The second
Southern Cookbook to be added to my collection, Third Thursday Community Potluck Cookbook by Nancy Vienneau is a treasure of recipes and stories that
celebrate local, seasonal food with family and friends.
What started
off as a couple of friends wanting to get together once a month to share good
food and company turned into a hugely successful monthly gathering and a
cookbook to boot! The book features just over 150 recipes (taken from their
monthly potlucks) and the chapters are divided into months which I know I have
said before but I personally love! There are quite a lot of photographs
throughout the book however a lot of them are for ingredients rather than the
recipes which is worth noting. The theme is potluck but this is no ordinary
potluck….Instead it is a group of friends getting together to celebrate the
local bounty with new and innovative dishes. What each guest brings is a total
surprise as there is no RSVP, no assigned dishes and absolutely no rules!
Quite
honestly I didn’t even know where to start with this book because I bookmarked
SO many recipes (the book was literally a sea of yellow post-it notes!!),
however I finally managed to narrow things down and in the end I tested 4
recipes.
Tested
Recipes:
Silky Butternut Squash Bisque
Fresh Dill-Feta Quick Bread
Cara Cara Cashew Chicken
Italian Meatballs in Hearty Italian Tomato Sauce
The first
recipe to be put to the test was the Silky Butternut Squash Bisque since
it looked delicious and I love Butternut Soup. The recipe was straightforward
and I really liked the idea of roasting the vegetables first which added
another level of flavour. I tasted the soup after each stage (and each new
addition of the final ingredients) and I’ll be honest, for me it tasted best
before the Greek Yogurt and Vanilla was added. I was definitely hesitant about
the vanilla and in all honesty I wouldn’t do it again. It was a nice soup,
definitely a bit different from any type of squash soup I have made before but
I didn’t love it. It’s unlikely that I would make it again.
