Posted by Ed Levine, May 9, 2008 at 1:00 PM
The first serious chef I think of when I think about Mother's Day is Lidia Bastianich. Lidia is the proud mother of Joe Bastianich, restaurateur, vintner, and food businessman extraordinaire, and of Tanya Bastianich Manuali, her travelmate on the Lidia's Italy television series. She's also a grandmother of five and the devoted daughter of her mom, Erminia, who escaped from a refugee camp with Lidia 40 years ago. So I figured I'd ask Lidia how she's celebrating Mother's Day.
Usually she spends it at her restaurants, she told me, because it's such a restaurant-oriented holiday. But this year Joe's son is having his First Communion, so the whole Bastianich clan is congregating at Joe's house in Connecticut. Lidia is making a special octopus dish that she says all her grandchildren love; here's the recipe.
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Posted by Ed Levine, May 4, 2008 at 12:30 PM
This week's Cartoon Kitchen features Serious Eats' cartoonist in residence Larry Gonick's spin on shrimp salad. —Ed Levine
Posted by Nick Kindelsperger, April 25, 2008 at 4:30 PM
I had to find something to do with my delicious leftover feta. While I wasn’t exactly worried about it going bad, I was afraid that I would attack the whole package with a fork without coming up for air. That’s not an appealing image.
Since I needed a little refinement, I searched all around my favorite sites for some kind direction. I still wanted the cheese to play a central role and didn’t want to spend much more money. This Cook's Illustrated salad felt perfect.
So, I had the fantastic feta, some plump grapes, and I even sprung for a new bottle of raspberry vinegar to properly dress the salad—but it was the small teaspoon of minced rosemary that really made the salad for me. The earthy notes of that herb provided the beautiful contrast to the fruity dressing. Instead of being cloying, the rosemary gave the whole salad balance. I'm always astounded by simple additions that focus a dish.
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Posted by Lucy Baker, April 22, 2008 at 3:30 PM
Sometimes a few simple ingredients come together to create something spectacular. The individual elements compliment each other so well that, when combined, the results are so delicious they border on magical. Think bacon and eggs; chocolate and strawberries; hot dogs, ketchup, and mustard.
To my mind, few dishes are as effortlessly flawless as a classic caprese salad composed of tart tomatoes, creamy mozzarella, and fragrant basil. And while I wouldn't normally mess with perfection, I was intrigued by a recipe in the May issue of Bon Appetit that replaced the tomatoes with slices of fresh mango, and added radicchio to the mix.
A caprese salad with tropical and bitter flavors? I had to try it out for this week's magazine recipe review.
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Posted by Robin Bellinger, April 22, 2008 at 2:00 PM
Last fall I caught up with an old friend over dinner. Slender, tall, beautiful, and very stylish, she has a fancy high-paying job that requires her to travel a lot, eat in swanky restaurants, and generally be glamorous. Average height, average build, and mousy-haired, I spend most of my days working at home in yoga pants and a sweatshirt from the children’s department at Target and get truly excited about the prospect of a Saturday night trip to Brooklyn for dinner out.
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Posted by Nick Kindelsperger, April 21, 2008 at 4:15 PM
I just picked up some fantastic French feta from my local cheese-monger that’s changed my opinion about the stuff. Feta has never really tasted like much to me, but this one does—it’s still crumbly, but it’s not overly salty, and doesn’t have that slightly chalky aftertaste. It reminds me most of a buffalo mozzarella with its luscious body and tangy bite, even though it’s a crumbly goat-based cheese. The cheese inspired this warm spinach salad.
Most of my warm spinach salads have been meat affairs. You know the drill: cook up a whole heap of bacon, toss it on some spinach leaves, and watch them wilt. It’s a delicious winter salad, one that I do love to indulge in, but then I found this recipe that utilized sweet red onions and feta. I’m not sure if all feta acts like my insanely good French version, but mine became gooey and luscious. The sweet red onions provide the sweetness, and the feta gets creamy and gooey. Not exactly a light meal, but it’s a great alternative to the bacon-laden kind.
