As is, roasted pears are wonderful with whipped cream, creme fraiche, or a custard sauce/creme anglaise*. But they can be the inspiration for all manner of desserts.
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Re-envisioning Lettuces and Other Tender Greens
Reading Mads Refslund’s inspired cookbook, Scraps, Wilt & Weeds: Turning Wasted Food into Plenty, I realize that I’ve been employing a simple strategy for using unexpected greens and stems for years: simply envision salad leaves as a green like spinach, perfect for quick cooking.
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My Favorite Sandwich via ‘What’s Your Favorite Sandwich?’
When I was invited to share my favorite sandwich on Your Favorite Sandwich podcast, my personal history of sandwiches flew through my head. Then I landed on a doozy.
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Hunger-Crazed Cooks Confess 50 Ways to Eat Eggs
When there is nothing in the pantry, there is almost always the egg. Here are 50 ways to cook them from hunger crazed food people and Leite’s Culinaria. Just to spark you imagination.
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Hey Vegetarians and Lazy Dogs: Check out this Faux Veal Stock
Years ago, I learned an easy-to-make vegetarian broth from chef Jean-Georges Vongerichten that tastes remarkably like veal stock. The main ingredient: ordinary button or cremini mushrooms in league with a few other ingredients you probably already have on hand.
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Italian Pot Roast (Fast, Freezable, Perfect for Dinner Parties)
The Italian pot roast I had many years at a dinner party has haunted me ever since, lurking in my memory as pure deliciousness. It is perfect for entertaining: it can be made ahead only has to be reheated to be wonderful. It you call it by its Italian name, it tastes even better.
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Food Gift: DIY Chocolate Shards or Slabs with Surprising Flavors
Shards of chocolate embedded with surprising flavors and crunchy elements make terrific gifts for much less cost than pricey “artisan-made’ chocolates. Here’s how to make them.
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Blackberry August: Island Harvest Crumble with Poem
Blackberries are considered both a scourge and a blessing. They grow anywhere and everywhere, bristling with thorns, invading civilized gardens, threatening to obliterate freeway on-ramps. But in August, if you see a car pulled off the side of the road, you can bet everyone’s piled out to gather wild blackberries to eat out-of-hand and transform in the kitchen.
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The Rhubarb Variations: 13 Riffs on One Simple Recipe
Our CSA Essex Farm delivered a big load of rhubarb this week, keeping us rooted firmly in the season. Our plan is to make up a big batch of basic cooked rhubarb (recipe below) that we can transform at a moment’s notice. The image of Rhubarb Whoopie Pies we found at Butter, Sugar, Flowers gives the basic approach:…
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Brown Sugar Coconut Layer Cake with Lemon or Dulce de Leche
Years ago, I developed a brown sugar-scented play on the classic American 2-egg /1 bowl cake known as Lightning Cake (because it only takes 15 minutes to throw together). Buttery, tender, and fragrant, its deliciousness and fine texture belies its ease. On a pretty plate and dusted with powdered sugar, it looks like the lovely…
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Curry Crusted Shrimp with Fragrant Yogurt Sauce or Warm Mango
This is one of my favorite ways of cooking shrimp: I peel and clean the biggest shrimp I can find, dust them with curry powder and pan-fry them. The curry powder coating curiously makes them as satisfying as deep-fried shrimp. They need little embellishment: fresh lime and cilantro will do, though a quickly-made Yogurt Sauce with…
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Pasta Fries + Other Secret Suppers and Eatings
Everyone I know, including stellar chefs, all have their moments of retreat into dark hungers and unique combos of flavors. The practice is deeply personal and satisfying, but now new. M.F.K. Fisher wrote about the odd combinations people ate when they were alone in 1937. Here are several longtime favorite “secret suppers and private snacks” from my files.
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Our Updated, “Best of” Holiday Recipes + Strategies
In the run-up to Thanksgiving, we often get calls from friends anxious for easy, foolproof strategies for the big meal. Here’s our updated tried-and-true, “best of” recipe traditions that lend themselves to tailoring and improvising.
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How to Discover Unique Flavor Pairings (with a Trove of Recipes)
When a friend tasted the wild plum that had been fallen in pine needles, she “got” plum and pine and by association ROSEMARY. I’ve used the technique of tasting foods that sat side by side “just to see” for many years to discover new and often unlikely flavor pairings. Here are 10 favorites, including a Plum and Raspberry Crisp with Lavender.
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20+ Last Minute Thanksgiving Food Strategies
For all of you scrambling (as we are) to wrap our heads around Thanksgiving, here’s our tried-and-true food traditions that lend themselves to tailoring and improvising.
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Weekend Eats: Shakshouka (Spicy Tomatoes with Eggs)
Susan Dworski sent us an email recently with images of a dish from Green Kitchen Stories: Shakshuuka with Hummus and Sweet Potato Chips, and this note: We eat Shakashuka for Sunday night supper at leasst twice a month. Or more. My recipe is very similar to this one, but their hummus sounds great. And the chips.…
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breakfast pizza: how ideas come from visual associations
(Video link here.) The first 20 seconds of this wacky video illustrates an essential tenet of improvisation – especially in cooking: the associations of ideas in your field of vision. Here, a classic breakfast next to a frozen pizza sparks the brilliant idea of a breakfast pizza. For us, it’s lead to the discovery that…
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what to eat and drink on election night and the day after
Just about everyone we know is beside themselves with anxiety about this election (we find ourselves checking Nate Silver’s 538 polling blog compulsively for comfort). On the eve of the election, we offer our ‘improvised life’ survival guide: cocktails and easy-to-whip-up treats to help assauge anxiety no matter which candidate you favor. The first order of business…
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‘improvised life’s emergency pantry
The wind has picked up in the huge trees in the park across the way. TV news is reporting mandatory evacuations around the city, as the confluence of full moon, the jet stream and hurricane Sandy’s massive size threatens major flooding and power outages. The sky is straight our of a Ghostbuster’s movie; we’re waiting…
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video: sally making herb salt with lynnne rossetto kasper (now there’s no excuse not to make it!)
(Video link here.) As promised in yesterday’s post, here ‘s the video of Sally on public radio’s The Splendid Table showing host Lynne Rossetto Kasper how she makes her Fragrant Herb Salt, and the many possibilities for improvising with it, from roast chicken to vegetables to butter cookies. You’ll find the recipes for it and…
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