winter

Sausage with Apples and Garbanzos

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I am swimming in apples.

I just can’t get ahead of them. The whole kerfuffle started when a friend went apple picking and brought me home a massive bag. Since then, my CSA has provided a steady supply, and well. My recipe-brain has been stretched this fall, trying to think of more and more creative uses for all my apples.

Most often, I eat them simply: to lend a sweet snap to a ham sandwich. Or alone, with cheese and charcuterie (goat cheese and triple-crème are special favorites). They are nice with soups, as the weather turns, like tomato, carrot, or squash.

You can bake them in a crisp until the apple melts into itself, stirred together with nutmeg and golden sugar. Or bake them as they are until caramelized, with butter and apple cider. Top with ice cream or Greek yogurt. Read more »

Strawberry-Kissed Walnut Sablés

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Butter, sugar, salt. When balanced properly, is there a happier confluence of ingredients? (The answer is no, unless you’d like to discuss the merits of cream, yolks, and sugar.)

My goal for this batch of cookies was to bridge the transition weeks from warm to colder weather. Toasted walnuts and notes of nutmeg tackle the ‘oh my, it’s quite nippy, I think I’d like something conforming’ aspects of fall, while drops of strawberry jam brighten each sablé and remind of sunny afternoons.

I decided these sablés (a word that means “sand” in French, in reference to both the cookie’s color and texture) should be pop-able, but ample enough so that a few would satisfy. Read more »

“Doggy Bag” Chicken Soup

If you ask the Frenchman, he’ll tell you I only ever order one dish when we go out to dinner: chicken. This isn’t true of course, but I will admit that chicken is my backup dish, my reliable mainstay amongst the flotsam and jetsam of an uninspiring menu. (It doesn’t hurt that chicken dishes typically arrive with some kind of saucy vegetable and potato arrangement, but that is neither here nor there.)

Last week we had friends visiting from France, and so I used the opportunity to knock a restaurant or two off my Must Try list. (It’s a long list, alas.) One evening, we dined in a restaurant where every hostess was certainly a model. I’d read an article about the owner; he raised chickens (well, not he, but people he employed) on a devastatingly bucolic farm somewhere upstate in order to supply the restaurant with high-quality poultry. This kind of information is like catnip to me; of course, I had to try it. Read more »

Maple Ice Cream with Tipsy Raisins and Candied Cashews

Holy batman, this is delicious ice cream. I mean, seriously, criminally tasty. I am not trying to toot my own horn here, but I really need you to know—this one’s a keeper.

I am the first to admit that my previous ice cream attempts may have left something to be desired. I know that the heavy pounding of cinnamon, star anise and cardamom I gave my chocolate and spice was not, perhaps, the best. It’s all right. And let’s not dwell on my celery endeavor, which while it fulfilled Food52’s contest requirements, has also made it so I cannot stand the taste or smell of celery.

This though, this is a whole different situation. Read more »

Research Chili

The fact of the matter is, I have never made chili before. Not really. I didn’t grow up in a “comfort food” household, and I do not spend my days herding cattle. I have no hockey team to feed. And since you can’t exactly whip up a single portion of chili, it never occurred to me to throw together a pot full. (A silly notion, considering how beautifully chili freezes.)

As a result of my chili ignorance, I was only vaguely aware of the rules surrounding the dish—beans vs. no beans, what cut of meat to use, what variety of chili pepper….and so on. I arrived at this recipe the same way any self-respecting nerd would have: I read everything I could get my hands on. Read more »

Pork Loin with Cider-Braised Leeks and Apples

Like all the best recipes, this pork looks like more effort than it actually is.  There are no fancy techniques here, no sudden movements. This dish will forgive you if you get distracted and walk away from the stove for a minute. Still, it looks pretty nice all plated up, either family-style on a serving platter or on individual dishes.

The best part? The whole thing is done in an hour, so it’s certainly manageable on a weeknight. You can use the final 20 minutes of cooking to throw together a salad, some potatoes or some other tasty root vegetable. Or you could pour yourself a glass of wine. Why not? It’s cold outside. You deserve it. Read more »

Key Lime Tarts

Key lime pie is my very favorite dessert, of all time, in the world. That is–when it is done properly. Because, to sound like a snob, it is almost never done properly. The next time you are in the supermarket, take a gander to the bakery department. You might find a key lime pie there, but more likely it is only something masquerading as a key lime pie. Have a look at the ingredients. Are there more than five? Take a look at the color. Does it look like an experiment in florescents gone bad?

Real key lime pie, the kind you find in restaurants in southern Florida, only has four ingredients: sweetened condensed milk, key lime juice, key lime zest and egg yolks. It is pale yellow, almost white, and has the consistency of thick custard. Read more »

Pear and Cranberry Cake

This is a family recipe, no denying it. It was my Aunt Martha’s creation, but quickly became a holiday staple in my house as well. I distinctly remember eating this cake as part of our Thanksgiving or Christmas dinner, and then again the next morning for breakfast; a huge treat for my sisters and I. Now I make it too (although the pears are a recent addition), because it is mixed and in the oven in under fifteen minutes, and because it makes my kitchen smell divine. The flecks of mild, sweet pear and bites of sour cranberry are little gems, lending this moist, citrus-spiked cake a distinctive holiday look and taste. Read more »