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Posted by Robin Bellinger, April 15, 2008 at 3:30 PM
I am going through a period of less-than-fantastic eating not because baby is demanding unhealthy food but because I am having trouble motivating to plan and cook dinner. It’s an early springtime thing, I think. It’s tempting to goof off or take an extra long walk in the park instead of battling the crowds at the grocery store, and the Greenmarket won’t be bursting with temptation and inspiration for another month or so.
Frequently I dream of conquering dinnertime laziness by gathering in one place all my favorite fast and simple dinners that do not require same-day shopping, but for some reason I always get hung up on this question of format: should the recipes live in a blog, a beautiful notebook, a Google document, Tastebook? Instead of scribbling recipes from the internet onto index cards, shouldn’t I print neatly and keep a proper box?
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Posted by Lucy Baker, April 8, 2008 at 2:00 PM
It's salad season. But I don't mean that in a negative, it's-almost-time-to-put-on-a-bathing-suit kind of way. I mean because the markets are once again full of fresh, vibrant produce, from artichokes and baby beets to radishes and watercress. And because the vegetables are in such abundance, they cost a fraction of what they did all winter. Cheap and delicious—what could be better?
One of my favorite spring veggies has always been asparagus. Whether simply broiled with a drizzle of olive oil and a sprinkling of salt and pepper or showcased in a sophisticated soup (I love Jerry Traunfeld's version with fresh thyme), I just can’t get enough of its sweet, crunchy, herbaceous flavor. For this week's magazine recipe review, I decided to prepare the quinoa salad with asparagus, dates, and orange from the April issue of Cooking Light.
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Posted by Blake Royer, March 31, 2008 at 4:00 PM
This might look a lot like a coleslaw recipe, and I'll be the first to say that coleslaw isn't one of my favorite foods. I've had too many disappointing experiences with the stuff in little paper cups, tasting like it had been tossed in Miracle Whip. No disrespect; it's just not my thing.
And yet, this cabbage salad recipe from Pork & Sons—a side dish to the smoked Boston butt—really makes the case for cabbage with mayo. Rather than shredded, the raw cabbage is sliced into wide ribbons, which maintain their crunch under the blanket of silky sauce, a homemade mayonnaise with a piquant handful of cornichons, capers, and shallots. And what a sauce it is—I made extra and have been painting it on bread to make amazing ham sandwiches. Red wine vinegar and mustard provide an appropriately spicy background to balance out the richness. I think of it as French-ified coleslaw.
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Posted by Nick Kindelsperger, March 28, 2008 at 4:15 PM
Just add salad!
I've arrived at duck confit salad because of an embarrassment of riches. I've had at least four legs over the past couple months (and have loved every one), but it was time to see what else this preserved item could do. Who knew? Maybe I was wasting my wonderfully cooked legs and wasn't exploring the many other options out there. I remembered seeing duck confit on a salad and started searching. When I came across this simple recipe for duck confit and pear salad, I decided to see what it could do for me and my duck fat covered friend.
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Posted by Adam Kuban, March 26, 2008 at 3:00 PM
Spring's here, it's warming up a bit where I am (at least for now), and that's got me thinking of picnicky foods. Like chicken salad. So for today's recipe from Nigella Express, I'm looking at the Mexican Chicken Salad she's got going on. Like (almost) everything in this book, it's quick and easy—and it's light, as it's not the traditional mayo-based chicken salad. It appears after the jump.
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As is always the case with our Cook the Books, we're giving away a number of them this week. Enter to win Nigella Express »
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Posted by Blake Royer, March 18, 2008 at 4:45 PM
Pork tenderloin is a great cut of meat to cook with—it's simple to prepare, inexpensive, and easily sliced into pleasing medallions for serving. It behaves very well and predictably, being a long cylinder of meat with little fat and tendon. The only problem is, just like that other conveniently-shaped protein that makes its way into so many dishes—the boneless, skinless, chicken breast—the pork tenderloin can often lack flavor. Buying one from a nice well-loved heritage pig rather than a commercial hog does add something, but it's never going to have the porkiness of a bone-in chop, much less a belly or shoulder.
