Posts Tagged ‘family favorite’

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

Our whole family has fallen head-over-heels with kale chips! What’s not to love about a crispy, healthy snack that’s a snap to make? It’s literally no more difficult than slicing up kale leaves, tossing with olive oil and baking for 20 minutes. What emerges from the oven is delicate and delicious, satisfying the crunchy-salty snack craving.

What type of kale works best? I’ve tried both Lacinato (“dinosaur kale”) and the curly variety. Both have that mild cabbage-y flavor, but I prefer the Lacinato, as it’s easier to cut and comes out flat.

Jazz it up any way you like by adding herbs or other flavors during the tossing step. You can try grated parmesan or asiago cheese,…

Category: Recipes

Ribollita — Italian for “reboiled” — is a hearty Tuscan vegetable and bread soup with peasant origins.  Its name comes from the practical reheating of yesterday’s minestrone soup, throwing in whatever leftover vegetables and stale bread you had lying around, and reboiling the whole concoction. I’m happy just to start from scratch and wind up with the same lovely, warm, comforting soup, since leftovers are so rare with four teenage boys eating us out of house and home!

If I had to pick my favorite cuisine, it would be rustic Italian or French. Nothing fancy, just simple, traditional, slow-cooked, handcrafted dishes that you know are made with a whole lotta love. Ribollita is a perfect example…

Category: Recipes

I’m so thrilled that last week’s fabulous recipe, George’s Meat Sauce, had people swooning all over social media. Folks shared with me their cooking plans, questions and even photos of drool-worthy results. The consensus was unanimous: George’s Meat Sauce is a winner!

But I wondered what the actual all-time most popular recipe is on my site. Is it something healthy like the colorful Bagna Cauda Salad? A nostalgic crowd pleaser like Giada’s Stuffed Mushrooms? Something hearty and decadent like Truffled Filet of Beef Sandwiches? (“I’ll have a Bloody Mary, a steak sandwich…and a steak sandwich. On Mr. Underhill’s bill!”) Or is it the best chocolate cake ever?

Surprise, surprise! Hands-down, it…

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

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

Want the best guacamole recipe? Hands-down, it’s this one I adapted about 20 years ago from Diane Rossen Worthington’s The Cuisine of California. I’ve used it ever since, to rave reviews. As my sister likes to say, “It’s seriously so good that it makes people faint!”

Assuming you use creamy, ripe avocados, you’ll end up with the most luscious dip or spread you can imagine. Adjust the cumin and jalapeño to your own taste, of course. We love to scoop it up with blue corn tortilla chips, but really, the possibilities are limitless. Use it atop any kind of taco. Serve it alongside warm scrambled eggs. Put it on a burger. Spread it on toast for…

Category: Recipes

If there’s one simple, scrumptious salad that screams “summer”…that people will beg you to bring to BBQs and picnics…that you will never tire of, it’s this Corn & Tomato Salad. The recipe is inspired by a dish at Alforno, one of our favorite restaurants in Providence, Rhode Island.

It’s the goodness of summer on a plate: sweet, crunchy kernels of fresh local corn; juicy sun-ripened tomatoes; crispy-chewy bread with a slight char; a sharp burst of pungent red onion; and a hint of delicate floral basil. We eagerly await that July day when the first early field tomatoes show up in a basket at our favorite farm stand, and the piles of corn beckon. From then…

Category: Recipes