Cafe enjoyment is often about strategy—where you sit, how to coax the barista into making your coffee just so, making sure you get there before your beloved cinnamon roll is snapped up by someone else.
My husband loves to grill and, unless there's a downpour, he will go out there and barbeque. So this past January when it was actually snowing in Seattle, he was still determined to fire up the Weber.
My boyfriend’s stepfather was known for his Caribbean-style, lemon-soaked, pepper-crusted bacon. This bacon made my heart sing and added a ferocious zing to my eggy, cheesy sandwich. If I had any business sense or any money, I’d open a weekend stand and sell only this sandwich! I urge you to try it on a sunny Sunday morning with some iced coffee.
Salsa verde is a great way to make the most of your summer herbs. Just pulse a combination of fresh herbs with plenty of olive oil, a little garlic, and a couple of anchovies, and you've got a condiment that can be used to top a steak, dress pasta, gussy up scrambled eggs, or smear over grilled flatbread.
Khao suey is a rich and indulgent curried bowl of coconut soup that is cooked with noodles and served with a delightful melange of garnishes. In fact, the garnishes remind me of the concept of deconstructed ramen.
Spaghetti and meatballs doesn't have to be a meal that you slave over and simmer all day, nor does it need to put you into hibernation once you've eaten it.
My mom learned the recipe from her mom who learned it working as a housekeeper/cook/maid in the 1930s. It used sage and poultry seasoning, which is key. My brother was the pickiest eater ever and he loves this stuffing, so it's kid-friendly too.
This is not a true Bolognese (which traditionally contains milk), but a simpler version that's also quite versatile. You can use pretty much any type of ground meat as long as it is not too lean. Serve half of it for dinner, and save the rest for the baby!
This stuffing is a Nicoletti family tradition. Unlike most sausage stuffings, which cook the sausage first and bind the stuffing with eggs, this one omits the eggs and uses the sausage as a binder.
One evening, not long after I was married, my husband Tad and I hosted a dinner party at our apartment. I pulled one of my usual tricks back then, which was to cook five entirely new dishes rather than hedge my bets with a few known winners.
The best bistecca alla fiorentina I've had was served to me one warm October evening at an outdoor café in Florence, where I ate alone, watching passersby strolling through the piazza.
This soup is my easy riff on soondubu, Korean tofu soup. I eat it alongside rice, and find it so luscious and warming that it's become a wintertime staple. Feel free to include any vegetables you'd like such as mushrooms or bok choy. It can also be made vegetarian by omitting the ginger and pork.
One of my New Year's resolutions this year was to cook simpler food more often. This was great news for my fiancé, who is a real meat-and-potatoes guy.
For all sorts of reasons, you might want to knock out the turkey early this year—the oven’s on the fritz, or too many sides or pies will be hogging it, or maybe you just like to get ahead so you can kick back come Thursday.
This assertive main course works really well when prepared in a slow cooker, provided that the meat is browned first in hot fat. The inspiration is a Neapolitan-style ragu. The pork shoulder can be cooked as an entire piece or cut up into pieces of about 2 inches as for a stew.
Tacos are a recurring weeknight meal for my family. One of our favorite versions is spiced ground pork with lime, pineapple, and black beans, piled high with diced avocado. It was only recently that I thought to add coconut milk to the mix.
After my husband and I had just bought our first home -- and were as poor as church mice -- he would often open the refrigerator door and say, “There’s nothing to eat!” I would scoff, scrounge around, then make something exactly like this -
