It’s easy to get carried away at Farmer’s Markets, where the compulsion to grab random things you’ve never used takes over. Letting fresh ingredients sit on the counter for too long defeats the purpose of going to such markets, so I always look for recipes that make the most of seasonal produce.
If you happen to [...]
Even if the recipe name sounds like a few rounds of word association, there’s nothing disjointed about the flavors in this ice cream. Fresh strawberries are mashed with sugar to draw out its nectar and folded with cheesecake ice cream. The rich custard base is blended with cream cheese and lightened with lemon zest and [...]
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English hot cross buns are scented with allspice and baked with dried currants and candied citrus peel. The buns are traditionally enjoyed for breakfast on Good Friday, but that doesn’t keep me from baking these all year round. It’s ready in about three hours so it’s quick as far as yeast rolls go.
The dough is [...]
These loaves of hazelnut and fig bread are loaded in every sense, with such senses being texture and nutrition, for starters. You’d be correct in thinking that it will smell wonderful as it bakes. Even as it rises, the raw dough is already redolent with the aroma of fennel seeds, fresh rosemary, and roasted hazelnuts.
The [...]
Preparing a Tarte Tatin in this way guarantees a crisp and flaky crust. Unlike traditional Tarte Tatin recipes, the puff pastry crust is baked separately from the caramelized apples. The basket-shaped puff pastry crust is made ahead of time and filled right before serving.
In addition to looking spiffier than the typical brown disk, I think [...]
Flan de Naranja is a light and silky custard dessert topped with soft caramel. Instead of milk or cream, this recipe uses freshly squeezed orange juice brightened with its own zest.
This light, dare I say healthy, flan recipe is also as easy as custard desserts get. There is no need to precook the custard, which [...]
Ensalada Valenciana is a simple salad of potatoes and oranges dressed with a red wine vinaigrette. This light salad has several layers of sweetness — subtle red potatoes, fresh and fruity oranges, and roasted savory pimientos.
What is a pimiento? It’s a generic Spanish word for peppers, but in this recipe, pimientos refer to roasted, skinned, [...]
Two-in-one recipes are more fun when booze is involved. That is fact. In this recipe, we end up with bonus snifters of basic vino caliente, or South American mulled wine, to go with blushing red poached pears. Granted, there isn’t anything exclusively South American about the spiced wine component, but vino caliente sounds much cooler [...]
View Poached Pears with Dulce de Leche Sauce Recipe »
Marcella Hazan reassures in her trademark impassioned tone, “Only an active campaign of sabotage could ruin it,” as if to say, “You can’t possibly screw this up, you donkey.” With that in mind, I’ve never had as much confidence in trying out a new recipe.
She insists on using Bosc or Anjou pears and singles out [...]
Sweet and fragrant cinnamon raisin walnut bread is a breakfast option worth waking up for. With all of the fruits and toasted nuts in the loaf, a generous slice is satisfying enough on its own. The center is filled with molten cinnamon sugar but you can leave it out if you prefer a less sweet [...]
View Cinnamon Raisin Walnut Bread - 100% Whole Wheat Recipe »
If you replace molasses with honey and add rye flour to your old-fashioned gingerbread recipe, you’ll end up with a basic pain d’épices, the French take on gingerbread. As its name implies, “bread of spices” is all about the fragrance and warmth of ground aromatics. There are endless spice mix variations and each recipe seems [...]
View Pain d'épices - Pierre Hermé's Fruit and Spice Cake Recipe »
This stollen is one of many treats lovingly inflicted upon kith and kin for Christmas, alongside boatloads of cookies and chocolate. If my number crunching is correct, at a going rate of 3500 calories per pound, my beat-up oven is responsible for a metric ton of holiday season weight gain. I’m just glad that no [...]
View Dan Lepard's Extra Moist Stollen Recipe »
When it’s so cold outside that a hot oven is no longer effective in raising the temperature, bake something with spices in it. Cinnamon, cloves, and nutmeg give a sense of comfort and warmth in this recipe for spiced applesauce cake. Served with a hot mug of spiced whatever, preferably heavily spiked with alcohol, it [...]
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Heavy on cranberries and walnuts, bejeweled strips of dough barely held itself together as I tried to make a braid out of it. It didn’t seem like the freshly kneaded ball could take the large amount of dried fruits and nuts, but sure enough, everything came together as advertised after a few folds.
As you can [...]
This cake reminds me of Iron Chef: Battle Apple and Chocolate. I kept thinking that apples and chocolate can’t possibly pair well because I couldn’t think of any recipes that highlight both ingredients. Think of apple desserts and caramel likely comes to mind. As far as chocolate desserts go, even if many fruits taste great [...]
View Apple Hazelnut Chocolate Cake - Valrhona Recipe
Tender and flaky mounds are studded with chewy dried cranberries in this simple scone recipe that comes together in minutes (once all of the ingredients are at room temperature, that is). The scones are light and airy with just enough sweetness to keep yourself from puckering up as you bite into the tart cranberries.
Cranberry drop [...]
