As much as I love Ottolenghi’s savory recipes for their dynamic flavor profiles, so much do I love his sweet recipes for their subtlety and finesse. Just like his Oat Cranberry Almond Cookies, these Peanut Sandies have flavor without being in your face. They perfectly balance butter with peanut, sweet with salty, not one element outshining the other. The texture is delicate and crumbles away in your mouth. They are, in a word, a delight.
Read MoreBefore you ask me, “Why another white sandwich bread recipe?”, let me ask you: do you ever have leftover mashed potatoes going bad in your fridge because no one wants to eat them? Or do you ever have that last bit of buttermilk that you can’t find a use for? And if you said no to both of those, then how about this: Why NOT another white sandwich bread recipe? Especially when it is a supremely soft, voluminous loaf, with a little more chew than your standard white and a bit more flavor profile from the buttermilk, This is a glorious loaf of bread. If you have enough restraint to let it cool completely before slicing, it makes for wonderful sandwiches and even better toast.
Read MoreMy husband eats chips and salsa like I eat popcorn: after the children have gone to sleep, in peace and quiet, as a way to unwind and relax. I churn out a batch of my simple salsa about once a week, but sometimes I’ll go off road a bit and do a salsa verde or a roasted red salsa or add something fun like black beans or corn or whatever. Usually it is a function of whatever I have in my kitchen. This salsa was something I threw together because of a couple poblanos getting a little soft in my fridge. Since the elements are broiled and charred, it has a much deeper flavor than my usual, which is quite bright and acidic. The product is delicious, but the method is dead simple and lends itself to any amount of variation. Look through your fridge and be creative!
Read MoreThis cake is what dreams of springtime are made of. The cake is light and airy like angel food cake, but a bit sturdier, richer, and moister from the vegetable oil and egg yolks. Together with a light whipped cream frosting and sweet tart strawberries, each bite of this cake is a delight. It makes a really large cake that would be perfect for a gathering, but it also keeps really, which is how my family of six enjoyed it for a full three days. A cake like this is really adaptable: add zest to the cake to give it a citrus flavor, brush the cake with a flavored syrup or jam, use different fruits or no fruits at all! But in my opinion, nothing gets more classic than strawberries and cream and the textures suit the flavor profile perfectly.
Read MoreThis was a recipe I definitely did not mind testing. But though I tested (with LOTS of tasting), there’s still just a lot of wiggle room in the recipe. When you have a treat like chocolate peanut butter, it might as well be just to your taste. So please don’t be annoyed by my loosey-goosey ingredients list. Feel free to follow it to the letter the first time, but fiddle with it as you please! I really just want to empower you to just try making it, that’s all. And anyway, chocolate and peanuts? You can’t really mess it up.
Read MoreIf you can’t have too many muffin recipes, neither can you have too many scone recipes. My favorite will always be the impossibly easy cream scones, but I don’t mind a little change up now and then. These scones are lightly orange-scented and studded with tangy cranberries. Cream scones are soft and tender, whereas these butter-based scones have a richer flavor and are a bit dryer with crisp golden edges. They’re good fresh, but my favorite is to wait a bit longer and then slice, toast, and spread them with butter.
Read MoreThe inspiration for this dish came from 1) how often we eat rice and beans or quesadillas with beans or burritos with rice and cheese and beans, and 2) a dish called Gnocchi alla Romana that my family loves. Gnocchi alla Romana, if you’ve never had it (but you should!), is nothing like the potato gnocchi you proably have had before. Basically you cook semolina flour in milk, beat in some eggs and Parmesan, let it cool and firm up, cut into circles and layer around a dish, and then recook in a hot oven until puffed up and crispy and golden. Its AHhhhmazing. We love it with a meaty red sauce or some roasted veggies and Italian sausage. Or just plain. But back to those rice and beans. We eat a lot of that kind of meal. And I doubt if we could ever get sick of it, but still - it’s nice to add a little variation. So I thought, why not swap in a corny grain, use cheddar or monterey jack cheese, and serve it with refried black beans? So I did and it was delicious and the kids loved it and I love having a new way to eat gnocchi (alla Mexicana?) AND beans.
Read MoreOk, so Joy of Cooking just calls these Basic Milk Muffins, but since you can also use cream, or buttermilk, or add any kind of fruit - dried or fresh - or nuts or spices or any variation thereof, I figured I could get away with calling them “endlessly variable”.
