Everyone has one day they look forward to every month. For some it’s pay day, for others it’s the day they get their nails done, for some it’s date night away from the kids. Well, I can’t remember whether I’m paid at the beginning or end of the month., I couldn’t keep up a manicure to save my life, and my husband and I don’t have children yet. No, for me that one special day is the day I open the mailbox and the new issue of Bon Appetit is there. It combines that fantastic feeling of getting something great in the mail with my love of food. I love thumbing through, dog-earing the pages that have recipes I want to try and I flip straight to the “The Hot 10” section to see if a Triangle-area restaurant is featured…and one is every six months or so!
My love of food is a product of my family. My mother is an amazing and prolific cook. When a friend lived with us for a semester she noted that we hadn’t eaten the same thing for dinner in a period of three months! That’s just what we were used to. For our part, my father, sister, and I loved to eat. When I went to college and started cooking for myself my parents gave me a subscription to Bon Appetit. It started slowly, but my passion for cooking grew. Now I cook several recipes from the magazine every month and cut out at least half of them to paste in my recipe notebooks. This is in contrast to my sister, who shares a love of Bon Appetit with me, but has a perfectly-preserved library of issues that she references.
Over the last year I’ve thought a lot about food challenges. Of course there’s the year of cooking from Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking portrayed in Julie & Julia that we’ve all heard of. But I also have a friend from church that is cooking food from a different country five days a week each month for a year in order to gain understanding of other cultures and traditions. Then there is my friend who has a baking blog and is on the constant quest to top her imaginative creations. There’s something exciting about a food challenge. It pushes you to try new things while feeding a competitive spirit. So, that’s why I’ve decided to start my own challenge. I will cook each recipe from Bon Appetit each month for a year.
I came up with this idea when I was falling asleep one night, which is when all ideas seem like great ones, but are skewed by sleepiness. However, when I woke up the next morning this idea still sounded like a good one. I thought my husband, Shaun, would be against it, but he was totally for it. We both think it is a great way to learn more about foods that we sometimes pass over and styles of cooking that are unfamiliar. So here I am, planning my meals for the month of October based on the 5 appetizers, 23 main dishes, 11 sides, 13 desserts, and 1 cocktail in this month’s issue. Among the more interesting recipe challenges, I will be cooking a live lobster, roasting my first duck, and preparing veal, which has always sounded scary to me. I should also mention we are only going to be in town for 22 nights in October, making for a packed month of food!
I’m setting a few ground-rules for myself. Since there are only two of us in our household I will cut down the recipe sizes, except when we have friends who are willing to join us. I’ll be keeping a blog to chronicle the experience. Being a researcher, I’m making this into a bit of a study. For each dish I will share our overall rating, the time it took to make it compared to what the magazine suggests, cost, and an overall “was it worth it” score. As much as possible, I will use local meat and produce. The Durham Farmer’s Market has a fabulous selection (and was featured in the Foodiest Small Town
So, here we go. One year of delicious food ahead of us. Tomorrow: Roasted Veal Shanks with Rosemary, Braised Red Cabbage with Vinegar, and Warm Pear Buckles with Tangerine Cream.
