Mashed potatoes are a really easy side dish that always please a crowd and hit the spot with so many dishes. Everybody brings certain expectations to the table, and this is an easy way to finish a meal strong.
This recipe is really rich as I like to work a lot of dairy ingredients into the mash. I also like to add a small amount of goat cheese to give a very subtle tang to the potatoes that you can’t quite put your finger on, but it just adds that little something extra. That and I am also a sucker for goat cheese. Richness aside, the potatoes also have that distinct roasted garlic taste which is sweet, garlicky (shocker!), and kind of nutty and is complemented by the parmesan and the notes of chives that pair so wonderfully with potatoes (my reason for entering Weekend Herb Blogging, hosted this week by Briciole). I also mash the potatoes somewhat coarsely with the
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Posted by mike on December 5th, 2007 in Side dish
Stuffing is one of my (and probably everybody else’s) favorite side dishes that you only have once a year with your Thanksgiving turkey. For such a rare treat, you might as well spoil yourself a little:
There seem to be an endless variety of ways you can prepare stuffing–from a bag, from inside the turkey, from fresh cornbread, apples, raisins, celery, squash, chestnut, oyster, cranberry–anything in season is pretty much fair game. This particular recipe was inspired by one that I saw online a while back that sounded delicious and slightly different from what I had grown up on. The end result was amazing: rather than the traditional cornbread croutons, you have the tang of sourdough bread, the heartiness of sausage, the earthy flavor of mushrooms, and the creaminess of leeks and goat cheese. There are a lot of really rich, heavy flavors at play in this stuffing, and it is guaranteed to live up to the high expectations everybody brings to
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Posted by mike on December 1st, 2007 in Pork, Side dish
Who doesn’t like cornbread, especially as a starter during Thanksgiving? I wanted to give it a little kick in a completely unoriginal way by adding in some other veggies: corn (crazy, I know!) and jalapeños.
Everything that went into preparing this seemed like perfection. I love peppers, so adding some heat through jalapeños and sweetness through pimentos? Yes, awesome idea. Creamed corn for flecks of corn kernels (the fresh corn at the grocery store didn’t look too hot) for that kind of half-interesting texture? More brilliance. Really, what more could you ask for? (I suppose cheddar cheese, maybe bacon…but anyways…)
Well, the cornbread was tasty, but all of these bright ideas didn’t quite come together as I had envisioned and I would make a few minor changes next time. For instance, the creamed corn simply added way too much moisture to the bread (but having kernels in the bread was definitely nice). I also wasn’t thrilled with how it looked–all the specks
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Posted by mike on November 27th, 2007 in Side dish
Indian food commonly has rice as a side dish, among many other enticing things, and there’s a lot of different, delicious ways of pairing rice with your food. My favorite two: lime rice and yogurt rice.
When I cook Indian food, I usually can’t decide on cooking any one particular kind of rice, so I instead make two different flavored rice dishes and have a little of each. As different as they both look and taste, there’s a lot in common between them, so making two at once is incredibly easy. After lime rice and yogurt rice, the third rice recipe included in this post is much simpler and is akin to something you might commonly encounter in Indian restaurants (which I’ll just call spice rice for lack of any decent name). I tend to not be a big fan (its too plain for me), but hey, maybe you will be. 
Another nice thing about these recipes is that they are simple to prepare
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Posted by mike on October 26th, 2007 in Indian, Side dish
My wife and I absolutely loved our honeymoon in Italy. Italy was my first international trip and we both can’t wait to go back…whenever that day might be. Of the many fantastic experiences, food ranked pretty highly–we had some of the best meals ever while we were there, and so of course, when I got back home, I had to try to mimic some of them. This side dish is one such attempt. I’m sure an authentic version would be far simpler to prepare, but I suppose I can claim immunity by not being Italian, right? But rest assured, the flavors are definitely there.
For the uninitiated, eating out in Italy is a little different than here in the USA. For instance, whereas here you might order an appetizer, meal, and dessert, over there (and I’m sure in many other countries), you were more likely to order a starter, a first course (which you might characterize as being similar to a “side
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Posted by mike on September 27th, 2007 in Italian, Side dish
So it seems that a lot of people know that they have heard of gnocchi before (pronounced “nyo key”) but they don’t really know what it actually is and have never tried it. Despite being listed alongside pasta dishes, gnocchi is not a pasta, but is actually a kind of Italian dumpling. Also worth noting is that gnocchi is not stuffed with anything, but rather incorporates all of the major flavors into the actual dough, which when cooked just right, can give you that tender center. It is usually based on a starch and flour-centric dough, containing things like potato, squash, ricotta, spinach, or today’s focus (what with October rolling around the corner): pumpkin.
Now if you’ve heard anything about gnocchi being hard to make, its not–its just a time consuming endeavor that requires care and patience (sounds believable, right? 
). But if you’ve ever had a really good plate of gnocchi before, you know that its worth it. And another
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Posted by mike on September 25th, 2007 in Italian, Main course, Sauce, Side dish