These really are just a simple muffin - not heavy and bready, not fluffy and cakey; moist but not dense, and juuuuust sweet enough. They are delicious. Sometimes I make them plain Jane with nothing at all. Sometimes I add a bit of cinnamon and chocolate chips; sometimes I add fruit and/or nuts. In the variation pictured above, I added orange zest, fresh cranberries, white chocolate chips, and walnuts.
I have never made these and not liked them.
Read MoreThis is about the most basic you can get with salsa. As you can see, the cast of characters is almost embarrassingly simple. But for that same reason, I can basically always whip up a jar of salsa in a matter of seconds.
There’s nothing fancy about this but it makes a great salsa both for chips and dip and adding onto all your favorite Mexican foods. Give it a try, and maybe even adapt it to your tastes!
Read MoreCubanos are the basically the best thing to come out of a pot of carnitas. Much as I love a good taco, sandwiches are my favorite food form. And of sandwiches, the ones that get griddled and crispy and melty are at the top. That’s why these Cubanos are a long-standing family favorite. They’re simple as anything but so delicious.
Read MoreDo you ever use pickled red onions? If you don’t, you’re missing out. If you do, you know how good they are - how much they add to such a wide variety of dishes. They are magical. I can’t technically call them a secret ingredient because they’re added after the fact, but they really do an amazing job of ramping up flavor and providing a delightful contrast and bite to an otherwise muted or rich or creamy dish. Off the top of my head, I put them on: bagels and cream cheese; scrambled eggs; toast with goat cheese; sandwiches; salads; most any Mexican food (put them on carnitas!) or Mediterranean food or Middle Eastern food. Need I go on? You can change up the pickling spices a bit if you wish to adapt them to a particular flavor profile, but the recipe I have below is basically good for everything. Also, sometimes I add thinly sliced carrots and/or jalapenos. The carrots keep their crunch a bit more and the jalapenos add some kick.
Read MoreI’m always on the lookout for vegetarian meal ideas because I try to plan three meatless dinners each week. My kids (and husband) would almost certainly be happy with a pasta dish on each of those days - and honestly I wouldn’t be too bothered about it either - but for the sake of variety and creativity and (probably) a trimmer waste, I usually mix it up with other vegetarian staples like eggs or beans and lots of hearty vegetables and grains. But beans and rice and frittata all get a little tired, no matter how many variations you try, so when I saw Mark Bittman’s How to Cook Everything Vegetarian at the library, I was so excited at the prospect of freshening up my meatless menus. And this book definitely delivers!
Read MoreIt’s the season for apples, cinnamon, pumpkin and all things autumn, and there’s really no better accompaniment for all those good things than a salted caramel sauce. It’s so versatile and adds another dimension to dessert with its more complex sweetness and buttery smoothness. Drizzle it over cheesecake or pie, swirl it into brownies, sandwich it between cake layers - there’s so much you can do!
Read MoreIf you look closely at these photos, you’ll notice that the crumb is a little more open than it should be. Perhaps it wasn’t shaped as tightly as possible or the dough wasn’t developed as well as it could be for even distribution of yeast development. Guess why I don’t care. BECAUSE MY EIGHT YEAR OLD SON MADE IT. I realized one day that he was totally capable of baking bread start-to-finish all on his own and that not only would it be a great learning opportunity for him, but it could also become one of his “chores”. So I walked him through the process and wrote down these ingredients as we baked this loaf together - intended to be easy and forgiving and to yield a loaf that he would be proud of and all the kids would want to devour.
Read MoreI had my doubts about this cake. The ingredients and method both seemed unusual to me, and I expected it to be maybe one dimensional and unremarkable. I know the recipe promises the cake will be “light, delicate, and delicious … like a milk chocolate bar”, but I was skeptical. But I’ve been working through my vintage recipe project and the occasion of my 1 year old’s birthday was pretty low stakes, so I gave it try. And I am so glad I did! This cake came out of nowhere and totally won me over. It is so so delicious. It’s not fancy, it’s nothing gourmet or complicated, but it is light as a dream with a delicate texture and chocolate flavor. The cake layers and the whipped cream together are airy and not too sweet - in fact, the cake is almost salty in the way that the most delicious milk chocolate has the sweet/salty element that keeps you going back for more. The frosting is very sweet, but it pulls it all together and balances the cake and cream. I’ve made a lot of cakes and watched a lot of kids eat those cakes and most of the time they don’t finish, or they eat the frosting and leave the cake or pick out the cake and leave the frosting. Not this time. They inhaled it., each one of them, both days it was served. So did the adults… I mean, when a cake is this light, it goes down real easy.
