This Week for Dinner – Weekly Meal Plans, Dinner Ideas, Recipes and More!: Sunday Supper with Pam Anderson’s ‘Perfect One-Dish Dinners’ (and a giveaway!)

This giveaway is now closed. But please keep reading to learn about this cookbook because that’s what this post is all about!

I recently had the choice opportunity of meeting cookbook author Pam Anderson and her lovely daughter Maggy Keet. Pam, Maggy and Pam’s other daughter Sharon have a really delightful food blog called Three Many Cooks and I’ve admired them from afar for a long time. I can finally say that we are “in-real-life” friends and boy am I happy about that!

Pam’s published oodles of fab cookbooks and her latest book is Perfect One-Dish Dinners: All You Need for Easy Get-Togethers. Maggy sent me a copy when the book first came out and it is beautiful. It’s full of, you guessed it, one-dish dinners…and Pam also creates entire menu plans for easy entertaining. Being the meal planner that I am, I love it! Maggy emailed a bunch of food bloggers last week and invited us to join them for “Sunday Supper.” Basically, we all made dinner from the book and are writing about our experience on the same day…which is today!

Our little family virtually joined the Anderson family for Sunday Supper yesterday. And it was fabulous. The food was amazing and it was so nice to sit down and have dinner as a family. (Nate works late a lot, so this doesn’t happen as often as we’d like.) I chose to cook the Coq au Vin Blanc, served with Baby Spinach with Beets & Goat Cheese. And we topped it all off with Chocolate Mousse. It was a very French meal that every last one of us was pleased with.

The Coq au Vin Blanc was a great recipe. I already had a lot of the ingredients on hand and it was simple to prepare. And did I mention unbelievably tasty?

The spinach salad was very similar to one of my Cafe Borrone favorites, so obviously I was super happy about that! (And, yes, the salad below is not dressed…we drizzled our olive oil and balsamic vinaigrette right before we ate it!)

And the chocolate mousse? First of all, it doesn’t have cream in the recipe. That earns, oh, 100 points in my book. Second of all, it’s so rich it can kill. Another 100 points. My unusually high tolerance for ultra rich chocolate desserts is apparently genetic…Cate ate all of hers AND Anna’s. (And…I think she was awake a few hours later than normal last night!)

Anyway, Pam has done it again. And I’m not just saying that because I think she’s the bee’s knees. Although, she is. But, really, her new book is wonderful. Nate was commenting during dinner about what a great concept the idea of one-dish dinners is. He’s right!

Since I love sharing, and Pam does too, we’re giving away TWO copies of Perfect One-Dish Dinners! You know the drill, just add a comment to this post! You have until Midnight PT on Friday, October 29 to post your comment. Two lucky people will be randomly-selected and the winner announced on Saturday, 10/30. (Books must be shipped to a continental U.S. address.)

Bonus! We’re including the recipe for the Chocolate Mousse in this post. Click more below to see the recipe!

Bonus Dos! I’m also listing all the other Sunday Supper posts after the recipe.

Creamless Chocolate Mousse with Vanilla Ice Cream
By Pam Anderson, Perfect One-Dish Dinners
- 8 ounces bittersweet chocolate, chopped
- 1/4 cup sugar, divided
- 3 large eggs, separated
- 3 tablespoons dark rum (I didn’t have any, so I just left it out)
- Pinch salt
- 1 pint premium vanilla ice cream

Melt chocolate and 2 tablespoons sugar in a medium bowl over a pan of simmering water. Remove bowl from heat and whisk in yolks, one at a time, until chocolate is stiff but smooth. Whisk in rum and set aside.

Meanwhile, beat egg whites and salt in a medium bowl with an electric mixer until foamy. Continue to beat, gradually adding remaining 2 tablespoons sugar until stiff peaks form. Stir 1/2 cup whipped egg whites into chocolate to loosen it. Fold in remaining egg whites until well blended. Cover and refrigerate.

To serve, scoop 1/3 cup mousse and 1/3 cup ice cream into a goblet.

Jane note: I don’t know if my medium eggs threw the recipe off, but…the mousse was perfect right after I made it and after being in the fridge for about 10 minutes. When I put the remainder in the fridge for later, the mousse turned into more of a fudge texture, and leaving it out of the fridge to “warm” didn’t soften it. I would recommend making the mousse not long before you’re actually going to eat it, and, if you need to refrigerate, only do so for a short time.

Sunday Supper Posts!

201

Jenna

October 28, 2010 at 1:19 pm

This book sounds great!

202

Linda F

October 28, 2010 at 2:09 pm

This would be a great book to have. Thanks for the chance.

203

Jennifer

October 28, 2010 at 2:30 pm

I love the concept of this book. I just make the Cassoulet-style Italian sausages with White Beans. It was scrumptous. And I got rave reviews from the family too!