Swanky, Low-Stress Entertaining With Cortney LaCorte
The Dinner Plan
Cortney LaCorte, known as Cheese Gal, joins The Dinner Plan to share her relaxed approach to entertaining, cheese plating tips, and easy wee
Key takeaways
- Transforming mundane meals into enjoyable experiences through ambiance and mindset shifts
Main topics
- Low-stress entertaining and hosting tips
- Easy weeknight dinner recipes
Notable quotes
"It's a weeknight, but it's a weeknight. W-E-A-K."
Conclusion
Cortney LaCorte's philosophy centers on making cooking and entertainin
Transcript preview
Speaker 1 (0:00) Before we get into my conversation with Courtney, I want to make sure you all know about the Dinner Plan September giveaways, which you can enter right now on our newsletter. Prizes include fun snacks to try like chocolate-covered potato chips from Emma's, popcorn from Bjorn Korn, and an assortment of sweet and savory olive oil tortas from Ines Rosales. You can also win cutting boards from Epicurean, a chef's knife from Maiden, and a countertop oven from Cuisinart. Mustard from Little Zing and a gorgeous Heston roasting pan. Plus, you could win a huge collection of new cookbooks. Get all the details and enter to win now at thedinnerplan.substack.com. That's thedinnerplan.substack.com. Speaker 1 (0:47) Welcome to The Dinner Plan, where we start every week with fresh cooking inspiration. I'm your host, Maggie Hoffman, and today I'm talking to Courtney LaCorte, who you might know as Cheese Gal on social media. She's perhaps best known for making delightful little couch snacks, and now she has a cookbook out called Oversharing. Anytime snacks, everyday dinners, and cooking for company. Courtney, congratulations on this book and thank you for coming into the studio today. Thank Speaker 2 (1:17) you so much for having me. I've got so many Speaker 1 (1:19) things to yap to you about, so thank you for having me. So before we get into the book, I'd love to hear what you've been actually cooking lately. Speaker 2 (1:27) Well, you know, I'm a bit of a snack gal, okay? Like apps for dinner, like often that is what my dinner is. Like I'll cook my kids something, then I do like a snack after bedtime. There is this marinated olive spoon of a burrata. app I've been doing on repeat since April. And you could eat it with a spoon. It's so good. What are you marinating the olives in? I mean, it's like the easiest little thing. Lemon zest, lemon juice, a little bit of Calabrian chili flakes, olive oil, obviously, a little bit of honey for sweetness, maybe hot honey just to give that bit of kick reinforcement. And then I spoon that over the burrata, tear up some basil, flaky salt, pepper. Maybe just with a spoon, maybe with a piece of baguette. I don't know. But it's really fabulous and it's just like Speaker 1 (2:15) this little moment, you Speaker 2 (2:16) know, Speaker 1 (2:16) just delicious. I love that you pay attention to giving yourself the snack that you are craving. It's my ethos. It's my entire reason for existing. I'm here for that. Okay, what have you been cooking though? I've got to hear. Maybe I am the last person to try this, but... I was looking at an old Martha Stewart pressure cooker cookbook, and she makes like coarse polenta in a pressure cooker. Oh. Which normally that's the whole to-do. I have done it in a slow cooker, but it's, you know, 12 hours. But if you have like really nice, coarse, freshly milled grits or polenta, it can be a business. And I am not standing and stirring. No Speaker 2 (3:01) one has time for that. Yeah. Speaker 1 (3:02) So this recipe. It's super simple. It's like four cups of water and one and a half cups of coarse polenta or grits in the Instant Pot with a little salt. You cook it on high. And, you know, I think you have to dial it in for the grits or polenta that you have. Some of these, like the one from the grocery store, is going to be different from the small mill. And I think mine could have used a total of like eight minutes on high. Speaker 2 (3:26) OK. You Speaker 1 (3:26) release it naturally for a little bit. You release it manually. You stir in some butter. Parmesan, you could go however. while. Do you want to go? Mine needed like a little more time. I think the original recipe was maybe six or seven minutes. I just like left it there, kept it on warm while I was cooking dinner, stirred in some milk until