This is a winter "go to" recipe in our house -- some meat, cabbage, rice, and tomatoes flavored with garlic and paprika makes for a warming one-pot meal. We really like this with lamb, but veal and/or pork are good too!
This is my favorite dish in any Chinese restaurant, where it is normally made with ground pork. Making it with ground turkey is healthier and it tastes very similar.
This lamb recipe is a hybrid of several, but is closely related to and mostly based on a recipe from Janny de Moor's cookbook Dutch Cooking which is an excellent resource and has great photos and recipes for all food Dutch.
If you love Thai food as much as I do, you know it packs a punch of flavor. This salad won't disappoint: seared steak gets bathed in a fragrant dressing of fresh lime juice, robust fish sauce, fiery chilies, and garlic. It is then tossed together with crunchy sliced onions, chives, and cilantro -- get ready for a party in your mouth. I like to serve this with some steamed basmati rice to soak up all the delicious vinaigrette.
These are not straight-up Italian meatballs. The sauce has a bit of North Africa as well as the Mediterranean in it, so the dish is exotic and comforting at once. The sauce has a whiff of cumin and mint, both good friends to ground lamb. Just before I serve the meatballs, I add little blobs of yogurt, crack a few eggs into the pot, and let them poach.
When I was a kid, I always thought Cornish Game Hens were one of the fanciest foods. To this day, I feel a bit guilty serving them to friends and receiving
There are millions of recipes for stuffed peppers on the internet right now. Some call for the peppers to be blanched in advance or stuffed raw and cooked longer—either way, both techniques result in peppers that taste steamed rather than roasted. I much prefer to roast the peppers to soften, then stuff and roast them again. The first round in the oven guarantees some sweetness and caramelization. Then the second round ensures a pepper that is tender but not falling apart.
I try to sneak the flavors of lamb shawarma into as many meals as I can, and this meatball scratches that itch without much effort. Warm spices, zippy tahini dressing, bright sumac, and a red onion salad all come together in a pillowy pita. The real bonus is that everything is just as delicious when you turn the leftovers into a cold sandwich the next day. The mixture of crackers and water is called panade, and it helps the meatballs stay tender and moist. And we keep things interesting with a combination of cooked (onion, spices) and raw (parsley, more spices) aromatics for layers of flavors. Everything is thoroughly mixed until springy and sticky, then allowed to rest before cooking until deeply browned.
Many of my favorite sandwiches involve something akin to salad soaking into the scattered holes of a sliced and toasted artisanal baguette. Here’s one such favorite.
I just love the notion that so many of the foods we love (think boeuf bourguignon or pasta e fagioli) started out as peasant food made with leftover bits that were available and then transformed into something spectacular. Chou farci, which means “stuffed cabbage” in French, is exactly that kind of dish. The ingredients of ground meat, cabbage, and vegetables are as humble as it gets, but it’s the way they are layered together that make this a show-stopping dish. Every year for the holidays, I make this as an appetizer. The instant you place it down on the table, you start to hear the “oohs” and “ahhhs”. It looks extremely impressive with its beautiful cabbage leaf display on the top. But only you know the secret of how easy it was to put together. After you make this once, you’ll barely have to look at the recipe the next time.
Pile this chicken salad on thick slices of toast, stuff into a pita, scoop onto greens, or use as a filling for lettuce wraps. Your roommate will make this into a sandwich when she gets home from work.
Lamb chops may not scream summer, but I started grilling them for family and friends at our barbecue a few years ago and we have never looked back. If you’re throwing burgers, dogs, or steaks on the grill, you have the skills to grill a lamb chop, and you will be rewarded for it. Lamb rib chops are not the cheapest cut of meat, so feel free to treat them like a special bonus at the barbecue, rather than a main event.
