Month: June 2019

Here are some tasty recipes to try out today.

• How To Make the Absolute Best Crab Cakes — Crab cakes should be all about the crab — no questions asked. They should be crispy on the outside, moist and flaky on the inside, and taste exclusively of fresh, delicious crab: no fillers or excess spices getting in the way. If you agree, you’ve come to the right place.
• Smoked Pulled Pork: Delicious Results in Almost Half the Time — Who doesn’t love tender, juicy, melt-in-your-mouth, smoked pulled pork? But traditional cook times for this BBQ staple can have you up in the wee hours of the morning checking your smoker. Thanks to accurate temperature tools and careful monitoring of the temperature of both the smoker and the meat inside it, we were able to cut 7 hours off of traditional smoking times while preserving all of the flavor and most of the moisture and silky texture.
• How to Make the Internet’s Favorite Tomato Sauce Your Own — There may be no tomato sauce more famous—or minimalist—than Marcella Hazan’s. Deemed Genius in 2011, the recipe’s ingredient list is as simple as can be: tomatoes (fresh or canned), butter, onion, and salt. That’s it.
• Greek Casserole — Today I made a Greek Casserole, which essentially is almost like a lasagna, and a Greek Pastitsio, but using leftover cooked beef. If you don’t have any leftover beef,  you can use the equivalent in browned ground beef in its place.
• Old Fashioned Baked Hash — Simple and incredibly tasty. Your family is sure to love this tasty combination of leftovers and fresh vegetables.
• Crab Dip — Here’s a delicious and EASY crab dip to serve at your next party! Just mix some lump crab meat with sour cream, mayo, shallots, and seasonings, and it’s ready for the party table. Delicious crab dip with lump crab meat, sour cream, mayonnaise, shallots, dill, lemon zest, white wine vinegar, and Worcestershire sauce.
• Honey Mustard Dressing — Honey Mustard Dressing is ready in 10 minutes or less and adds zip to any salad, but don’t let lettuce have all the fun! Use it as a dipping sauce for chicken fingers, a marinade for pork, or toss it with freshly roasted vegetables!
• Creamy Tomato & Basil Soup — A great tummy warmer. Simple to make and oh so tasty!
• Get Well Custard — Quite simply delicious. Serve with berries or fruit.
• How to Make the Easiest New Orleans-Style Beignets — Biting into a beignet is like biting into a buttery, fluffy pillow. When fried in hot oil, the slightly savory dough yields bite-size nuggets with perfectly crisp exteriors and tender interiors that beg for a dusting of powdered sugar and a cup of hot coffee.

Still more to come. Don’t even begin to think I’m getting close to the end, here. 😉

• The Best Crispy Roast Potatoes Ever Recipe — These are the most flavorful crispy roast potatoes you’ll ever make. And they just happen to be gluten-free and vegan (if you use oil) to boot.
• Spaghetti à la Bolognese — “Bolognese sauce is one of those recipes that transcends its particular cuisine: I remember preparing it at the Plaza-Athénée in Paris in the 1950s. Recipes for different versions abound. My wife, who loves spaghetti Bolognese, makes hers with beef, pork, and veal. The most common version is made with beef only, but in this recipe, I use half Italian sausage and half ground beef.” — Jacques Pépin
• How to Make Sun Tea — A great way to make some tea without heating up your kitchen is to use the power of the sun to make sun tea.
• Turkey Tetrazzini — Turkey tetrazzini recipe, a turkey casserole with egg noodles, mushrooms, peas, Parmesan and Swiss cheeses, cream, bread crumbs and turkey.
• Best Ever Sloppy Joes — Best ever Homemade Sloppy Joes! 1-pot, with browned ground beef, onions, garlic, carrots, celery, cooked in sweet sour tomato sauce, served over hamburger buns.
• Glissade Chocolate Pudding — I’ve done chocolate pudding many, many ways over the years. And it’s nearly always good. But from this day forward if you come to my house for dinner, and I decide chocolate pudding might be a nice finish to the meal, this is the recipe I’ll be using.
• FERMENTED PICKLES — This easy fermented pickle method uses salt water but also a secret little trick I call raw apple cider vinegar. Maybe it’s not so secret but it’s a great trick, especially if you’re new to fermenting and a little skeered.
• Spicy Shrimp Skillet with Tomatoes and White Beans — Quick-cooking shrimp is an ideal contender for a fast weeknight skillet dinner — especially when juicy tomatoes and hearty white beans join the party. This spicy dinner relies on just a handful of ingredients to become something that’s simple and satisfying. Serve it in low bowls to catch the flavorful broth, along with some crusty bread for dunking and a salad for something green, and you’ve got complete meal.
• How To Make Croissants — How to make croissants gives you a foolproof method so you can confidently mix, fold, roll, and assemble flakey, buttery croissants at home that taste exactly like the best croissants from a French bakery in Paris. Swear.
• Creamy Blue Cheese Dressing — Ditch the bottled dressing and make bold, creamy blue cheese dressing at home in mere minutes! You probably have everything you need already in your fridge!
• The Best Nachos — These classic Tex-Mex nachos are loaded to the MAX! Avoid soggy nachos by briefly baking them before topping with cheese, seasoned beef, refried beans, guacamole, and salsa. They’re a great snack, party appetizer, or even casual weeknight dinner.
• Swiss Steak — Swiss steak is a method of slow-cooking a relatively tough cut of beef, such as a round steak. The meat is browned, and then braised in a tomato sauce.
• Steak Diane — Try this classic recipe for Steak Diane! “Diane” refers to the pan sauce made with mustard, Worcestershire, cream, and cognac. It’s ready in under 30 minutes, making it a great choice for a date night in!
• Tuscan Roast Pork — This Tuscan roast pork is made from a seared pork loin rubbed with a garlic, rosemary, and sage paste and then slowly roasted in the oven. Easy, elegant, and certain to impress.
• Creamy Chicken & Butter Biscuits — I’ve been in the process of reducing the size of some of our favourite meals and today’s casserole is our favourite Chicken & Biscuit casserole reduced to feed only 2 or 3 depending on how hungry you are!
• Homemade Vanilla Cake — If you’ve been searching for the perfect, easy-to-make, but totally delicious homemade vanilla cake, this recipe is for you! It’s light, fluffy, and works great for any occasion!
• Easy Vanilla Buttercream Frosting — This quick, easy, fluffy, spreadable, pipeable, food-dye-able, not-too-sweet, but totally delicious vanilla buttercream frosting is a baker’s dream! This is your go-to buttercream frosting!
• How to Make Thai-Style Fried Shallots — Fried shallots go from 0 to 100, real quick. Here’s how to streamline the process for a perfectly crispy, crunchy garnish every time.
• Irene Kuo’s 1-2-3-4-5 Spare Ribs — “This is a lighthearted title for an extremely easy and delectable dish—the 1 to 5 referring to the simmering ingredients. The sauce-coated meat is succulent, with a deep sweet and sour flavor. The dish serves 2 or 3 amply when accompanied by rice and a stir-fried leafy vegetable or a crisp salad. The ribs are also good as an appetizer.” —Irene Kuo
• Shrimp Cakes — These easy Shrimp Cakes are such a good weeknight meal. They’re made with shrimp and sweet potatoes mixed with garlic and other spices. Serve with tartar sauce and coleslaw!

