Posts Tagged ‘Barefoot Contessa’

Sure, chocolate’s the expected choice for a Valentine’s Day dessert, but c’mon, doesn’t this sweet and glossy raspberry dream look festive and romantic too?

A traditional English dessert, Eton Mess is commonly made with strawberries, layered with meringue and whipped cream, and it’s named for the college in the UK where it was created back in the 1800s. This variation, adapted from the Barefoot Contessa, features plump, glorious raspberries. The sweet meringue pieces contrast the tangy berries and add a delightful crispy crunch, and it all swirls together on your spoon with the help of fresh whipped cream.

To top it off, Eton Mess is a cinch to make. The raspberry sauce takes but a few minutes on…

Category: Recipes

Life is nothing short of hectic these days with four teenagers, all on different afternoon and evening schedules. There’s baseball training, newspaper layout sessions, driver’s ed classes, sports broadcasts, Spanish tutoring, yearbook meetings, study sessions, alumni college interviews, guitar lessons, piano lessons, bass lessons—well, you get the idea. Some nights, it’s like Grand Central Station with ridiculously staggered arrivals and departures.

On those crazy nights, instead of wasting time cooking something that will be shoveled down on the fly between activities, I often put together the components for BLTs (or in this case, California BLTs!) and let the troops assemble themselves as time allows. They’re easy and satisfying, and the cool secret is cooking the…

Category: Recipes

In honor of our interview with Ina Garten (the Barefoot Contessa) last weekend, and because it’s the last day of Passover, I wanted to share our review of what finally became the first recipe that actually turned out amazing matzo balls. Mmmmm…balls. I mean, no one can resist a Schweddy Ball-nothing beats those Balls-but these came mighty close!

I like my balls tender, light-but not so light that they dissolve — and they have to be tasty, too. I grew up eating my Nana’s k’neidlach, which she made from a box, but I’m just not a box kind of chick, so I really wanted to learn to make them from scratch. There are three…

Category: Recipes

Oy. Brisket. The Jewish grandmother’s filet mignon. Use whatever recipe you find stupendously scrumptious, but let’s just say gray meat ain’t my thang.

I grew up a good Jewish girl, mindlessly and obediently eating my grandmother’s brisket at Passover seders and other family dinners when it was the only choice, but far preferring chicken when there were two offerings. People would smack their lips and rave about the deliciousness of Nana’s preparation, but for me it was like French kissing a can of silly string. Doesn’t matter if you cook it in award-winning barbeque sauce, tomatoes and onions, ketchup and onion soup mix, or frankly, hot fudge — there are plenty of other things I’d rather put in…

Category: Recipes

We stumbled upon this recipe on New Year’s Day six or seven years ago when we were lucky enough to have a bounty of luscious leftover caviar from a celebration the night before and were looking for a way to use it up (I know — what a deliriously happy dilemma!). We happened to have had the rest of the ingredients in the house — angel hair, lemon, butter, salt and white pepper — and within 10 minutes, a New Year’s Day tradition was born.

This dish could not be simpler, yummier or more festive and elegant, depending, of course, on whether you fall closer to Tom Hanks in Big or Christian Slater on Curb Your…

Category: Recipes

If macaroni and cheese conjures the vision of a blue box with a packet of powdered cheese that results in a big bowl of orange slop, be warned: this is not a dish for you. Mind you, I’ve eaten more than my share of the Krafted-in-a-food-lab version. Until, that is, I discovered the rapture of real macaroni and cheese.

Begging your pardon, but the Reiser princes have unanimously proclaimed the Lobster Mac & Cheese at Bobby Van’s to be the ne plus ultra of lobster mac & cheese. It’s at once crunchy, crispy, lusciously creamy, exquisitely cheesy, and it’s loaded with delightful plump chunks of fresh, sweet lobster. (I know…I’m bordering on food…

Category: Recipes

No, life isn’t all meatballs and cupcakes here at Chez Reiser. From time to time, we actually do eat from some of the other food groups!

Happily, we love us our veggies. Although when you’re a one-trick pony and all you do is toss veggies in olive oil, kosher salt and pepper and throw ’em in the oven to roast, it’s not really glamorous enough to blog about, agreed? Some of our perennial faves include asparagus, fennel, Yukon Golds, broccoli, cauliflower, butternut squash, onions, golden beets, eggplant, and our current passion ““ the one whose mere mention brought ardent supporters out of the woodwork on my Facebook page ““ brussels sprouts. You can grate or shave a little…

Category: Recipes

A few Sundays ago, we decided it was a fried chicken kind of day, and we figured that nothing goes better with all that crunchy goodness than top-notch mashed potatoes. Ina has three recipes for what I used to call “mash’ll tee-toes” as a toddler, and because of the buttermilk in the chicken recipe, we decided upon the buttermilk variation. The problem with mashed potatoes is that they either come out lumpy if you use a hand masher or gluey if you’re silly enough to put them into a food processor. Two words, my friends: food mill. Brilliant! Miraculous! Standing ovation! Those Yukons transformed into edible velvet. Moistened with milk, butter and buttermilk, they were…

Category: Recipes

(Wait – “real” meatballs? As opposed to, what, mock meatballs made from Ritz Crackers?)

There’s only one problem with these meatballs. No matter how many I make, I never have leftovers for the freezer.

Feeding my crew is a somewhat daunting task. The more time consuming a dish is, the more the five of them always like it. And the more they like it, the more they eat. And the more they eat, the less chance for me to have extra so I can save work on a lazy day and pull something dazzling out of the freezer.

I try. I really do. This time I started with five pounds of ground meat. That’s two-and-a-half times…

Category: Recipes

While typically I rule the kitchen and Dave is the Grillmaster, the one thing Dave really rocks on the stove is béarnaise sauce. He has long used a recipe from a beat-up, falling apart Betty Crocker cookbook from the year one, and it is just the most delectable sauce ever to be made. Butter, egg yolks, tarragon, shallots, vinegar…sighhhhh. My sister claims she’d be happy with just a dish of it and a spoon. And a Lipitor chaser.

Sometimes, though, let’s just say Dave has “worked too hard during the day” to take the time to finely mince the shallots, and he ends up cutting them into large dice instead. Which means they don’t soften completely. Which…

Category: Recipes