it felt right. But it came out so nice and it was like hands off perfection. Favorite kind of recipe right there. And also Speaker 2 (3:51) I'm starving now, Speaker 1 (3:52) by the way. And I am the person who will buy, oh, nice grits or nice polenta. And then leave them in my cabinet for a year. Yep. Because I don't want to stand and stir. So Speaker 2 (4:04) real. That's realistic. You know what I love to put in my polenta? And actually, this is a little recipe in here, a little mascarpone, just to give it that richness and that creaminess. Incredible. Speaker 1 (4:18) And then the rest of the meal could be super easy. It could be like a bolognese you had in the freezer. It could be a couple of sausages. It could be roast vegetables. Anything can become a fancy dinner if you made the good polenta. 100%. I love that. And then I was microwaving the leftovers for breakfast, put an egg on it. Speaker 2 (4:35) That's my go-to thing because I am famous for hating to make lunch. Lunch is like the bane of my existence. So this sounds great because I can just reheat it the next day, do like a little... I don't know, whatever else Speaker 1 (4:47) is in the fridge. Leftovers. So I want to talk about the fun snacks that you make for yourself. I want to talk about hosting. But let's start with regular weeknight dinners. I love how you put it in the book. You write, some nights cooking anything feels like an Olympic sport you did not sign up for. Listen, there are Speaker 2 (5:07) some nights where you just think. It's a weeknight, but it's a weeknight. W-E-A-K. You know what I'm saying? So yeah, that's what this chapter basically is Speaker 1 (5:15) an ode to. So what can we do to make those nights easier? What's your like hot take on how we can make weeknights less painful? I focus less Speaker 2 (5:27) on the meal prep of it all and more on the mood prep. Turn the music on. Pour something pretty in your glass. Okay. Put on a candle. If I'm going to be... cooking when I don't feel like cooking for 30 minutes. I might as well try to enjoy it. You know, it's 30 minutes I don't get back. So I'm going to put on my playlist. I'm going to do all those things to like get my mind right. And then it makes the whole process so much more enjoyable. So that's kind of my hot take on that. Speaker 1 (5:52) I love that. And it's not like any of that takes time. Put on comfortable clothes. We're not like messing up any other clothes. The music has to be right. Unfortunately, I think I have discovered for me. That sometimes I need to do a little cleaning before. Fair. So fair. Because I'm not happy cooking if there's a stack of dishes on the counter. Speaker 2 (6:16) Yep. Speaker 1 (6:16) It's the clutter Speaker 2 (6:17) because it can make you feel like, and it makes the whole thing worse. I agree with you actually on that totally, which is why if my husband is cooking, I like actually can't be in the kitchen because it looks like Speaker 1 (6:27) a bomb went off and I'm like, I can't. What is on your cooking playlist? Speaker 2 (6:32) Okay. So I have a, I call it the Nancy Meyers-esque and it's Things from her films, right? But it's just like the very, I have like a lot of crooner stuff on there. I've got, you know, stuff from the Parent Trap movie. I mean, it's just things that make me feel special and like I'm in a movie. It really, it sounds so cheesy. I'm romanticizing my life as much as I can, right? We've got one shot at this, so we might as well enjoy making dinner on a Tuesday. And that's, let's be realistic too, that's not every single night. There's some nights I'm like, I'm calling in for backup, I'm ordering a pizza. I absolutely have those nights too, but if I can, I'm going to try to enjoy it. Speaker 1 (7:10) What do you make if you are really low energy, but you're like, I got to cook something. We had pizza last night. I Speaker 2 (7:16) think my most made recipe, probably of all time, but especially in the weeknights chapter, is the weakest night, sheet pan chicken, thighs and veggies. It's the simplest, most flavorful dinner. My kids will eat it. That's number one. Will my kids eat it? Yes. Okay. Will I enjoy it? Yes. So that's a win-win already. But it comes together so quickly. I'm a chicken thighs girl. Chicken thighs over everything. I just so much more bone and skin on also. I actually learned a little trick from