I LOVED this dish. I think it was the first FFwD dish I made that I would call "quick" so that was a huge plus. This dish will find its place into my work night dinner rotation, because it can be on the table in less than 30 minutes.
I really made this recipe something that I thought we would both love, and we did! That meant leaving out the dates and the raisins. To substitute in, I added macadamia nuts which are delicious and were on sale this week, and kept the portion of pistachios and almonds the same.
The butter bubbles and browns with the nuts.
Dorie directs you to zest in orange at the end, and zest in Parmesan. I zested most of this naval orange, and it gave a great flavor pop to the dish. For the Parmesan, I pulled out another of my favorite cheese brands - Hautly aged Parmesan. This Parmesan is nice and strong, so just a little of the cheese grated on gives great flavor, with only a little cheese.
In the future I would use a less butter than Dorie calls for, and just add whatever nuts I have on hand. While we normally don't share the recipes from FFwD to encourage support of printed cookbooks, Dorie has posted the recipe on her blog, you can see it here: http://doriegreenspan.com/2011/01/there-was-a-time-in.html
I'm betting there will be lots of fun variations to check out with the other FFwD bloggers.
