X

Featured Recipe

Ancho Chili Black Bean Potato Skins

Serves 4 Ingredients 2 dried ancho chilies 1 C. boiling water 2 T. olive oil 1 small yellow onion, minced 1/4 C. minced fresh cilantro 1 t. ground coriander 2 T. tomato paste 2 C. cooked, drained black beans salt to taste Place the ancho chilies in a pie pan,…

More


Homemade Beer Bread with Pulled Chicken Barbecue and Quick Cucumber Pickles

Makes 4 Servings Hands-On Time: 20 Minutes Total Preparation Time: 20 Minutes Suggested Accompaniment  Cole slaw Ingredients 1 recipe Beer Bread (recipe below) or use 4 large rolls or hamburger buns 1 recipe Basic Barbeque Sauce (recipe below) or 2 cups store-bought sauce 1 recipe Dill Pickle Cucumber Slices (recipe…

More


Cold Pea Soup with Shrimp and Carrot Salad

Cold soups generally leave me cold. They just seem like an excuse for a cold drink. But this one is an exception. Prepared with all the prescribed accoutrements, curried shrimp, shredded carrots, and toasted nuts, this dish is a perfectly refreshing warm-weather meal. Makes 4 servings Hands-on time: 25 minutes…

More


Two-Melon, Proscuitto and Feta Salad

Melon and prosciutto is such a refreshing summertime appetizer that I wondered if there was a way to make it entree-hearty without ruining its essential appeal. I did it by adding watermelon and feta cheese to the lineup. These two play together beautifully – the sweet watermelon and the salty…

More


Watermelon Screwdrivers

Serves 4 to 6 Hands-on time: 20 minutes Total preparation time: 4 1/2 hours (Due to freezing) Ingredients 1 pound cubed watermelon flesh, about 5 cups 1 quart orange juice, preferably fresh 3/4 cup vodka or to taste Directions Remove all the seeds from the watermelon and place in a…

More


Asian Chicken Salad with Carrot Ginger Sauce

This recipe was an excuse for me to repurpose the super-refreshing carrot salad dressing served at sushi restaurants. You’re welcome to substitute peanuts for the almonds, and cooked broccoli for the sugar snap peas. The “uncooked” ramen noodles add crunch, sort of like an Asian crouton. Many people don’t know…

More


Bruschetta al Tonno

Everyone loves Italian food, especially The Husband. When we go out to eat, Italian is his number one choice and one of his favorite Italian spots is Tre Dici, a tiny little neighborhood spot with a terrific chef, Giuseppe Fanelli. We love Giuseppe’s gutsy down to earth food. It is…

More


Duck Tacos

I was plenty happy to meet rotisserie chicken, but now I have found rotisserie duck. Rotisserie duck, like rotisserie chicken, should be one of the home cook’s favorite cheating ingredients. It’s tasty and it’s good to go. If you don’t want to eat it heated, straight up, you can shred…

More


Mushroom Enchiladas

Makes 4 Servings  Hands-On Time: 25 Minutes Total Preparation Time: 40 Minutes Ingredients 1 1/2 pounds portobello mushrooms (about 6 medium to large) 3 T fresh lime juice 2 t ground cumin Kosher salt 1/4 c plus 1 T vegetable oil 3 garlic cloves, 2 unpeeled 3/4 pound plum tomatoes…

More


Peach and Blackberry Dessert Tamales

This is a brilliant recipe invented by Suzie Trivisonno, my new friend from Charlotte, North Carolina who entered our locavore competition last summer and submitted what we felt was the most original recipe using ingredients from 50 miles near her home. I was so happy to visit Charlotte and her…

More


Blueberry Pot Stickers

I have always been a huge fan of the Chinese dumplings known as pot stickers. They’re wonton wrappers filled with pork or shrimp, crisped up in a pan, steamed, re-crisped, then served with a dipping sauce. Yum! Thinking about pot stickers recently, it occurred to me that if you swapped…

