entertaining

Earl Gray Tea (and Other) Butter Cookies

When I want a dessert for a dinner party, I often turn to this recipe for delectable, melt-in-your-mouth cookies fragrant with butter and the caramel flavors of light brown sugar and Earl Gray tea, with its citrusy-floral scent.

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.

A Simple Formula for Sublime Macaroni-and-Cheese

My latest iteration of mac-and-cheese is a fast, ultra-simple formula that I can tailor as needed without using a recipe, with utterly delicious results. Win-win-win.

Anti-Anxiety Cookies: Chocolate Planets + Wonders

For the many people I know who feel that they are living in a sea of relentless anxiety, I offer two of my best chocolate cookie recipes: thin, chewy disks of intense chocolate AND fist-size hunks of chewy/moist chocolate cake loaded with chocolate chips, nuts and whatever else you can think of.

Divine Roasted Sesame Oil + Down n Dirty Ginger Scallion Sauce

I’d been disillusioned by sesame oils for some time, finding most that I tried with a harsh, over-toasted flavor. La Tourganelle’s delicious Roasted Sesame Oil was a joy to discover, and has inspired all sorts of culinary improvisations.

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.

Gift: Spring Bulbs for Effortless Blooms + Magic

I rely on spring bulbs for their ability to bring a breath of spring into our wintery lives slowly, miraculously, over several weeks.

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.

Two Cranberry Sauces, One Complex, One Simple

Although I’ve had many cranberry sauces in my food-wandering days, I am partial to cooked ones that exploit cranberries’ best qualities: an abundance of tannic red-fruit tartness and pectin that releases when the fruit softens to form a thick, jammy sauce. Here are two favorites.

Dry-Brined Butterflied Turkey: A Short Roast to Perfection

The combined techniques of dry-brining and spatchcocking (butterflying) makes for a quick-cooking turkey with moist tender flesh, crisp skin, and a good deal less than the usual anxiety.

Fragrant Pears in Red Wine, Cardamom, Bay Leaf, Anise and Coriander

Over the years, I’ve learned a huge amount from wine connoisseur and cook Josh Eisen, including essential lessons about the many things you can do with “ends” of bottles of wine left after a meal. These pears are one of my favorites.

Salt-Roasted Shrimp with Alice’s Aioli

Roasting shrimp in their shells on a bed of hot salt renders them moist, perfectly-seasoned with a pure concentrated ‘sea’ flavor. They are meant to be eaten with one’s fingers, dipped into a sauce, in a slightly pagan summery ritual that’s a pleasure in winter.

Sublime (and Easy): Seven Hour “Spoon” Lamb

One of my favorite chilly-weather dishes is also the homeliest-looking. But a leg of lamb cooked seven hours unattended when I’m home working elicits sighs and raves at a dinner party that night, and sublime leftovers in the days that follow.

Salt-Roasted New Potatoes with Crème Fraïche and Cracked Coriander

Roasting new potatoes buried in salt transforms them, yielding an extraordinarily pure flavor and creamy interior. Creme fraiche, cracked coriander and snipped chives gild the lily.

Never-Fail Roasted Fish + Five Quick Sauces

When jittery cooks confess their fear of cooking fish, I recommend a foolproof, tried-and-true method I perfected decades ago. It renders fish tender, succulent and evenly cooked. It works fine for a variety of fish, and is perfect paired with of these five favorite simple sauces.

Kitchen Gold: Red Wine Essence

One of the most extraordinarily extravagant and extraordinarily delicious sauces in my repertoire is Red Wine Essence. Because it will keep for months in the fridge, the powerful sauce is my secret weapon to call upon at any time I want to transform simple foods into complex dishes.

Our Favorite PaperThin Pancakes (No Flour, Eggs, or Milk…)

One of the best snacks I’ve had was in the market in Nice: a thin chickpea-flour pancake served hot on pieces of paper to eat with your fingers, pulling off the chewy edges and the soft crepe like interior. This sublime creation is easy to duplicate at home, where the eggless, flourless, dairy-less crepe-like pancakes can go savory or sweet.

Edible Flowers: Foraging & Feasting’s Essential Info + Wondrous Recipes

“One of my life’s quests has been to eat as many flowers as possible” wrote Dina Falconi in the wonderful Foraging & Feasting: A Field Guide and Wild Food Cookbook. Here’s Dina’s list of late summer flowers and essential advice for using flowers in your cooking and her sensational Leaf & Flower Custard Ice Cream Master Recipe.

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.

To-Die-For Recipes for the End of Cherry Season

Today at the market we saw a sign that said Cherry season ending soon, and we thought Yeah, better make hay and bought a couple of pounds to eat iced, our favorite way. A bowl of cold ripe cherries on ice are a one-ingredient, sublime dessert that also couldn’t be more elegant and satisfying But there are others equally as lovely…

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