Thankfully, the dressing from this Gourmet recipe packs a serious, unexpected punch. Building on the basic red wine vinegar with garlic and olive oil, it's fortified with the caramelized pan drippings of the roasted tenderloin and thickened with warm toasted walnuts. Arugula and sliced endive are the refreshing bitter counterpoint against the warm pork.
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Posted by Robin Bellinger, March 18, 2008 at 1:00 PM
I know I’m not the only person frustrated by the breathless announcements of nutrition journalism and by the studies behind it, which are so often contradictory and can always be manipulated to show just about anything (as discussed in last week’s thread about corn syrup). I'd rather forget about it all in favor of Michael Pollan's elegant and manageable, "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants."
But now that I’m pregnant, I find myself drawn again to this report and that study or those recommendations.
Fish interests me most, probably since the information about it is so confusing: it’s vital to human well-being/no, it’s full of mercury and other toxins. In fish’s plus column, one of the omega-3 fatty acids that makes its way up the food chain from seaweed to swimmers, DHA, is said to be crucial for baby’s brain and retina development, especially in the third trimester. (Hey fathead, did you know that the human brain is 60% fat?)
Because wild fish is so expensive, I didn’t eat a lot of fish before; it was a special treat. Now, though, in addition to taking a DHA supplement with my prenatal vitamin I’ve started seeking out the highest-reward, lowest-risk, best-value fish I can find, and you can guess where that leads me: sardines.
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Posted by Robin Bellinger, March 11, 2008 at 1:00 PM
Finally, happily, I’d like to tell you about something pregnant women can and should eat with no worries. In fact, everyone who is trying to work more whole grains into their diet should try this recipe for wheatberry salad with dried cranberries and fresh herbs, one of the few really craveable whole grain preparations I have discovered. The Dean and DeLuca Cookbook
calls it a side dish, but it also makes an excellent snack for your morning or afternoon slump. Pregnant women in particular are advised to eat many small meals and snacks throughout the day; this kind of grazing is said to help prevent queasiness during the first trimester and simply to be necessary during the hungry third trimester. Expecting or not, you’ll find that having a bowl of this salad in the refrigerator makes it possible for you to skip a trip to the deli for chips (my weakness) and snack without guilt even as you fill those seemingly impossibly high whole grain requirements.
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Posted by Blake Royer, March 6, 2008 at 4:15 PM
You can barely call this a recipe: it involves thinly slicing a couple ingredients, adding some olives, and tossing with olive oil. But it's just one of those magical combinations that works. Fennel and citrus belong together, but the addition of olives adds a little twist to the citrus acidity, giving it a briny undertone. The whole lemon goes in, including peel, which adds some textural interest.
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Posted by Blake Royer, March 4, 2008 at 4:30 PM
My girlfriend and I had just returned from a weekend of eating pizza in New Haven, Connecticut, and, frankly, salad was the only option for our stomachs after days of cheese and grease. But we were hungry, too, and a pile of leaves wasn't going to cut it. More problematic was that cooking after a few hours of traveling was the last thing I wanted to do. The takeout menus beckoned.
But we had some mesclun greens around, as well as some cherry tomatoes. Taking inspiration from the classic Salad Niçoise, we looked in the freezer for some haricot verts, and a salmon fillet to replace the usual canned tuna.
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Posted by Blake Royer, February 26, 2008 at 4:00 PM
To anchovy or not to anchovy? That may be the Caesar salad question. The original recipe didn't have them—it had Worcestershire sauce. But personally, I love the nutty flavor of anchovies, so when Alice Waters backed me up in The Art of Simple Food
, I felt a boost of confidence. Every single thing I've made out of her book has been spot-on, and I was sure this would follow.