Kenji. The baking powder trick on the chicken, on the skin, it just helps crisp it up a little bit more. And I can play around with like maybe the seasonings, but like my most basic, obviously, it's just olive oil, kosher salt, salt and pepper. And then I make this sort of like herby butter to spoon over the top because the chicken. thighs are roasting on top of the veggies. So like that fat is flavoring the veggies for me. And then I do that butter at the very end. And it is, it's to die for. Speaker 1 (8:14) Sometimes that little touch at the end is what makes a difference. And the oven did all the work pretty much. How do you like to think about the week? What's your advice for like a better way to deal with the meal planning? Yeah, I mean, that's Speaker 2 (8:30) the part that can feel so daunting. I think where people go wrong is they go, OK, Sunday to Saturday, what am I making? And I kind of look at it more like two to three days at a time versus the whole week. And I also like to try to pick one to two recipes a week that I'm pumped to make. And then I look at the calendar and I'm like. Where do I think I would have the most energy? Because if I'm driving my kids to ballet and soccer, that's the night that we're not going to try to do, you know, the pot roast. So I kind of like to look at it that way. And I also don't think that we need these crazy recipes every single night of the week. If I'm going to do my big fat Greek grilled chicken one night, I'm going to make enough for the next day. And we can turn that into like maybe it's a bake. Maybe it's chicken tacos. Maybe we're doing a chicken salad, you know. Things like that. Repurposing the same thing from the day before. I love doing that and turning it into something fun. Speaker 1 (9:22) Where you get into trouble is that list of seven recipes. That's way too much. No, Speaker 2 (9:27) I can't do that. Speaker 1 (9:28) I mean, maybe some can and I Speaker 2 (9:29) love that for them, but not for me. Speaker 1 (9:32) What are some ingredients that you swear by for flavorful dinners that are less effort? Speaker 2 (9:39) Okay, well, you know, boursin is like the one true love of my life. Okay, next to my husband and my children, of course. So it's obviously it's this little puck of I like the garlic and herb. I love to bake it and I throw in like artichokes and if I want to do like some tomatoes and then in capers and it can make this sort of gorgeous sauce, a little splash of white wine. And then you can toss that with pasta. I also love it as an appetizer, though, because you can whip it and make it a dip. You can dredge it in some flour, a little beaten egg, crispy panko breadcrumbs, a little hot honey after it's baked. There's another app. could be for dinner. You can do so many things with it. It's like a little creamy flavor bomb. I also really love compound butters are also like my secret weapon. And I have a whole little ode to them in the book because you can roast veggies and you can have this in your freezer. So like I'll prep compound butters once every other month. And if I just need to toss it with some pasta, throw it over a protein, over a steak, chicken thighs. whatever it is. And it's just this beautiful, and you could do herby butters, cheesy butters, spicy, sweet even with a little, oh, it's like a sweet potato. I get passionate about butter Speaker 1 (10:50) in general. So. Do you freeze it in a little log or are you making individual portions? You Speaker 2 (10:56) could do it a couple of different ways. I mainly do the logs and then I'll take it out and keep it in the fridge for the week and it's ready to go. But you totally could do individual portions. I mean, you could do it like that ice cube trick. You know, that could be actually that's a great idea. Speaker 1 (11:09) If you wanted to switch it up and use more than one compound butter over the course of the week. Speaker 2 (11:14) Totally. Speaker 1 (11:15) Any other ingredients for quick flavorful dinners? Let me Speaker 2 (11:19) think. OK, listen, I am no stranger to Publix fried chicken. I actually throw a we call it bougie comfy New Year's Eve party. And it's where I pretty much don't cook. We do Publix fried chicken because I just feel like it's the best. So you can make. Those lettuce wraps, the fried chicken lettuce wraps with them, which that's a go-to weeknight dinner of