Recipe A few weeks ago, Alex and I were in Whole Foods and just as we were hoping, they had some samples out in the cheese section for weary travelers. (Yes, walking from Chelsea to the Lower East Side counts!) One of them was something that, being me, I initially kind of shrugged over, because who would buy something called Feta Salsa which was clearly not salsa, really a throwaway of a “recipe” and also like $8 for the tiniest of containers.
Recipe Did you know that you can make crackers at home? Crackers that are completely natural, have no funky or suspicious ingredients and also don’t cost more than pennies? And addressing my pet peeve: crackers that are actually firm enough for you to spread cheese and other deliciousness over?
Recipe There are cookies, and there are cookies. There are melted toffee bits and pound-of-chocolate brownie-like discs that require half a glass of milk for a single bite and there are snappy little sables called Punitions. There are peanut butter cookies with chocolate pieces, peanut butter pieces and tiny chunks of peanuts in them and there are toasty little twice-baked shortbreads with scraped vanilla beans inside. There are pecan squares on shortbread bases boasting nine sticks of butter and two pounds of pecans and there are these: brown butter, brown sugar shorties.
Recipe Shuna introduced me to this soup. I think it was July 2007 and she’d gathered a bunch of food bloggers at Veselka, a Ukranian diner in the East Village famous for serving awesome beer-blotting food like borsht, stuffed cabbage and pierogis around the clock. It was hot and humid out, however, so the thought of anything besides a grilled kielbasa, pickles and a cold beer seemed insane, and yet there was our host, ordering cabbage soup.
Recipe I know that a lot of you think that I break my back in the kitchen each week, slaving over the most exacting steps in this recipe or that. But the fact is, I get more lax every year. I don’t feel as badly when things don’t go perfectly and I don’t feel any need to prove my cooking prowess by making my own pâte feuilletée when it will probably keep me cooking until midnight.
Recipe Today might have started off as Pie for Breakfast Day but I think we all know that the day after Thanksgiving is all about detox. Away with the heavy cream! Begone, you cheesy gratins! Skedaddle, you deep, gooey casseroles, sticky-sweet yams topped with charred marshmallows and green beans with fried onions. Please, don’t make me eat that butter and drippings-laden gravy again… at least until tomorrow.
Recipe Oh, people. I know you’re pumpkin-ed out and it is not even Thanksgiving yet. But if there could be room in your gullet for one more pumpkin love — perhaps even as a last minute, the-heck-with-pie, Hail Mary pass of a Thanksgiving meal dessert — I think that these wee cakes are a worthy cause.
Recipe, Tips[Previous episodes: Pie Crust 101 & Pie Crust 102]
As you wish, my friends.
So, when we left off, you had all realized how much fun and easy it was to make pie dough at home, in no time flat while dirtying less than ten dishes. I suspect that each and every one of you ran to your fridge to pull out the ingredients and ten minutes later had your doughs neatly chilling back inside them. And now, all that it is left is getting those babies rolled out and filled with pumpkin or apple or cherries or lemon or … gah, I just hope you share with me.
Recipe, Tips I don’t believe in perfection, in life or in the kitchen. At best, everything we do is a work in progress that gets a tad closer each time we nudge and tweak it. Case in point, last year’s Pie Crust 101 tutorial: My goal was to convince dough-phobes that they needn’t fear the crust by showing how I made mine in five minutes flat, or seriously, way less time than one would spend buying one. My goodness, especially with the lines in the grocery stores this week, right?ncG1vNJzZmirnZ7BtbHNpKCtm5iau2%2BvzqZmqZmXmnxyfJFodqGbj6G8pK3ToqandaWbtg%3D%3D