Fearing the wrath of Michael Ruhlman, I decided not to make it a Chicken Caesar. I'm glad I abstained: chicken breast wouldn't add much to this salad, serving only its usual function as a boneless, relatively tasteless protein to make the meat eaters happy. The play of textures is already interesting, between the crunchy croutons with their soft interior, and the spectrum of crunch from leaf to leaf. The dressing is delicious—though this is a very different taste than the restaurant or bottled Caesar I was used to. It's sharper, more daring, less gummy and creamy. It's kind of intoxicating. To cut back on the sharpness, use a milder olive oil.
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Posted by Nick Kindelsperger, February 22, 2008 at 4:30 PM
Here’s another one of those green bean dishes I’m so fond of, and yet another pick adapted from Saveur. But what caught my eye wasn’t necessarily either of those two things: It was the honey.
I got so sidetracked with thoughts of runny honey that I didn’t even notice that I’d have quartered pieces of radishes amongst it all. It’s not that I loath the veggie. When fresh, it has a wonderful peppery note that might be perfect on a salad or a shrimp taco. I just worried that the veggie would meddle with the glorious golden sweetness.
But a funny thing happened when I cooked the radish. It lost all of that fresh bite, and picked up some wonderful round notes. Instead of one of the ingredients hogging the spotlight, they all played nicely together. In fact, the honey faded into the background, making this a more savory dish than a sweet one. The original recipe uses chili honey, an ingredient I didn’t have on hand. But a sprinkling of red pepper flakes seemed to work well enough.
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Posted by Nick Kindelsperger, February 18, 2008 at 4:15 PM
I’ve been stuck on Saveur for a few weeks now, mostly because I’ve been able to find little gems like this one. The magazine likes to search for truly authentic dishes and explores their origins in longer written pieces. Salad of shrimp and roasted peppers is actually an adaptation of a traditional Italian dish which substitutes the hard to find eel (well, in the Midwest at least), with the far more approachable shrimp. Everything else is pure simplicity. How can so few ingredients create something so fresh and flavorful?
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Posted by Ed Levine, February 17, 2008 at 1:00 PM
This week's Cartoon Kitchen features Serious Eats' cartoonist in residence Larry Gonick's spin on a marinated salad. —Ed Levine
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Posted by Nick Kindelsperger, January 30, 2008 at 4:45 PM
This full flavored vinaigrette came from the Cafe Flora Cookbook
, a vegetarian restaurant in Seattle that I’ve never been to. Oh well, I’ve had a lot of luck these kind of works, because they tend to pack a lot of flavor into meager vegetables that I’d never treated correctly. This time it’s the shallot, an ingredient I’d sometimes just added raw to a vinaigrette.
Who knew it just needed a nice roast? It gets creamy and pungent, the perfect balance for the spicy and tart mustard. It is designed to be poured atop a spinach and smoked mushroom salad, the latter item I’d never heard of before. According to the book they are described as an “obvious substitute for bacon.” Guess what I substituted? It turns out smoking mushrooms is much harder than walking to my butcher and buying some real smoky bacon. But the choice is yours. The vinaigrette will taste fantastic over just about anything.
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Posted by Nick Kindelsperger, January 23, 2008 at 4:15 PM
All that talk the other day about Donna Hay had me flipping through her oversized book, Off The Shelf, for one last dish. See, it’s due back in the library very soon, and by very soon, I mean overdue. But that’s a problem that I’ll need to figure out between me and my library lady. I do know that the book has been the sleeper in my library stash. I picked out some big names in the last haul home, including James Beard and Craig Claiborne, but I seem to keep going back to "Off the Shelf." When I was reminded by the above mentioned chicken dish, I figured it was worth the last dip inside to see what I could find. This also coincided with one of my busiest days, and the thought of not having to expend too much effort felt like a worthy cause. I took her mantra to heart, and tried to find something that was nearly completely in my pantry.
