Posts Tagged ‘entrée’

I haven’t done a recipe blog post in months, but I made this bowl of scrumptiousness the other night and couldn’t keep it to myself!

It’s a recipe from Andrew Zimmern in Food & Wine, and as soon as I read it, I knew it had to be Sunday dinner. This bolognese is layered, complex, luscious and indulgent. There are nuances of smokiness from the bacon, fruitiness from the wine and sweetness from the butternut squash. But what stands out, amazingly, is the delicate veal flavor.

My whole family was, quite simply, blown away. And it takes a lot to blow us away culinarily. They can’t wait for me to make it again, and when I do, I…

Category: Recipes

Is there any better Super Bowl comfort food than chicken wings? Crispy skin. Spicy, tangy sauce that drips down your chin and tempts you to lick your fingers. Chased by refreshing gulps of frosty, crisp beer.

Chicken wings, of course, are perfectly suited for an endless variety of sauces. Buffalo sauce, barbeque sauce, sticky-sweet teriyaki sauce. All good, and all in our rotating chicken wing repertoire. But we came across a recipe that blows away all other chicken wings. The star of the show is Thai hot sauce, also known as sriracha, and the supporting flavors include the warm — almost exotic — nuances of cinnamon, coriander and cumin. Fresh cilantro cools the sauce, while lime juice…

Category: Recipes

Looking for a comforting, hearty, winter dish that you can pull together pretty quickly? Look no further! This simple one-pot wonder can be enjoyed as either a delicious soup or a belly-warming stew, depending on how long you reduce the broth. And leftovers—if there end up being any—are a most welcome sight and reheat easily over a low flame.

The recipe comes from a favorite old cookbook called American Brasserie by Chicago chefs Rick Tramonto and Gale Gand. With my lifelong penchant for collecting cookbooks, my library has long since outgrown a shelf in my kitchen, and I have to be selective about which books make it to the shelf of honor and which live a…

Category: Recipes

How I wish you could smell my house right now. There’s an enormous pot simmering away on the stove, and the aroma of pork, fennel and white wine is sneakily wafting around the corner into my office. It’s all savory and comfort-foody and yummy. And when I say an enormous pot of sauce, I mean I six-times’d (sextupled?) the recipe so in addition to feeding my gang, I could feed the freezer and have a bunch of those magical moments when there’s no ambition to make dinner — and then you open the freezer and see a container of this scrumptiousness sitting there and there are angels’ voices singing and the swirling freezer frost adds…

Category: Recipes

Every once in a while, I’m lucky enough to stumble upon a new recipe and know instantly that it’ll become part of our weekday dinner repertoire. This light, flavorful baked pasta — shells stuffed with ricotta, fontina, fennel and radicchio — is one of those recipes.

It had been staring at me temptingly, all cheesy and crusty, from the cover of Food & Wine, and by last week I could no longer resist. I sautéed fennel, radicchio and onions in a large pan while boiling up the jumbo shells, and then I stuffed them individually with a mixture of the sautéed veggies, fresh ricotta, shredded fontina cheese, eggs and parsley. While I prefer to make my…

Category: Recipes

The High Holidays are soon upon us, when Jews around the world will welcome the New Year 5773. If you’re cooking dinner for Rosh Hashanah or whipping up something to break the fast on Yom Kippur, I’ve got a few ideas to share.

Rosh Hashanah Barefoot Contessa Matzo Balls: Want to know my three secrets for light, tender, tasty matzo balls? Check out this recipe and dazzle your guests with delightful matzo balls that are easy to make and will please a crowd.

Barefoot Contessa Brisket: I’m not a brisket fan, but if you are, I hear this recipe gets rave reviews. It’s got a flavorful tomato juice-based sauce, and the brisket cooks with…

Category: Recipes

The moment summer starts, my boys begin clamoring for their very favorite summer dish: this crunchy, flaky, fresh fish in a luxurious, tangy butter sauce. I have a hard time holding them off til late July, when the stripers are ubiquitous and tomatoes are good and ripe. But once I treat them to it, they wish they could have it every night.

Making the dish is easy, although I typically have to triple the recipe to feed my hulking teens. Grrrrr. The good thing is that striped bass is fairly firm, so it doesn’t fall apart in the pan like more delicate fish, plus it cooks relatively quickly. The key is to keep pieces of similar thickness…

Category: Recipes

Oh, the power of suggestion.

I saw an episode of “Barefoot Contessa” recently where Ina visited legendary New York Italian restaurant Rao’s, and learned to cook their famous lemon chicken. Essentially, it’s broiled chicken that’s then bathed in a simple lemon-garlic vinaigrette, but I wanted to eat the television, it looked so succulent. I could barely wait to make it for dinner the next day with fresh poultry from the chicken farm up the road.

I almost always follow a recipe exactly the first time I make it, but this time was an exception. I underestimated the number of lemons I would need, so I was shy on the amount of lemon juice it called for. And because…

Category: Recipes

Just like I’m a sucker for a fabulous roast chicken, I’m also enchanted by delectable grilled chicken. There’s something so irresistible about flavorful crispy char that gives way to velvety, slightly smoky meat. It screams summer.

Over Memorial Day weekend, we were one of the happy families who managed to score fresh chickens from the Iacono’s chicken farm in East Hampton. They raise, kill and prepare the birds right there at their home/farm stand, and especially on holiday weekends, you need to reserve early because once the birds are spoken for, ain’t no mo’. And once you’ve had chicken that was walking around the day before yesterday, anything that’s wrapped…

Category: Recipes

It’s official: grilling season is underway!

I pulled out one of my long-lost, all-time favorite grill recipes last weekend, and apparently I haven’t made pork tenderloin in years, because the boys told me they’d never had it before. And they were kinda peeved that I had held out for so long because they all loved this easy, yummy entré!

Pork tenderloin isn’t the most flavorful meat on its own, but the simply blender marinade adds some tangy citrus flavor and a hint of spice from the cayenne. Truth be told, I don’t always have both variations of chile powder in the pantry, and I often just double up on whatever’s on hand. It’s always good. The recipe calls for…

Category: Recipes