Crispy apple chips were originally meant for garnishing desserts but it also makes for an addictive light snack. Paper-thin apple slices are soaked in a simple syrup and dried in a very low oven to keep the fresh apple flavor intact.
Granny Smith apples are perfect for this recipe — drying intensifies its tartness, but the [...]
This blueberry and cranberry loaf is based on a recipe for “election day bread,” which originally had raisins, candied citrus, and spices. Considering its name, doesn’t it make more sense studded with reds and blues?
But since blueberries are in season during the warmer months and cranberries during the cooler months, this combination doesn’t make sense [...]
Cooking suji halwa is a lot like preparing risotto, but with a lot less stirring. Coarse-ground semolina is first toasted and rendered aromatic in ghee, the Indian version of clarified butter. Raisins and a simple syrup are then poured over the semolina and stirred over low heat until the sweet liquid is fully absorbed.
Since the [...]
If you have a nagging need to apply heat to apples before enjoying it, try steaming for a change. Cooking and baking cultivars such as Granny Smith Apples can be steamed with good results, changing its distinctive crispness into a spoonable consistency. Steaming also intensifies the flavor of apples while retaining much of its fresh [...]
View Apples Steamed with Red Bean Paste Recipe »
Horchata de melón, a refreshing drink splashed with lime juice, uses parts of the melon typically discarded in the North American kitchen. The netted cantaloupe rind, you’ll be relieved to hear, won’t see any blender action here. The glistening seeds, however, encase delicately flavored kernels rich in protein and beneficial oils. Strained to remove [...]
View Horchata de Melón - Melon Seed Drink recipe »
Chocolate pot de crème is my dessert of choice for intimate gatherings because it is easily scalable and can be made a day in advance. A silky custard baked in single-serving portions, pots de crème can be topped with fresh fruits, whipped cream, or chocolate shavings to make a dainty-looking but unfussy dessert.
You may already [...]
Do you twist Oreos apart and eat the filling by itself? Doing the same filling finagling maneuver with Fig Newtons is a lot messier but I can’t help it. The is-it-cake-or-is-it-cookie sawdust exterior merely gets in the way of fig enjoyment by jamming itself in between teeth and up roofs of mouth. It’s nothing more [...]
View Pan de Higo - Spanish Fig Cake recipe »
This Japanese treatment for eggplants turns the spongy fruit — I thought it was a vegetable — into creamy morsels that lend itself well to the simplest of seasonings. Serving as its own cooking vessel, the purple berries are grilled until charred while steaming from the inside. The whole eggplants will expand and sputter as [...]
View Grilled Eggplants, Japanese-Style (Yakinasu) recipe »
The current object of my cheese obsession, the grill-worthy Finnish Juustoleipa, is quite enjoyable broiled until slightly charred but still firm and squeaky. Being a fresh cheese, it stays relatively mild even with the heating and can definitely use a bit of help to make it more interesting.
If there’s anything I learned from the entries [...]
I’ve never made any form of whipped egg white dessert before but these Swiss meringue cookies surprisingly came out as good as I could hope for. The scent of raspberries permeated the cookie and the slivered almonds added a nice textural contrast to the crisp meringue. The low and slow baking temperature also concentrated the [...]
View Swiss Meringue with Raspberries and Almonds recipe »
This deceptively simple steamed dessert has only three ingredients — peaches, dates, and brown sugar. I wasn’t too excited about it at first because I like peaches raw and I’m not too fond of dates. Since I was steaming chicken for dinner and had some fresh peaches on hand anyway, I figured that I might [...]
View Steamed Peaches with Honey Dates recipe »
Mangoes and cream sounds as classic a food pairing as peas and carrots, peanut butter and jelly, or spaghetti and meatballs to my ears. This combination lends itself to so many variations, each with its own distinctive character.
The recipe and variations that follow are based on malai aam, a classic Indian dessert of mangoes and [...]
What can you do to make buttery brioche buns better? Why, soak it in vanilla-infused cream and milk, of course. Adding fresh antioxidant-rich blueberries isn’t such a bad idea as well, mainly so you can convince yourself that the resulting mess of creamy goodness is somewhat healthy.
Since this is based on a Daniel Boulud recipe, [...]
Belgian lambics rely on spontaneous fermentation from naturally occurring wild yeasts, giving this beer style its acidity and distinctive tartness. It doesn’t sound too different from the process that makes sourdough sour, does it? The particular style used in this sorbet recipe is fruit lambic — fresh whole fruits are added once the fermentation starts.
There’s [...]
Pork Cooked in Orange Juice
I’m always looking for flavor combinations I’ve never tried before. The less ingredients there are, the more appealing it is because tasting how the different components complement each other can help inspire ideas and creativity in the kitchen. In this recipe, pork shoulder is slowly braised in orange juice, oregano, and [...]
Fresh mangosteens are a rare sight even at Southeast Asian groceries in Chicago. Imports of irradiated fresh mangosteens from Thailand have only recently been approved by the USDA, but they’re still far from common. Aside from being seasonal (try your luck around springtime), they seem to fly off the shelves as soon as they’re available.
When [...]