This recipe is a little less overwhelming than the chicken one I mentioned. And that’s fine. Not every recipe has to knock your socks off. But, of course, that didn’t stop me from tinkering. And the one thing this recipe reminded me of was Jamie Oliver, who had a bean salad much like this one, but he added some anchovies for additional body. Sure enough, that really helped to heft up the dish, and add another layer of flavor. It isn’t completely necessary; it’s perfectly fine the way it is. I just happened to have the anchovies in the pantry, so it was fair game.
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Posted by Nick Kindelsperger, January 14, 2008 at 4:15 PM
I’ve been stashing Fresh Food Fast
on my crowded book shelf for ages, incurring pesky library fees, and generally not getting much from the interaction. It’s okay, not every cookbook needs lights my fire, but I had had hopes about his one. The very descriptive title seemed like a perfect fit for me and my quick cooking. But I just kind of forgot about it. Maybe it was the library fee that reminded me, but I finally was able to peak through and find some recipes.
This one immediately popped because I needed something light and fresh to side up to a steak. Now, the book also happens to be about the wonders of vegetarianism, so I don’t know how the author would feel about such a set up. But it worked very well. In fact, the salad bowl was finished before we could even attempt to finish the steak, one of the first times that has ever happened. The chives and mint really are a remarkable pair, and the very little oil makes it an obscenely healthily one, too.
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Posted by Nick Kindelsperger, January 2, 2008 at 4:30 PM
This looked way, way too simple to possibly be any good, and I probably would have never given it a chance had it not had the clever title that is catchy and quite literal. The first butter is actual butter, and the second is the Boston Bibb lettuce, which is in the butterhead lettuce family. These two ingredients only need a little lemon juice and salt and pepper to make a quick and unique dish.
The recipe came from my brand new copy of the North Market Cookbook, which is my local destination for all things food in Columbus, Ohio. It was written by the cheesemonger of Curds and Whey, which seems a little odd considering not an ounce of cheese comes anywhere close to it. But it’s only a problem in theory, as the salad doesn’t need anything else. Somehow the clarified butter lightly coats the lettuce but never gets too heavy. The numbers by the ingredients are only a suggestion. I like to lightly dress my salads and then crank up the salt and pepper. But that’s just me.
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Posted by Blake Royer, December 20, 2007 at 5:00 PM
There was no hope for brevity in titling this recipe—a salad can be made a thousand ways, and rarely is one transcendent or ubiquitous enough to merit its own name. Cobb salad is one; salad Niçoise—the grandfather of composed salads—another. This recipe didn’t land far from either of those trees, an elegant take from Tamasin Day-Lewis’s Good Tempered Food. "Composed" salads, as opposed to the “simple” or tossed variety with lots of leaves (which is what I’m used to calling a salad) are composed of carefully chosen ingredients—usually what’s in season—and are arranged elegantly for everyone to dig in to the varying flavors, textures, and layers. There’s usually a protein around, which makes them filling enough for a low-key light dinner.
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Posted by Adam Kuban, December 12, 2007 at 1:30 PM
You've probably had a salad with bacon bits at some point in your life. But why not go all in with this Wilted Spinach and Avocado Salad With Warm Bacon Dressing? It's from this week's Cook the Book, The Bacon Cookbook
.
James Villas, the book's author, isn't too picky about the bacon used for this salad but does recommend using a young, crisp baby spinach.
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Posted by Blake Royer, December 11, 2007 at 4:00 PM
It’s amazing what a handful of pine nuts can do to a recipe. Even these sliced zucchini sautéed in olive oil magically changed in my skillet from out-of-season blandness to a subtle, nutty satisfaction. And while the pine nuts had me looking the other way, the recipe switched out regular raisins for golden ones, which, though only subtly different on the palate (perhaps a little less sweet and more tangy), are more harmonious for the palette of the dish.
