Shredded Carrot

If you told me 5 years ago that my coffee table would not only host my own cookbook, but also a cookbook written by a friend of mine, it wouldn’t even be something that my brain could grasp and I would probably just laugh it off. But here we are, and that sentence is a reality.

Nick from Macheesmo was a once rival, turned friend and also powerful ally in the world of food blogging, and his book Love your Leftovers, comes out in a few days! Love your Leftovers is an epic tome of meal planning that teaches you how to cook in large batches and then repurpose the leftovers into dinners later in the week. Nick is modest on the cover when he says there are “over 100” recipes in the book, because many of the recipes feature variations and twists with full ingredient lists. I asked him what the true recipe count was, and he said it comes to 187!!!

As I flipped through the book wondering what to cook the other night, the Vietnamese Noodle Salad that uses leftover grilled flank steak caught my eye (because I could eat vietnamese noodle salads every day of my life) and it did not disappoint.

Last week I went to an awesome burger event in Boston called Battle of the Burger. It was lots of fun and sponsored by Amstel, so as you can imagine I had a few. I tried as hard as I could to taste all 20 burgers there, but alas, I only made it to about 15. I almost had to crawl out of the event I was so full! I even had to pass on the make your own sundae booth, and throw away a few bites of a shake shack burger which might have been a low point of my life. I was really impressed with many of the burgers, especially the lamb and tzatziki burger from Cafeteria, but overall, I wished some of the restaurants lightened things up a bit. Every burger was an overindulgent savory bomb which was awesome at first, but after trying 10 or so, they all started to meld together. If I was there, I would have served these Vietnamese vermicelli topped burgers as a bit of a reprieve from the bacon-truffle-mushroom-aioli-cheese madness.

What the what??? This came about because Mandi noticed the texture of sabra reminded her of cake frosting. She asked me to make her a carrot cake that we could frost with the hummus. It obviously had to be a savory cake to work with the super savory hummus. It actually came out pretty tasty! The cake was really flavorful and was almost the texture of a dense pancake. The carrot and curry really came through, and melded well with the hummus. I initially imagined this as a brunch dish, but it’s more of a cool and unique app for hummus lovers.

This pork is slow roasted in a red curry sauce and topped with a fresh herby slaw.