Ok, you are seriously going to love me for this one. Get ready to name your next child Kate. (You could even name your next dog Kate. I won't be offended). This is absolutely scrumptious and easy and efficient (you don't hear that word describing a recipe often, do...
Spring. In Chicago. Sigh. Some people say we don't really have spring here. Just a bitter arm-wresting match between winter and summer. On days like last Sunday, when it reached 85, summer seems just about to push winter's fist into the table. Today, April 18th...
At the end of every basketball season I have my daughter's team over for a celebration. By now I have made a basketball-shaped cake, basketball-inspired cupcakes, and basketball-themed cookies. If this goes on much longer I will have to learn how to do ice sculpture. ...
This is what comes from reading Bon Appetit right before lunch. Everything looks good. Turns out, this dish really was. This is probably not a weeknight meal as it has a few components, all of which take some time. But well worth it. The first part is an...
Raise your hand if you think croissants are hard to make. Wow, that's a lot of hands. And last week, I would have been right there with you. But guess what? They're not! Yay, now we can have them every day! In fact, Tom Petty must have had...
One of the reasons I started a blog was that I would sometimes find an absolutely wonderful recipe and there were only so many people I could button-hole about it at work without getting the feeling that they were starting to avoid me in the hallways. This soup...
Once again from my favorite week night cookbook comes an amazing dish that is reliably accomplished in 30 minutes and is nice enough to serve at a dinner party. Chicken breasts, in my opinion, are over-rated. They became so popular during one of our many...
I made "real" Beef Wellington once. And it took days. Even without making the puff pastry or the pate from scratch, it was quite a project: a scrumptious and complicated red wine sauce made with oxtails, the Duxelles, the proper cooking of an intimidatingly...
I had never made Spanakopita before despite the fact that everything about it sounds good: feta, phyllo, pecorino-romano, butter. And I was even able to get phyllo dough, in the correct size, at my local Jewel; a store committed to the idea that all people want to eat...
This is from the latest (February 2011) issue of Cook's Country and it is incredibly delicious and just different enough from every other pasta dish you probably make often to get your attention. And I love that the vegetables (in this case, eggplant) play a bigger...
Don't you just love the holidays? And don't you just love when they're over? I adore all of the carb-heavy, fat-laden, coma-inducing foods I make around Christmas but when it's over I am always left craving something that cuts through the heaviness of traditional...
This is from the most recent (Jan/Feb 2011) Cook's Illustrated. With a vegetarian among us I'm always looking for something meat-free that will appeal to all three of us. And quick recipes are never unwelcome. Tonight cooking was hastily wedged between work and a...
Another favorite from Cook's Illustrated's The Best 30-Minute Recipes and another great option for vegetarians, or flexitarians having a meat-free night. And, with the exception of the shiitakes, a good choice for Cheapetarians (thanks to the brilliant use of those...
It's a rainy Monday here and while not exactly cold by the standards we will soon be numbly familiar with, it's not pleasant either. It's the kind of night when you take the dogs for a walk and they get down to business quickly and turn right back for home. You need...
It's hard to say what I love most about this dish. We are very partial to Mexican food, especially my husband to the point where I suspect he might be a Mexican trapped in the body of an ancestral German. Although he doesn't cook much he has embraced Rick Bayless'...
For the last 18 years we have spent Thanksgiving with my husband's family in Ohio, so I have not made a Thanksgiving dinner since 1992. And, truth be told, I wouldn't have been very good at it back then anyway. To make up for not getting to make this classic meal in...
I feel like I owe you some fish. I was hoping you wouldn't noticed that I don't make it often. I blame growing up in the Midwest in the 60s and 70s where fish, with few exceptions, came in the form of frozen sticks upholstered in bread crumbs from some crazy place...
Earlier this year (May, 2010) Cook's Illustrated featured a recipe for "Almost Hands-Free Risotto." Got my attention. I'd been tinkering with risotto and had some success but hadn't yet found the perfect recipe. The game-changer in this one is the cooking vessel. ...
This is one of our favorite stir-fry dishes and if I can only convey one thing to you about this recipe it is this: do NOT fear the fish sauce. Believe me, I'm as adverse to the stuff, in its undiluted form, as anyone. When I'm pouring it out I actually hold my...
Like you and your parents and Andy Warhol, I grew up on Campbell's Tomato Soup and it will always hold a special place in my heart (and that place is with its fist firmly around my arteries). But after finding this Cook's Illustrated recipe for Ultimate Cream of...
One of my favorite cookbooks for weeknight meals is Best 30-Minute Recipes from America's Test Kitchen. In the chapter entitled "Starting with Leftovers" I discovered the brilliance of the Tostada. To give you the short-cut, spray some corn tortillas with Pam,...
This is one of my favorite recent recipes from Cook's Illustrated and one of its most talented (former) employees, Kenji Alt. The familiarity and simplicity of the ingredients belie how incredibly scrumptious this dish is. It's elegant enough to serve at a dinner...
Tonight I made a dish from the November/December 2010 issue of Cook's Illustrated. As per usual, the fine people at Cook's have solved one of our nation's most urgent and intractable problems: poor coating adhesion on our pork chops. Turns out using a little...
I was thinking about my friend Susan tonight when I made this. She recently told me that she would love a cookbook with easy one-dish meals and lots of vegetarian options. Like us, she is not a vegetarian but would like to eat less meat, and I think there is a growing...
This is an excellent recipe with three variations; in addition to the Garlic-Ginger-Sesame there is a Garlic-Shallot-Rosemary and a Garlic-Chile. Because this one has an Asian profile I serve Asian side dishes with it (like the stir-fried green beans below). The Chile...
Mmmmmmwahhh! I added about 1 tsp of lemon to bump the flavors up a bit. Thank you for posting this…