Today I continue collecting the recipes I haven’t gotten around to trying.

• Chicken Pad Thai — A take-out favorite comes home for dinner. Here’s our version of Pad Thai with chicken. A little prep goes a long way and makes this dish an easy stovetop dinner. You can do this!

• How to Make Creamy Chocolate Ice Cream Without an Ice Cream Machine — You don’t need an ice cream machine to make great chocolate ice cream, but you do need to reach for top-notch cocoa powder.

• A Soothing Persian Rice Pudding for Ramadan — As the fasting month comes to a close, one writer reflects on the foods that bolster.

• White Bean, Tomato, and Shrimp Skillet Dinner — Consider yourself transported to the Mediterranean! This gorgeous skillet dinner is bursting with tomatoes, anise-scented fennel, white beans, and vibrant shrimp.

• Crispy Tacos (Tacos Dorados) — Commercial taco kits are convenient, but the seasoning packets taste dusty and flat and the shells are short on flavor and prone to cracking. Frying your own shells results in great taste and texture, but the process is tedious and messy. Instead, we made tacos dorados, a Mexican preparation in which corn tortillas are stuffed with a beef filling before being folded in half and fried.

• Rigatoni alla Genovese – Maybe the Best Meat Sauce You’ve Never Heard Of — I have no idea why this amazingly flavorful Genovese-style meat sauce isn’t way more popular than it is. It’s quite simply one of the best pasta sauces you’ll ever taste, thanks to a very slow cooking process, and massive amounts of onions.

• Foolproof Pan Pizza Recipe — A pan pizza recipe for those who love a thick and crispy crust that’s golden on the botton, but puffy and soft under the layers of sauce and mozzarella.

• Crispy “Everything” Flatbread – “Everything” and Everything — These crispy “everything” flatbread crackers aren’t just called “everything” because they’re inspired by the “everything bagel,” but also because they’re everything you’d want in a flatbread. They’re savory, and interesting enough to eat by themselves, but also pair perfectly with countless dips, any cheese plate, and of course, anything you’d schmear on a bagel.

• The Best Chili Ever Recipe — A methodical approach to perfecting classic beef chili.

• Grilled Chicken Teriyaki Skewers with Miso Ranch – A Combo Made in Heaven, and Sebastopol — I’ve wanted to film a skewered version of our chicken teriyaki recipe for a while, but it was actually a karaage I recently enjoyed that pushed me into action. Michele and I were at Ramen Gaijin in Sebastopol, where they serve an amazing chicken karaage that comes with a miso ranch dipping sauce. The cool, tangy sauce is just perfect with the fried nuggets of chicken, and I assumed (correctly so, as it turns out) that it would be just as effective with these skewers.