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Posted by Nick Kindelsperger, November 26, 2007 at 4:00 PM
Oh, who am I kidding. I was really just taking a break last Friday before settling down and inventing ways to eat all of the food. I mean, half the fun of Thanksgiving are the mounds of leftovers Ziplocked-up in the fridge. At first, the meals just looked like facsimiles of the main event. There were many overstuffed plates of turkey, mashed potatoes, and broccoli. Lunch became a routine of sandwich preparation. But as I was getting down to the dregs, I had to start thinking of creative variations.
That’s when I dug out the cranberry sauce. It was the perfect accompaniment to the big turk, but I was having a hard time figuring out what to do with the little that was left. By the third day, a salad sounded like a godsend, and I tossed some greens with a little white meat, some goat cheese, and crumbled bacon. And that's when I thought of the dressing. A little of that cranberry sauce whisked with olive oil and all the disparate items were tied together. Not exactly revolutionary, but tasty nonetheless.
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Posted by Adam Kuban, October 23, 2007 at 1:45 PM
We're going to take it down a notch from yesterday's pressed pig's ear dish. This one's safe even for vegetarians. Who'da thought that'd be the case from a book called Beyond Nose to Tail?
With its striking red and green color, make sure to serve this salad on a white plate for best effect.
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Posted by Nick Kindelsperger, October 15, 2007 at 4:15 PM
Who knew Whole Foods had such an extensive website? Or that it would have that recipe for Sweet Corn and Black Bean salad that I had just paid $7.99 a pound for the day before. Needless to say, it’s a tad cheaper to make it yourself and only marginally harder.
The key to the salad’s success is the quick vinaigrette that binds all the ingredients together. Instead of being more or less a corn and bean salsa, its a dip that requires no chips. The fork worked fine for me. I also started sprinkling it on other salads, which is probably a leftover habit from the Whole Foods prepared section. I always managed to stuff way too many items into one box, which is probably why I never made it out of there with a salad under $9. This is a great way to atone for those spending fits.
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Posted by Adam Kuban, October 3, 2007 at 3:00 PM
Today's Cook the Book recipe is one that the late James Beard, "the dean of American gastronomy," recommended as a dish to serve "at a buffet party, with cold meats for luncheon, or to take on a picnic." (Of course, you better hurry on that last one.)
As with all the Cook the Book entries this week, this recipe comes from Beard on Food.
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Posted by Nick Kindelsperger, September 28, 2007 at 4:00 PM
By most standards, this salad is typical or, more bluntly, kind of boring. Roasted almonds, Boston lettuce, and a simple vinaigrette. But the ginger croutons, ah! Those are a keeper. Or, as the recipe says, “a knockout." Making croutons is a simple action to save a boring salad, and making ginger croutons is a step beyond that.
The dressing is more a theory than a recipe. They didn’t deem it necessary to give amounts. Just a splash of this and a dash of that. I guess that’s what one should expect from Cooking in the Lowcountry from the Old Post Office Restaurant. The dressing somehow works. I wish the same thing could be said about the almonds. I should have purchased pre-slivered almonds. Halfway through, I just started chopping them up because I had a life to live. Luckily, nothing else here takes that long.
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Posted by Adam Kuban, September 25, 2007 at 1:30 PM
This week's Cook the Book entry, How to Pick a Peach by Russ Parsons, is all about where the foods in the produce aisle come from, when they're at their best, and how to pick a prime example of whatever it is you're in the market for. Arugula, Pear, and Goat Cheese Salad, one of the recipes that goes along with the chapter on pears follows, but first a couple of pear tips from Parsons.
- Where they're grown: Pear trees need more cold than most other fruit trees, they are susceptible to a wide variety of climatic ills. For this reason, between 90 and 95 percent of the total U.S. crop is grown in California, Washington, and Oregon....
