realized that those two were all he could have. It's not often he inhales something that's not a chocolate chip cookie, so I call that a win. And almond flour and egg whites means it's healthy right? Right. We'll just pretend the 1.5 sticks of butter never happened.

Lastly, I made Butter and Rum Crepes, Plain (sans Rum). I've never made crepes before, and wasn't totally confident that I'd end up with anything besides a pile of deformed crepe. However, the crepes were surprisingly easy to work with, and delicious, to boot. I doubled the recipe, and they were GONE in about five minutes. My favorite preparation was to smear them with nutella and homemade tangerine curd. Holy moly. YUM.

They were gone so fast I never took a picture. My bad.