So tonight we’re going for the gold – Sole Meuniere (the dish that turned Julia Child on to French food), haricot vert (in this case, French green beans from Fairway), and pommes de terre (here Potatoes Lyonnaise).  First, the potatoes, because they can be made ahead and reheated. The finished dish:

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I will post the next step in the nachos recipe now, in case anyone is cooking along. You need to make the guacamole now, or soon, so it can sit in the refrigerator and come together. As I progress, I will add photos and commentary to this post.

For reasons explained earlier, tonight it’s nachos. The recipe for the refritos, one of the toppings, is here.  Now, we move on to the quacamole:

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I was going to dive back into Mastering the Art of French Cooking, but the girlfriend wants nachos.  If you wish, go grab the ingredients and cook along with me.  I am cooking from scratch and making it up as I go along.

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I’m off tonight, so commenter mellbell is taking charge:

I certainly can’t compete with our resident chefs blogenfreude and promnight when it comes to savories [eds. – oh please], but give me some flour, butter, sugar, and eggs, and I’ll whip up something sweet. And when The Most Exciting Two Minutes in Sports rolls around (or even when it’s, say, eight months away), that something sweet is Derby Pie.

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I watched my Nana make them many times as a child, and as a young adult she let me make them under her supervision.  But like many grandmas, she never cooked from a recipe.  I wrote down what she did sometime in 1982, but that piece of paper is buried somewhere in my mom’s house. Nana died in 1984, so I had to suss it out, and here’s what I came up with:

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Wow, this stuff is very good.  The finished dish:

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Three day weekend, so the big meal is tonight. Moroccan food – it’s a tagine:

Ingredients

• 2 tablespoons canola oil
• 8 chicken thighs
• Salt and freshly ground black pepper
• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 1 large yellow onion, peeled, halved, and thinly sliced
• 2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
• 1 tablespoon ras al-hanut*
• Large pinch saffron, soaked in 1/4 cup warm water
• 1 cinnamon stick
• 1 1/2 cups canned diced tomatoes, drained (15-ounce can)
• 1 1/2 cups canned chickpeas, rinsed and drained (15-ounce can)
• 3/4 cup dried apricots, sliced into half moons
• Harissa Sauce, recipe follows
• Chopped flat-leaf parsley, for garnish
• Chopped fresh cilantro leaves, for garnish
• *Cook’s Note: Ras al-hanut is a mixture of many different spices used in Moroccan cooking. It is available at spice markets or online.

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