Eileen and I were lucky enough to attend a cooking class at Dirty Apron recently. The class we were in was Perfect Pairings: Food & Wine pairing, and it was a delightful evening. We made four courses and enjoyed some beautiful wine.

Last weekend was Easter, and thus a long weekend. Eileen decided I should make breakfast on Sunday morning. One of her favorite things is this sausage, fontina, and bell pepper strata from epicurious.com.

Its a really easy recipe to make. I cut it in half this time, as there was only the two of us. It was so delicious we ate it for breakfast and had leftovers again for dinner. Yum! Highly recommended.

Tonight I made bleu cheese macaroni and barbecued chicken. It was a special request from Eileen. The original recipe comes from Epicurious and I generally followed it pretty closely.

It turned out delicious and I’d highly recommend it.

Eileen and I were at our friend Melissa’a home for dinner recently (it was an excellent meal as you’d expect) and she was telling us about this amazing bleu cheese soufflé from Ina Garten’s cookbook Barefoot in Paris. Melissa had made it once before and raved about it. Leafing through the book made my mouth water, everything looked delicious and also practical to make.

We stopped into the local bookstore and picked up a copy at the very next opportunity. There are a quite a few good recipes in this book. We’ve made the fennel salad and rosemary cashews, both are easy and excellent. Eileen really wanted to try the soufflé but I’d never made a soufflé before, and always heard it was really tricky. Certainly there are plenty of jokes about slamming doors and banging pots causing the soufflé to fall. But I decided to give it a whirl anyways, with Eileen’s encouragement. And she said she was hungry, so it was either order something or make the soufflé.

It turned out extremely well. I’ll definitely make it again. Eileen thought of making this as a side to a roast lamb dish, so I’ll have to find an excuse for a dinner party and make it!

A while ago I posted this recipe for a Bearnaise sauce. This past weekend I was making a sauce again but I forgot where I found the original one. Instead some surfing lead me to this one. It was much, much better and also easier to make. Highly recommended. And yes, it took me a while to find the original one for comparison.

Suggestions welcome for a better recipe if you know of one.