52 Cookbooks - Week 7, Everyday Food

This week for the first time I drew a cookbook I already use fairly frequently, Everyday Food: Great Food Fast. It's a 2007 collection by the editors of Everyday Food magazine, so it's full of recipes suited to current tastes and food trends, without being too labor-intensive or beyond the skills of the average home cook. In other words, everyday.

For the sake of my challenge, I chose a recipe I'd never made before, Chili-Rubbed Skirt Steak. Simple stuff--just steak coated with a chili-heavy spice rub and broiled. I also made the suggested side, romaine salad with a homemade creamy chili dressing. It looked like this:



Tasted pretty good, too. I also made a dessert from the book, Grilled Chocolate Sandwiches. Chocolate-stuffed french toast, basically. The flavor was fine, but it was messy to make, since chocolate melts softer than cheese and kept wanting to ooze out rather than adhere to the bread. I think you could get the same or better flavor with easier clean-up from pouring a good chocolate sauce over ordinary french toast.