March 2014 - Mostly Balanced

Goat Cheese and Sausage Pasta

September 14, 2020March 19, 2014 by Meg

I wish I had a fascinating origin story for this weeknight-dinner dish, but in reality, it’s been a busy year, and this is just the kind of dinner I’ve been feeling like putting together after work. It’s a good standby for when mental and physical energy are sapped. It’s got a lot of enjoyable components (goat cheese + sausage + veggies) to give you something to really look forward to at the end of a busy day. It’s not overly complex, but it’s perfectly satisfying.

I’m hoping it’s the start of more successful pasta dishes that use goat cheese as the base for a creamy pasta sauce. I’ve made several attempts at goat-cheese-based pasta recipes, all of which served as passable dinners for David and me, but none worth sharing or repeating. I keep thinking it should be simple to put together a basic pasta dish using goat cheese as the base for the sauce, but my attempts so far have been off: the goat cheese lends either a weak or funky flavor or I overthink the combination of ingredients. This is the first time I’ve found the effort worthwhile, and it’s so exceeded my expectations. It’s in the realm of regular rotation for dinner recipes.

Pan-seared Kumquat Chicken

September 14, 2020March 10, 2014 by Meg

For my birthday, David took me to one of the best restaurants in our new neighborhood: Craigie on Main. It’s a French restaurant that’s known for it’s consistent high-quality, creative cooking. It’s been on my list of places I’d love to visit for as long as I’ve been in Boston, and now that we live just down the road, we finally made reservations. For my birthday dinner, I had pork prepared four (!) different ways: terrine, sausages, one I can’t remember (whoops), and a pan-seared pork loin in a just-sweet-enough kumquat glaze. It was fabulous, and this chicken dish is a riff on some of the flavors I so enjoyed that night.

Kumquats are new to me. They’re a citrus fruit that’s usually available in the late winter months, so they’re perfect this time of year. They look like tiny little oval oranges, and they’re meant to be eaten whole, skins and all. One of my colleagues at the hospital introduced me to them. She brought a little baggie of them to work one day and gave me a few to snack on, just popping them in to my mouth. When you chew them, there’s a bit of a tart zing, but soon a bright sweetness comes through. It’s kind of like a layered flavor.

Wild Blueberry and Pear Crisp

September 14, 2020March 2, 2014 by Meg

We moved!

Although I’ve loved spending the past few years in my kitchen in Boston’s North End, it’s time for a change. David and I are lucky enough to have found a great place on the other side of the river that we both love.

We’re much closer to nature, with a little back yard and the Charles River just a few blocks away. We’ve been watching the trees bud and the flowers spring up over the past couple of weeks as we settle in. Lounging on the stairs to our back deck outside in the (still very chilly) night air, we talk about all we’ve left behind and everything we’re looking forward to in our new neighborhood.

To celebrate our first Saturday in our new space, I made this pear crisp. I wanted my first dish to be celebratory: something we don’t eat every day. Because we had loads of unpacking to do, it also needed to be on the low-maintenance end of the spectrum.