More


Blueberry Yogurt Pie

July is Blueberry Month and with local berries arriving in markets right now, it is the perfect time to enjoy some. Go to USDA Blueberry Blog to learn more about this special North American berry. When we came up with the idea for this Blueberry Pie recipe, I was worried because…

More


Aunt Alice’s Blueberry Muffins

One bite of these muffins and I’m transported back in time to my childhood visits with Aunt Alice and Uncle Pat and my cousins at their summer place in Kittery Point, Maine. On those evenings when Alice herself wasn’t cooking up something wonderful, the whole rowdy bunch of us would…

More


Flammekueche or Tarte Flambée

For the article about my trip to France, I was asked, “How will you implement what you saw/ate in your work in the U.S.?” My answer, “
I want to . . . reproduce a very tasty Alsatian dish we were served on the boat, flammekueche or tarte flambée, sort of like…

More


Rick’s Barbecue Sauce

My cousin-in-law, Rick Bzdafka, frequently cooks for the large crowd spending holidays at our family’s farm. A very talented cook and the soul of affability, Mr. Rick always whips up two separate batches of his barbecue sauce, mild and very spicy. (Note the variations.) Whatever your preference, you’ll find that…

More


Tequila Lime Shrimp with Mango Salsa and Cumin Chili Chips

This sunny summer dish is perfect all year round. Don’t limit its appearance, it is so flavorful that you could serve it in the dead of winter and be happy. Here’s some weird food science. Alcohol in a recipe heightens the flavor of the other ingredients even if you don’t…

More


Indonesian-Style Chicken with Spicy Peanut Sauce

Chicken thighs should be more popular. The meat is much more flavorful than the white meat and almost always cooks up moist, which is not something you can say of chicken breast meat. Yes, the thigh is slightly more caloric than the breast, but I prefer it anyway. This is…

More


Rosemary-Scallion-Crusted Rack of Lamb

Rack of lamb is my favorite cut of lamb. It’s always delicious – the bones add so much flavor – and the basic preparation requires little more than popping it in the oven and keeping an eye on it until it’s done. It’s really almost impossible to mess up. But it…

More


Baked Striped Bass with Sherry Vinaigrette, Olives, and Capers

Back in the early eighties a pioneering new fish restaurant called Le Bernardin opened up in New York as the American outpost of a French original. Under the direction of Chef Gilbert Le Coze, Le Bernardin’s revolutionary stroke was to reduce significantly the butter and cream required in classical French…

More


Roasted Asparagus Bruschetta

With asparagus in high season, this is a delicious way to start a special meal. My favorite way to cook asparagus is to roast it at high heat which caramelizes and concentrates its flavor. After it’s been roasted, asparagus dresses up very easily. In this recipe from Sara Moulton Cooks at…

More


White Bean, Artichoke, and Tomato Gratin

Any recipe devoted to artichoke hearts involves the terribly boring and even slightly dangerous job of bending back and pulling off those prickly leaves. After wrestling with some artichokes during the first test of this recipe, Andrea Hagan, the backup recipe tester on this book, said, “Why don’t we just…

More


Strawberry Rhubarb Cobbler with Gingered Biscuit Topping

Strawberries and rhubarb are a delicious way to welcome spring. Technically a vegetable, rhubarb is so darn tart that it’s usually paired with a sweeter buddy, like the strawberry, in an effort to temper its tang. Try to find field-grown rhubarb. Darker in color, it has a much shorter season…

More


Onion Soup Omelets

Makes six 3-egg omelets For the onion filling: 2 tablespoons unsalted butter 4 to 5 medium onions, about 2 pounds, halved crosswise and very thinly sliced 1 teaspoon finely chopped fresh thyme leaves 1 1/2 cups chicken stock, preferably homemade 1/4 cup red wine Kosher salt and freshly ground black…

More


Three Mushroom Tart

When I developed the original version of this recipe for a Gourmet column on mushrooms in the mid-eighties, porcini and enoki mushrooms were considered very exotic; the white button mushroom was still king. These days you see all sorts of once exotic mushrooms in the supermarket—portobello, shiitake, chanterelle, etc.—and they…

More