Gravlax can be the centerpiece of simple-yet-elegant appetizers, first courses and salads. It’s delicious for breakfast or brunch, served with brown bread, cucumber slices, capers, red onions and mustard sauce (much more delicious than lox in my opinion). Toss it into warm potato salad or pasta. Mouthwatering. Making It Easy Gravlax, pronounced GRAHV-locks, is a Swedish-style cured salmon made by…
Pasta + Baby Spinach + Ricotta + Half & Half + Butter = Quick-to-Prepare Fun In the ten years I served on the James Beard Foundation’s Cookbook Award Committee, I flew to NYC four times a year to attend the meetings (we had no idea that ZOOM would become a thing – after all it was the 90’s and early…
This salad recipe is adapted from “Ancient Grains for Modern Families” by Maria Speck (Ten Speed, $29.99). Speck used marinated dried figs in the salad, which are delicious. But I changed my mind about the figs when I had a luscious quinoa salad at Marche Moderne restaurant (Newport Coast). It was adorned with candied kumquats. Reset. I love the sweet-tart…
Chicken with Caramelized Onion and Cardamom Rice, Wowzers
Chefs, Cookbooks, Cooking, Melissa's, RecipesChicken with Caramelized Onion and Cardamom Rice: My niece Holly Sue is a chef. A graduate of the Culinary Institute of America, many years ago she left a restaurant career to raise her family, but later started a highly successful at-home personal chef business when her boys were approaching middle school age. Her clients pick up made-from-scratch family dinners twice…
Rad Red Times Three Salad with Beets, Blood Oranges and Pomegranates
Cookbooks, Cooking, Melissa's, Produce, Recipes, VideosI love red-fleshed fruits and vegetables! Red Times Three Salad showcases three of my favorites: blood oranges, red beets and pomegranate seeds. Blood orange’s sweet-sour flavor profile has a subtle note of raspberry. It pairs beautifully with the earthy edge of beets. I use Melissa’s ready-to-eat peeled and steamed baby beets – they are so convenient and beat the heck…
Many years ago, after taking cooking classes at the Santa Fe School of Cooking in New Mexico, I decided that layering enchiladas in a pan was a much faster and easier than the tradition individual stuff-and-roll approach. Right? A recent article in Martha Stewart Living magazine, offered a layered vegetarian enchiladas suizas recipe. I substituted small cubes of butternut squash…
When the pandemic changed our world, I no longer could shoot close-up-and-unmasked with chefs in my home kitchen. So I changed my approach to filming videos. For the time being I’m flying solo, cooking up some of my favorite recipes garnered from my decades of work in the food world. Favorites – recipes that feel like best friends. I’ll start…
In my book, an apple-cider donut is one of the best bets in the bakery box, both in flavor (apple and spices) and texture (crunch, crunch of sugar-salt-cinnamon-nutmeg coating). This loaf cake captures those lovely traits. The apple note comes from reducing apple cider to intensify the sweet-tart beauty; it’s used in the batter, atop the cake just out of…