• Easy Baked Beef Brisket – Slow and Low is Not the Tempo — Remember that time you waited all day for your “low and slow” beef brisket to finish cooking, and once it finally did, it was dry? It left you disappointed, disillusioned, and wondering what went wrong. Well, I won’t bore you with all the scientific, easy-to-Google details, but basically meat can “stall” during long, low-heat methods, and never reach the proper internal temperature to fully release all the succulent goodness. 

• SALTY CASHEW-COCONUT COOKIES — I wanted a cookie that reminded me of a PayDay bar because those are one of the best candy bars ever invented. And in fact you could probably use roasted salted peanuts here in this recipe just fine but I haven’t tried it because I’m a FANCY GIRL NOW and my peanuts are cashews. (Actually, it’s ’cause of peanut allergies in some kids we know but the “too fancy for peanuts” excuse sounds so glamorous!)

A long time ago, I remember reading about the tyranny of tabbed browsing. You would get a bunch of tabs you wanted to read, but their numbers would grow faster than your ability to read them. For a while I tried to address this by capturing those pages in a list in hopes of a better future where I might read them at my leisure. I am trying again, here.

• Skillet Shrimp Fajitas — It’s all in the seasoning for these skillet shrimp fajitas! Toss shrimp in some chili powder and red pepper flakes, and then quickly cook them in a skillet with some veggies. Better-than-restaurant quality fajitas are yours in no time!
• How To Make Lemonade from Scratch — Sipping icy-cold sweet lemonade on a blazing-hot summer day is one of life’s finest pleasures, which is why we think making lemonade from scratch should be the easiest drink you make this summer. After all, it is just three ingredients: lemon juice, sugar, and water. There’s absolutely no reason you should be heating up the stove or breaking a sweat to squeeze lemons.
• Caroline’s Carrot Cake — This easy, no-nut carrot cake comes right out of my mother Caroline’s (of Caroline’s Cakes) grandmother’s kitchen. Four moist layers of carrot cake are filled and iced with the creamiest of cream cheese icings. A taste to behold! —Richard Reutter
• Orange Marmalade Recipe — This orange marmalade recipe is started the day before you will be canning it. Chopped Oranges need to soak for 12 – 18 hours. I start it in the evening and then finish and process it late the next morning or after lunch the next day.
• Grilled Corn Salad — Here’s an easy summer salad made with grilled corn, peppers, and zucchini! Serve it with burgers and grilled chicken at your next backyard barbecue. Keeps well, too!
• Butterscotch Cookies — Love butterscotch? Then put these cookies on your list! These crispy, crunchy butterscotch cookies made with brown sugar and browned butter, perfect for dunking in milk or coffee.
• 11 Homemade Jam Recipes for Beginners — If you’re never made jam before, the process may seem daunting. But homemade jam is surprisingly simple — and the results will blow any store-bought jar out of the water. Here are 11 of our easiest recipes to start with.
• Classic Southern Buttermilk Biscuits — These Classic Southern Buttermilk Biscuits are light, tender, and the perfect match for a slice of ham, melted butter and honey, your favorite jam, or smothered in country gravy!
• Classic Shortbread Cookies — Take afternoon snack time to a new level with these buttery, crisp, and utterly delicious classic shortbread cookies! Easy to share, but we won’t blame you for keeping them all to yourself.
• Moroccan Orange Cake — I am willing to guarantee that you are going to fall abso-flippingly in love with this simple cake I am sharing here with you today.  GUARANTEE!  Not only is it a very simple cake to make, but it has to be one of the moistest, most flavourful cakes you could ever want to eat.
• How To Make Quick & Easy Chicken Flautas — Hola! Vianney from South Texas here to share with you how to make the tastiest flautas filled with juicy shredded chicken. The filling can be made in advance, which means these babies come together in under 30 minutes. Served warm with plenty of shredded lettuce, tomatoes, crema, and avocado, flautas are a quick and easy dinner idea.
• The Best Tartar Sauce — The recipe I am sharing today is one I developed when I worked down South at the Manor. I used to make it when I was making them Cod Cakes or even just pan frying fish. They loved it. No surprise there. It’s totally delicious!  Homemade Tartar Sauce from scratch tastes infinitely better than anything mass produced!!
• How to Make Romesco Sauce the Catalonian Way — Romesco is a bold Spanish sauce that’s delicious and incredibly versatile, as good on roasted meats as it is on raw vegetables. Here’s how to get closer to the original flavor of the sauce than many English-language recipes will allow.
• Restaurant-Style Sizzling Steak Fajitas — This recipe preserves all the things that make fajitas so fun and enjoyable, while also transforming the restaurant favorite into an easy, accessible weeknight meal. Read on for my tips that make it a breeze every time.
• Easy, Crispy Baja Fish Tacos — Sitting oceanside, cold beer in hand, enjoying a crispy fish taco — that’s what summer dreams are made of. The next best thing? Recreating that moment at home, and this California-inspired fish taco recipe lets you do just that.