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Posted by Nick Kindelsperger, September 12, 2007 at 4:00 PM
I come back often to Rick Bayless and his fantastic Mexican Everyday. Before he gets into ingenious tacos, slow-cooker beans, and the perfect rice, he has a short section of salad dressings. It may seem like he personally created these dressings to mix with American salad sensibilities, but that’s fine. As this chipotle and balsamic dressing shows, they are fantastic.
The sweetness of the balsamic vinegar balances the sharp bite of the chipotle peppers. Even my relatively simple salad of romaine and red onion was tasty, but that didn’t stop me from exploring. I decided mid-meal that it tasted good on everything. Remember those shrimp from Monday? What they needed was this dressing. I rolled sushi in it and even dipped my bread in it.
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Posted by Adam Kuban, August 29, 2007 at 2:15 PM
If you missed Monday's intro post on it, this week's Cook the Book features Jenni Ferrari-Adler's Alone in the Kitchen with an Eggplant, a book in which food writers and food-crazy authors share what it means to cook for one or dine alone. Today's recipe accompanies an essay written by Jami Attenberg, in which Attenberg relates how she picked up her solo dining habit after a romance had started to turn sour.
The recipe, for Roasted Beet and Cucumber Salad with Ricotta Salata, has been adapted from Diner in Brooklyn, New York, where Attenberg lives.
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Posted by Ed Levine, August 6, 2007 at 1:45 PM
Corn salads are one of my favorite dishes to serve in the summer, when freshly picked corn is readily available just about everywhere. Eric Gower's is particularly full-flavored and zesty, perhaps because of the habanero pepper he throws in. If habaneros scare you, substitute a jalapeño or an ancho chile, which are both much milder. Make sure that, no matter what chile is used, you remove all its seeds—they're where much of the heat is concentrated.
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Posted by Nick Kindelsperger, July 18, 2007 at 4:00 PM
Making a great salad has never really been a question of time. Most can be mixed together in a matter of minutes, and this one is no different. What is different about this little beast, beyond the cute presentation, is how it turns the normal Greek salad on its head by removing ingredients instead adding them. It’s simply romaine, green onions, dill, lemon, oil, and salt. I added a little feta just to be horribly difficult, but that’s really all you need.
I found this recipe in Jim Botsacos’s The New Greek Cuisine, a book I wish I had the courage to tackle more often. (Most of his recipes look fantastic, if a tad complex). It’s only natural that I’d drift to the one that can be whipped up in less than five minutes.
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Posted by Ed Levine, June 7, 2007 at 5:15 PM
A great side dish is almost as good as the 'cue itself. Almost.
But if you don't have sides, you feel as if something's missing. Carolyn McLemore's Cornbread Salad has a little something of everything in it, however. The recipe, after the jump.
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Posted by Ed Levine, May 3, 2007 at 6:45 PM
Like a lot of people my age, the Silver Palate Cookbook became my go-to cookbook when I first started cooking for friends and girlfriends. In fact, the first brunch I ever cooked for my wife featured two recipes from the Silver Palate. Julee Rosso's and Sheila Lukins's recipes are simultaneously sophisticated and down to earth, and—here's the best part—they always work.
This was one of the most popular summer salad recipes from the original Silver Palate.
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Posted by Ed Levine, April 27, 2007 at 9:30 AM
Steve Cuozzo in the New York Post had a funny piece about Niçoise salad. With more and more chefs and home cooks using fresh instead of canned tuna, I thought it would be useful to publish Julia Child's classic Niçoise salad recipe. It used canned tuna, of course. I like the Italian tuna canned in olive oil or, if you feel like splurging, get the Ortiz Ventresca tuna. It's more expensive but worth it. It's buttery and meaty and delicious and will make your salade Niçoise swing so much harder.
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Posted by Ed Levine, April 17, 2007 at 2:00 PM
The recipe that follows has been adapted from Nancy Silverton's A Twist of the Wrist. This is a recipe so easy and so elegant it was a huge hit at a recent dinner party my wife and I threw. And it looks good enough to be served at a fancy-pants restaurant.
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