A Weekend of Cooking – Gardeners’ Community Cookbook

As part of the Soup’s On Challenge, I immersed myself in Smith & Hawken: Gardeners’ Community Cookbook this weekend and made several recipes over a two day period. This cookbook came about through a community effort of more than 350 gardeners from around the United States, including some well known professional chefs like Barbara Kafka and Sheila Lukins. Victoria Wise has written 10 cookbooks – and if they are all as wonderful as this one I will have to go looking for them.

Wise divides this cookbook up into ten sections: Starters, Salads, Soups, Pasta Aplenty, Main Dishes, Vegetable Sides, Sauces/Salsa/and Pestos, Pantry Perks, The Bakery, and Sweets. She not only includes a recipe index, but also a contributor’s index for those cooks who want to try a specific chef’s recipe. Interspersed throughout the book are interesting facts about food, technique, and tools of the trade. The recipes are easy to read and follow and include a short blurb by each contributing cook.

I chose to create two dishes for Saturday evening: Artichoke Supreme (page 277 – from Vegetable Sides), and Grilled Chicken Salad with Roasted Red Bell Pepper Dressing (page 79 – from Salads).

Artichoke Supreme requires some time to prepare – including about 40 minutes for boiling the artichokes. During that time, I prepared the stuffing using sweet onion, 2 medium tomatoes, chopped fresh basil, and bread crumbs from a loaf of good, day old bread. This is a dish which can be served hot or cold – my husband and I ate it hot on Saturday, and ate the leftovers cold for lunch on Sunday. I liked it better cold. I also thought it would have been tastier with melted butter dripped over it before adding the stuffing. But, regardless, it was a satisfying dish with plenty of flavor.

The grilled chicken salad was a disappointment since I used salad greens which were too tender to hold up to the hot chicken. The recipe called for hearty greens (arugula, watercress or frisee), but my supermarket didn’t carry those, so I substituted baby lettuce to the recipe’s detriment. On the plus side, the roasted red pepper dressing (made with roasted red bell pepper, roasted garlic, basil, olive oil and balsamic vinegar) was outstanding – flavorful and not overpowering, but rich enough to stand up to the chicken. I think this would also taste wonderful over steak.

This evening’s menu utilized some leftovers from Saturday to which I added Rosemary-Roasted Walnuts (page 3 – from Starters), Deviled New Potatoes (page 5-6 – from Starters), and Spinach and Strawberry Salad (page 50 – from Salads).

None of these dishes was difficult, but the Deviled New Potatoes is a bit fussy and takes some time to prepare. It is well worth the effort, however. Delicate, creamy and with a bit of crunch from the diced celery, carrots, sweet pickles, and scallion…it makes a luscious side dish with left over chicken drizzled with roasted bell pepper dressing. The spinach and strawberry salad with Kentucky salad dressing (made with olive oil, cider vinegar, sugar, minced onion, poppy seeds, sesame seeds and a dash of Worcestershire sauce) provides the bit of sweet to this meal. The roasted walnuts would have made a nice addition to the salad, but my husband and I ate them by the handful instead. This meal, served with a cold glass of Hayes Ranch Chardonnay (Central Coast-California), was satisfying and filling. My husband’s favorite dish was the spinach salad, with the deviled new potatoes coming in a close second.

As an aside – I would recommend purchasing an immersion blender if you don’t have one. It made preparing the dressings for these dishes a snap. I love mine and don’t know what I did before I got it.

I’m really happy I joined this cooking challenge as I’ve had this fantastic cookbook on my shelf now for more than a year without having made a single recipe until this weekend! This is a cookbook I can recommend, especially if you are looking for a special recipe to serve to friends fresh out of the garden.

*NOTE: Please click on the photos above to view them in a larger size.