Read MoreWe are in full-on summer mode and we are loving it! I wish my kids would add sleeping in to the mix but they must love life so much they can’t wait to get at it again every morning - or at least that’s what I tell myself when 6:30 rolls around every morning and they’re (literally) springing out of bed. At first our utter lack of routine and responsibilities unnerved me - I felt like I had to impose a schedule and create a checklist just to keep some kind of regularity in our days. That totally tanked. Turns out homeschooling moms enjoy summer as much as the kids do. But we did end up finding a rhythm of sorts and it’s wonderful. Breakfast, outside play before it’s too hot, inside play while baby naps, lunch together, pool, dinner, evening walk... Same things every day. Simple and wonderful.
Now for some links!
Fun and interesting
Check out these perfectly timed shots: this, this, this, this, and this. I could look at this kind of thing forever.
This hovering backpack kind of blows my mind. It is mesmerizing!
“Very impressive starling murmurations” is kind of an understatement, imho.
These quizzes are so gimmicky. Unless they come out so right, haha. (I got snowy.)
Thought provoking reads:
Smash the Wellness Industry. Lots of good thoughts here. I’m not sure I agree with the author on the cause of the problem, but it’s definitely a problem and one I think women have to be conscious of and fight on a daily basis. “Women, can two or more of us get together without mentioning our bodies and diets? It would be a small act of resistance and a kindness to ourselves.” It seems simple enough, but I bet it would make big changes!
The babushkas who stuck around after Chernobyl. The risk of radiation poisoning vs leaving the only home you’ve ever known.
I got sucked in to this food blogger’s account of her experience of hyperemesis gravidarum and swore up and down afterwards that I would never again complain about my relatively slight morning sickness when/if I get pregnant again.
The durable feeling that a child is always at risk, but from the perspective of a physician.
For this holiday weekend:
How fireworks work. It’s time you understand it.
Assuming you go to a picnic this weekend, here are some best bbq sides that you can bring!
It’s good to reflect on the sacrifices made by the signers of the Declaration of Independence.
Make these!
That’s all I really want to say to introduce this recipe. I could go on about how yummy they are, but really I just want you to take my word for it and make them. They are Ottolenghi at his best - simple but totally packed with flavor.
Read MoreThese English muffins are so vastly different from our sourdough English muffins, both in terms of flavor, texture, method, and time. Our sourdough English muffins are bready and made in the traditional way of a yeasted bread - risen, shaped, proofed, cooked - and in order to develop the sourdough flavor, all of it done over the course of 12-24 hours. These whole wheat English muffins, on the other hand, are soft and wheaty, and the dough is almost more of a batter that gets scooped onto a griddle, flipped, and finished off in the oven - all in a wonderfully short 2 hours. They aren’t perfect circles and they look pretty rustic but they are undeniably yummy. You can get up a little early and make these for a same-day late breakfast or brunch. Kind of magical if you ask me!
Read MoreSummer is in full swing! I’d love to know how you all do your summers. Do you just let the days run their course or do you have a daily schedule? I have to admit, I don’t achieve my ideal summer day every day, which I envision as a balance of scheduled and free time. Schedule takes discipline and that just seems to go out the window when there’s no external accountability for it (like school.) Tips would be appreciated!
For now, I’m going to seize this lazy Saturday morning and browse these links. Join me!
Read MoreI hope I’ve gotten your attention. I hope you didn’t skip over this post thinking, “Blech, I hate oatmeal it’s so gross” or wondering why anyone would be excited about oatmeal at all. I used to not be excited about oatmeal, too. Now we have it every Monday and Friday and even my kids are happy about it. Here’s the thing: these tips are game-changers because they turn your bowl of oatmeal from a flavorless mess of gluey slop into something that is actually full of flavor, delicious, and doesn’t even need brown sugar. (Although you can still put brown sugar on. I do. Along with a lot of other yummy things. Read on!)
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